Random Thoughts about New Comm Forum

As breaking as Liveblogging is, you can't add your analysis or commentary to things you are reporting on. I just kept typing whatever I heard without having the time to think things over. So I am going to try and collect my thoughts about the conference in this post.

• First off, I feel bad for missing the day 1 of the conference which apparently had a lot of interesting sessions. I wish I had the time to attend the first day but I simply didn't.
• If there was any doubt on whether or not Blogging is becoming mainstream, it was put out in the conference. There were people from Procter & Gamble and other large corporations present in the conference and they had already started looking at "blogosphere" for product feedback, beta testers etc. They also are aware of the viral nature of information flow that exists in the blogosphere and want to use that for "hyper local" marketing.
• Apparently there are now classes of bloggers. A-List, B-List and so on -- like that in Hollywood. And apparently Robert Scoble belongs to A-List. I hope am atleast in the Z-List :)
• The conference was very visibly US-centric. Although I saw a few british participants, it was an all-american show. And I am pretty sure that I was the only south asian in the conference. Not that its bad or anything, but it would have been nice to bring in global speakers and participants - both to bring in a worldwide perspective and to emphasize the global barriers that blogging breaks.
• A very high percentage of bloggers use Mac. Something like 40% of those attended the conference were either sporting a Powerbook or the iBook. I even spotted a MacBookPro (what an ugly name) which was just released.
• Sheraton Palo Alto is an excellent choice for the conference. Located just minutes from the majestic Stanford University, its easily reachable from all bay area airports. The internet access could have better though. Although there was wifi access in the ballrooms, there was none in the meeting rooms where the actual sessions were conducted.