Insufferable Web 2.0 post: day one

Wired magazine’s guide to building a web 2.0 startup, likely to be getting much reading about these parts this week. Picture by wilbertbaan, used with permission granted by his Creative Commons license

I’m sat in the huge Moscone convention centre in central San Francisco, and they’re playing Robbie Robertson’s Somewhere Down That Lonely River over the PA system. I quite like this song, so I’m rather hoping the speaker doesn’t kick off during this, but I bet he will because he’s slightly late and he describes himself as a “kick-ass public speaker” on his website. The session he’s leading? How to innovate on time.

C’mon. I had to mention it.

It’s glorious to be back in San Francisco for properly webby conference. I’ve been coming here reasonably regularly for various reasons since 2001 - MacExpos, often, but with visits to Google and Blogger and other interesting places squeezed in. Even when stuff didn’t make it into print, it was often the place where I’d learn about trends and finally understand the significance of stuff - tagging and XML spring to mind - that I hadn’t grasped before.

I don’t report much now, but being here is still as fascinating, and the trip is still valuable for the learning. This place is truly the heart of all that’s dot.com - a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem of talent, money and support services that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and an ecosystem that means nowhere else is likely to overhaul it any time soon.

One thing that’s changed since I was last here; we’re now (really) in the era of the social web. The upshot of every webhead in Christendom (and beyond) having a blog, at least one Twitter account and a life fully exposed and declaimed on Facebook is that you know, to within a hundred yards and a few minutes, when they’re at a party.

You used to travel this far and feel quite alone. Now, there’s the surreal experience of landing at SFO after ten hours and 5371 miles, checking in and - after obligatory stop at Cheesecake Factory for Crispy Shredded Beef - heading to a party a few blocks away to be hailed by by the charming Jackie Danicki before having so much as a drink in my hand.

And then asked about my brother. Ho hum.

[Later: she describes me as a socialist pig on her blog. In a nice way, I'm sure. She's obviously never met a real socialist, although I accept the pig sobriquet with only a nod towards its accuracy.]

There are lots of folk I’m looking forward to meeting. Paul Carr, now ending a mammoth US tour which started when we were both in Las Vegas (we narrowly missed each other) is here, and blogging heavily. Chief Shiny Ashley Norris - a man I’ve met more abroad than in London, I suspect - is nearby and plotting drinks. TechCruncher Mike Butcher is liable to hove into view, I sense, at any moment. Thanks to their mammoth use of social media, I can take a stalker’s interest in their movements from the discomfort of this conference centre seat.

Which is a point. Scott Berkun, the speaker, has started during Robbie Robertson. He is, as it turns out, kick ass - giving us some familiar but well packaged thought on innovation theory and project management, delivered with pizazz. His O’Reilly book may be worth a squint later. But this seminar should, really be called this How to Innovate, and On Time. The comma, and the “and”, are important - this talk only ends with a segment on the “on time” bit.

And it better end on time. I suspect the jet-lag wall is positioned at roughly six o’clock.