When we launched the first Office 2.0 Conference in the Summer of 2006, we thought we did everything in a rush. The event was announced on July 26, 2006, and a website was released on August 16. Less than six weeks before the event, which took place on October 12-13. But in retrospect, we really took our time, for until now, we did not even have a website. And the conference is less than a month away. Well, it was fun while it lasted, but some prospective attendees recently started to wonder whether we were going to have an event at all, so we fired our keyboards and mice this morning, and developed a brand new website in about eight hours.

First, the domain name. We initially used the office20con.com domain name, originally registered by our friend Ivaylo Lenkov form SiteKreator. We then moved to the shorter yet a bit cryptic o2con.com. This year, we're finally settling down for the much more straightforward office20.com, thanks to a generous donation made by Mark Bean. I won't even try to explain why Mark decided to give away such a valuable domain name, for the circumstances make me cringe every time I am reminded about them. Instead, I will just extend a warm thank you to Mark, who will always be welcome to our events. In the meantime, the office20.com site will become the primary place where I write about Office 2.0, taking over from IT|Redux.

Second, the underlying platform. Last year, we used version 1.0 of Jive Software's Clearspace. We liked it a lot, even though it was a bit rough around the edges, yet amazingly good for a 1.0 release (and I know a thing or two about software engineering). This year, we looked around for alternative solutions, found many interesting products, but eventually sat down with Sam Lawrence and his team for a demo of the upcoming Clearspace 2.5. It was love at first sight, and I am proud to announce that we are one of the first production users of Clearspace 2.5 beta (2.5.0 beta 1 to be precise). This release brings many new features to an already powerful product, especially along the lines of social networking. Through our partnership with Jive Software, we will also use it as customer portal for Monolab|Workspace.

Third, our sponsors. On this front, every year that passes by seems to make things easier than the year prior. Somehow, we seem to have developed a decent track record, and sponsors trust us with a fair chunk of their marketing budget. Candidly, we're quite honored about it, and our job is to deliver on ever-increasing expectations, which is why we decided to reduce the number of sponsorship slots from 60 down to 45. At present time, I am quite happy to report that we signed Etelos, Jive Software, Fenwick & West, Google, Intuit, Polycom, Salesforce.com, Swisscom, Appirio, CentralDesktop, EchoSign, Egnyte, Fusebox, SlideRocket, Veodia, Yuuguu, Zoho, FreshBooks, and Social Media Today. One in particular is very dear to my heart: Salesforce.com. We've been trying to get them to participate for two years now, but calendaring issues got in the way. This year, things worked out. Awesome!

Fourth, our speakers. This year, we're being extremely selective. Quality is our primary goal, which is why we decided to stay at the St. Regis, for it can only accommodate about 600 attendees. It's also the reason why we decided to run only two parallel tracks instead of four. As a result, the number of available speaking slots was essentially cut in half. The Editorial Board (Susan Scrupski, Oliver Marks, and myself) made a call for speakers about a month ago, received close to 200 submissions, and is now in the process of going through them. A preliminary list of speakers have been published (click on 'Agenda' from the website's home page), and the complete list should be communicated early next week, at which point we will start working on the final agenda. The later should be released by the end of next week.

Last but not least, the device. After much research, we made the assumption that most past attendees would upgrade to the iPhone 3G themselves, hence focused our selection process on the most successful form factor that was brought to market over the past 12 month: the sub-notebook form factor pioneered by the Asus Eee PC. We reviewed many different models from various manufacturers, and eventually selected the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, for its exceptional screen (8.9″ WXGA) and gorgeous industrial design. Due to the device's high cost, it is unlikely that we will be in a position to offer one to each and every speaker, but we will make sure that several demo units are available to anyone wanting to play with it, media representatives included. We will then donate these demo units to a local school, like we did last year with a few iMac computers.

So here we are now. If you want to join the fun, please register before we sell out.

And if you have a blog, we can always use some linking love...