Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Arrived yesterday morning to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. (After having just gotten back from Europe the day before-uuhh). The conference is at the Westin Waterfront, which is a gorgeous hotel. about 10 years ago or so I used to work right down the street at Thomson Financial. None of this stuff was here then. Flying out tonight to Toronto to address an ASUG meeting there. A couple of thoughts from yesterday:

• David Weinberger, who gave one of the keynotes, made, at least, two points I found interesting around metadata
• Best real word example of metadata and what finally crystalized the concept for me: library card catalog.
  
• "No difference between data and metadata.....Everything is metadata" - "Metadata is what you know, data is what you're looking for."
  
• David showed how something that is generally considered data, e.g., a line from a book -"Call me Ishmael" - can also be metadata. If that's the only line you remember, but you don't remember the book's title or author, you can search on that line.
  
• Fellow Irregular Andrew McAfee made a request during his keynote for a central repository of Enterprise 2.0 success stories. He says he seems to cite the same examples over and over.
  
• Ran into a former McKinsey colleague of mine on the plane down. Seems McKinsey has an initiative around technology and business that involves how Enterprise 2.o technologies will affect things. To me this is an indication that these technologies are now on the radar screens of C-level executives at the world's largest firms.
  
• Attendance is good in terms of quantity and quality. Several Irregulars are here (thanks to Atlassian for picking up dinner last night!) and I've met a few new people, including Michael Krigsman with whom I had a good discussion over lunch. I'm looking forward to expanding my network today.
  
• There's no accounting for taste. At dinner last night there was a very heated debate about best band of the 70's. In one corner was Andrew McAfee making a spirited case for Led Zeppelin; in the other was Jason Wood arguing (seriously) for Earth, Wind and Fire?!?!? Don't they know it's Lynard Skynard?
  

[Enterprise 2.0 Conference][Enterprise Irregulars]