When my alarm went off at 6am, it felt like I was waking up at 3am ... but then, according to my body clock, it was. The When 2.0 conference was due to start at 7am at Stanford University, and when I arrived at 6.58am there were about 10 people milling around, including Ray Ozzie. Kudos to Ray for being on time, available to talk, and not hidden away in some protected tower.
I'll write about the content of the day at a later stage, but from an organizational aspect, Esther, Daphne and the rest of the team did an outstanding job. The setting was pleasant, the food was good, the sound system was 99.7% perfect, and the videographers didn't get in people's faces. For me, the first half of the day was the most interesting and relevant; I found the second half more tough going. I sat next to Rob Hof from BusinessWeek for most the day ... and was glad that I'd recently renewed my BusinessWeek subscription!
The conference had an interesting business model ... charge $1195 to attend a one-day session, get 165 people to attend, prepare a paper on the topic by interviewing the players, and then invite the players to be part of 4-person panel discussions. Ask some discussion-generating questions, invite questions from the floor, and give people lots of time during the day to mix, mingle, and talk business over good food and fine wine. Outgoings include venue hire, food and wine, sound system hire, video taping ... you do the math. Very interesting.
I walked back to the Westin, and then met up with one of the product managers from Oracle for dinner. We had a far ranging discussion about collaborative infrastructure, calendaring, platform vs. product, and much more. Thanks to Marten.
Comments