Today I attended Lunch2.0 @spigit. It was very well organized, even though it happened to be one of the hottest days in SF Bay Area. Spigit is one of our clients and it was great to interact with their enthusiastic Lunch 2.0 participants.

This event, combined with the BarCampBlock Conference, which I attended last week, led me to thinking how the conference landscape is changing dramatically. Earlier, most of us paid very high fees to attend conferences.

Now, conference fees are gradually disappearing! Some are free, yes absolutely free. These new age conferences have evolved into a different, more productive vehicle for professionals. Participants are active players in the industry; there are very few casual spectators. Casual, basic lunches have replaced time-consuming elaborate affairs. The main focus is to network with other professionals in the business and learn about new trends. It’s refreshing to cut out the social noise and pick on the essential stuff.

Here are some examples: O’Reilly’s FOO camp (FOO = Friends of O’Reilly)

BarCamp

Mashup Camp

More power to new age conferences, keep them coming!

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

This time Barcamp was in SocialText offices, Palo Alto and was really well attended - more than 600 attendees in the camp and lot of early idea folks checking whether market was ready for their innovations. I think this is a special feature of BarCamp. Agreed, that demo’s in Demo Camp were not well organized and rehearsed but the learning experience and fun in participation makes up for more than anything else. I have always believed that every idea is great and it is the execution that makes the difference. I can definitely say that these BarCamps are a great way to start building experience which can lead to understanding what it takes to execute well- finances, legal, building team and of course, networking.

Here is my picture from the conference - http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1192/1164244077_f6888c7d72.jpg?v=0 talking to Podtech founder Jeremiah Owyang.

Skype generated news when it went down last week. There is also Techcrunch analysis on how competitors profited from the Skype’s downtime.

This also brings one more important point not covered in any analysis- how fast skype has moved into essential category. If you look into the past, electricity took a lot of time moving into cannot-live-without-it category. Next good example was computers which was faster cycle into the category followed by internet, then email and now Skype in a very short timeframe has attained the ‘essential’ status. Lot of smaller companies which have distributed work force are totally reliant on Skype for connecting their workforce. These companies had to scramble to find alternatives.

Which is the next ‘essential’? Any guesses?