The first Office 2.0 Conference was very much an accident with a happy ending. It was put together in less than two months, yet turned out to be pretty successful. Because we had so little time to organize it, we had to innovate on many fronts, and improvise for pretty much everything. This largely contributed to create an interesting buzz, and lots of creative energy. So when time came to start thinking about its second edition earlier this year, we pretty much decided to wait until the last minute before doing anything beside setting a date and booking a place for it. We're less than two months away from the actual event (September 5-7, 2007, register here), and time has come to get some work done. Here is where we are.
First of all, what is the Office 2.0 Conference? The Office 2.0 Conference is a live experiment aimed at discovering the future of mobile productivity & collaboration. It is a unique gathering of visionaries, thought leaders, and tinkerers using innovative online services for getting things done. In a nutshell, it's lab work performed live, at a large scale, in a relatively short amount of time. The whole thing is organized using Office 2.0 tools exclusively (no paper, no desktop application), all participants receive a WiFi capable handheld device to do pretty much everything during the event, and year after year we try to push the enveloppe as far as we go. Some things work, some don't, and we're trying to learn as much as we can along the way.
Second, what should you expect this year? Based on the feedback we collected over the past ten months, we made some slight changes to the format. While the location remains the same (St. Regis Hotel, book your room here), we booked more space so that we could host more people (500 to 750). We also decided to hold less panels and dedicate more time to demonstrations, roundtables, and workshops. For this reason, we will run four parallel tracks during most of the event: one focused on Enterprise 2.0, one called Mobility & Productivity, and two demo tracks. The demo tracks should be quite interesting: during two days, at least 50 companies will present their applications for 10 to 15 minutes, twice. Participants will use their handheld devices to provide feedback in real-time, leading to the selection of recipients for the Office 2.0 Awards.
Another important change this year will be the focus on customers. While the conference is aimed at remaining a relatively small gathering of industry players, we are working very hard to increase end user attendance. One way to achieve such a goal is to encourage the companies that will present during the demo tracks to have their customers run demonstrations for them. That way, attendees will get real user presentations instead of marketing pitches, and will learn from the hands on experience of actual end users.
On one hand, the Enterprise 2.0 track is directed by Jevon McDonald, Suzan Scrupski, and Catherine Shinners. It will focus on the use of online collaboration and productivity tools in a business context, and will feature fascinating corporate use cases gathered from all around the world. On the other hand, the Mobility & Productivity track is being put together by Marc Orchant, Oliver Starr and several others. It will focus on the end user, and the hardware and software tools that help us get things done, on the go.
With the goal of preparing everything in just the last two months prior to the event, the actual agenda is still being worked out, and a call for speaker has yet to be issued. Nevertheless, I can already share the content of some sessions that have been confirmed: one will present the various way to implement David Allen's famed GTD methodology, another will showcase tools for mindmapping, and yet another will be a bake-off between online collaboration platforms (think Clearspace vs. Socialtext). Because we will have less time for panels, the number of invited speakers (outside of the demo tracks) will be somehow limited. Nevertheless, if you feel that you could make an outstanding contribution to the event, please feel free to send me your suggestions for speaking engagements.
The theme for this year's event is Mobile Productivity, therefore the handheld device we will offer to every participant will play a key role in making the experiment work (or fail). We are still in the process of selecting the actual device. While everybody wants an iPhone, it is not clear that we will be able to get them to work without having to subscribe to a 2-year plan, which we cannot afford obviously. Therefore we are looking at alternative options, and two we are considering currently are the HTC Touch and the Nokia N800. We hope to be able to make a final decision by the end of July, so that participating companies can tailor their applications to the device we select.
Through this device, participants will be given access to a host of applications and services that will offer them a unique conference experience. Instead of printing a brochure with agenda, speaker list, and sponsor presentations, we will just provide a mobile version of the conference's website. This will save some trees and spare you the frustration of having to carry an ugly conference bag around. Also, to share your contact information with an exhibitor or an attendee, all you will have to do is click on the exhibitor's logo or the attendee's name from your handheld device. No more bade scanning, and no need to carry a stack of business cards. Most of these applications are currently being developed by Etelos, one of the first Office 2.0 companies to to become iPhone-ready.
Networking before, during, and after the conference is also one of the primary objectives for the event. For this purpose, we have created a public Office 2.0 Group on Facebook, complemented by an Office 2.0 Conference event opened to all attendees. Together with the Clearspace instance that will be used as public website for the conference (thank you Jive Software), they will be our main collaboration and networking platforms.
Last but not least, the entire event will be recorded, and live high-quality video feeds shot from all meeting rooms will be served through Veodia. We are still looking for an experienced video crew (5 to 6 people) to cover the conference. If you are studying at an art school and can put together a team with professional video equipment, I would like to hear from you. We might have some iPhones very soon...
That's it for now. Next: our Office 2.0 Setup. See you in San Francisco!
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