Ignite: It's Simple, But Not EasyIgnite: It's Simple, But Not Easy

Most IT executives I talk to are baffled by Web 2.0. Don't get me wrong, they get excited about the technology like anyone else, and arguably they understand its inner workings better than some of the Web 2.0 cognoscenti. Where they stumble is on its applicability in the enterprise. They struggle to ignite the flame. They need to come to fun events like Ignite.The more people I talk to deep in the trenches of Web 2.0 development, or the more I lurk in that world in wonderment, the more I understand why this is. There's a simplicity that escapes the bureaucratic, process-driven mindset of most corporations. Communities form when they are sparked by a common interest, a passion, a sense of belonging. They can't be forced; they *won't* be forced.

In the DNA Lounge, a bar (owned by open source hacker Jamie Zawinski, who also wrote a good bit of the Netscape Navigator code) in a dingy section of 11th Street in the SoMa area of San Francisco, O'Reilly's Brady Forrest led a packed house through more than a dozen five-minute presentations, where the slides rotated automatically after being displayed for 15 seconds. As you might imagine, this made for pretty dynamic, fast-paced talks. And all of them were excellent, even if the topic wasn't your favorite. Pretty cool, but the presenters had to not only pack in the content, they had to do so with a rambunctious, talkative crowd drinking the night away.

Instructables' Christy Canida talked about the 7 Sins of Online Communities, with the instruction to commit at least one of them if you want to be successful. My favorite was sloth -- people are lazy, she said, and the best thing you can do is spoon-feed them.

A journalism student from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism talked about journalistic ethics in the modern Web age, asking for open source journalism, measured by ratings and not just an honor system among practitioners.

There were fabulous talks about robots by David Calkins and monsters by Annalee Newitz, and a helpful lecture from Vinnie Lauria on how to use your users. Turns out, you can get your users to do product marketing (Digging your content, for example), quality assurance testing, and all kinds of other things you need.

Many people waited around to hear Lane Becker convince them to run a marathon. I remain unconvinced, but I got a good history lesson on the running of marathons and a little biology tutorial as well.

My friend and colleague Jen Pahlka did a fascinating presentation on her fears about what Web 3.0 means (being that she runs Web 2.0 Expo with Brady Forrest), focusing on our push-button culture and taking us down a fun path that included a parallel between how housewives of the '40s and '50s were marketed to and what the Web promises us for tomorrow. By the way, do you know that there is an aerosol version of pancake mix called Batter Blaster?

My favorite was Christian Crumlish, from Yahoo's Developer Network, who talked about grasping social patterns. He made the Ignite presentation format look like he'd done it hundreds of times, and he made the topic seem like a bunch of common sense. If you want to find his slides, check out this site in a few days (apparently they will be posted soon).

And if you've never heard Kathy Sierra speak about creating passionate users, you should run immediately to find where she's speaking next!

All of these presentations will be available later this week on SlideShare.