Standing by himself at the exit gate was an exhausted but enthused Bill Neukom. He vigorously shook hands with everyone through the windows of their cars, thanking them and exchanging pleasantries. Several players got out and gave him a hug.

I am sure he thanked them many times after the Series. Being an owner and the CEO, many would say he thanks them enough by signing their checks. Hosting the Playoffs, World Series and the Parade for the first time probably meant little slept for the last month. He is easily the wealthiest person working for the team.

In other words, he did not need to be there. He wanted his thanks to be the last thing the Giants received as they left for the off-season.

Behind every great organization is great management. Bill Neukom will be missed.

This year’s event was different than the previous two versions. While huge (and Tim O’eilly claimed they turned away 5,000 people), the mood is more businesslike. Gone is the “everyone is getting rich but me” frenzy of the second year and the “I’m not the only one who thinks there might be something here” attitude of year one. VC attendance was way down. Corporate business development attendance was way up.

Day three was the most interesting. Below are a few highlights.

Ram Shriram on the current environment “While there is venture money for early stage companies, the number of billion dollar exits are very few and far between. There have been two internet IPOs this year and both are languishing at a sub $500m valuation and suffering from a lack of research coverage.”

Note to all journalists trying to sell more of their publication by saying we are in a bubble. A bubble is when companies with no chance of profits are sold for over a billion dollars or go public on a daily basis. Thus, we are not in a bubble. Clear enough?

More from Ram “There will continue to be many sub $100 million exits, but this is threatening to venture capital IRRs.”

Roger McNamee (whose hair cut shows he is spending too much time with Bono) on content “Media guys say that user generated content is just an appetizer, people really want Hollywood movies. that’s just bullshit.”

McNamee to along winded entrepreneur whining that he could not raise venture capital. “Entrepreneurship is not for lightweights.”

Eric Schmidt flatly denied that any of the uTube consideration was going to copyright holders.

Barry Diller on company building “Equity is built by holding on.”

On the Teen panel (which was not nearly as good this year). Question “ How much time do you spend on MySpace? Unanimous response, “2-4 hours a day” “because I want to get my profile just right” and “I like it when people tell me they love my MySpace page” and “When I check my MySpace page it is like Christmas morning with the presents under the tree.”

Question – Who do you trust more Yahoo or Google? Unanimous response, “Google.” They will regret that.

Best eye candy came from Microsoft labs.

Monday, April 24th
Took the card and the PC to Cingular. Got laughed at for using the included software -”The Cingular stuff doesn’t work, go download the Watcher utility from the Sierra web site” Did a system restore and installed the Sierra Watcher software. Still can not connect, but can collect POP email. Took it to Cingular again, but the no one in the store knew anything about the card. More people buying Razrs. Another hour trolling through support boards looking for the solution.

Tuesday April 25th
Took it to Cingular again. The manager took one look at my dbase record and sheepishly admitted the clerk had not activated my card. 30 seconds later, it works – really well.

Wednesday and Thursday, April 25 & 26
Never loses connection during 8 straight hours of RSS demos in the bowels of the Moscone. And it’s fast!

Friday April 27
Moving offices on Monday so call SBC/AT&T to makes sure the order for internet service to our new office is on track. It’s not. The rep did not put in the order (nice job, “Gary” of SBC’s Torrance office). Install 3G card on old Vaio and use Windows internet connections sharing out the eithernet adaptor to a router to provide wifi to the new office space. A terrific short term solution, although the engineers complain of slow uploads for doing builds. Probably violating some terms of service, but given the amount of my time they wasted this week, we can call it even.

Saturday May 6
For inexplicable reasons, coach makes my daughter arrive an hour early for her soccer game. Rather than flipping through magazines, I get work done. Nice. No noticeable drain on battery.

Monday May 15
Off to New York for the Syndicate Conference. Works well in San Jose Airport. Arrive at lousy hotel, where the “free” WiFi costs $10 a day. The Cingular sales rep had said that 3G won’t be fully deployed in New York till the end of the year. I fire up the 3G cards and get nothing. Not even Edge. Try it at an agency meeting across town and get nothing. Try it at a partner meeting downtown and get nothing. New York, not a Cingular 3G kind of town.

Conclusion – it’s magic when it works, but Cingular has a long ways to go with thier network and their customer service.

- The rise of the web Larry Webber, the web is not another vehicle, it is the vehicle.
- The Googlification of marketing success is directly tied to how effectively companies turn their customers into their sales force without advertising.
- The emergence of PR as a lead generation tool, which the Salesforce.com CMO called “the virtuous hype circle.”
- CMO Rising CMO moving from a staff role to more central to the success of tech companies
- Use of internet tools (such as email) to achieve near term ROI at the expense of lifetime value of the customer.

The dapper and gracious Alex Vieux wrapped up with his top 10 takeaways from the conference. Number two – Branding is not a marketing issue it is a business issue.

This rang true as I went back to hotel. Lest the entrepreneurial live seem too glamorous, I was again too cheap to stay at the conference hotel, so I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Encinitas.

Or so I thought, as that very day the hotel had been turned into a Howard Johnson. Neither brand has much of a connotation in my mind. And I don’t spend much time thinking about that which I can not control. Not so their cliental. Checking in at 10:30 PM and checking out at 7AM, I stood in line as guests voiced their anger in person and on the phone. What would this mean to their rooms? What about their reward points? Would their reservation still be valid? Do they still serve breakfast? The patient desk clerks answered the questions and only complained that their new uniforms had not yet arrived. To me it was the same hotel, they just changed the name, but not to their customers. Somewhere the branding team at Holiday Inn is smiling.

Rosenberg discussed the creation of podcasts in conjunction with the launch of Filemaker 7. The idea came from the PR team, not a top level corporate mandate. Initially they created scripts but went away from the scripts to keep it more conversational. They also recorded over the phone (rather than go to a studio) to make is sound more live and conversational. In the first 90 days 12,000 people have downloaded the podcast. Given the specificity of the content that seems fantastic. Next will be a series of Podcasts tailored to their vertical markets.

Landsberg discussed big marketing trends “innovation is coming from consumers, not corporations – they own the brands anyway.” He discussed the consumer value exchange equation = consumer give money and attention and get goods or services. New tools such as RSS, Blogs and Podcasts have the ability to effect that equation. He also nicely summarized where the tools fit in the acquisition to retention continuum.

Finally Kenton brought up measurability. Rosenberg felt results came from good content rather than from delivery. Landsberg felt that it is too early to determine ROI on RSS, Blogging and Podcasting initiatives, and that the focus should be on increased brand interaction and on measurables such as click-throughs, registrations and conversions.

Just scratching the surface with the above, I eagerly await the podcast from Chris.

No word on the jump suit.

Ajax Apps – wow they have gotten good! They have moved beyond responsiveness to include other desktop attributes like support for keyboard shortcuts and file save reminders. They are also taking advantage of the ease of integration of web services making these services “fully-Web 2.0.” Yeah, dude.

A particularly outstanding example is Zimbra. Think Exchange with every conceivable web service hyperlinked/mashed into your email, as bubble help. Dates bring up your calendar, tracking number go check their delivery status, and of course addresses bring up Google maps. If it works, I want it.

Identity/Attention – The Attention Trust demoed their Attention Recorder, a plug in to Firefox that captures your click stream. The hope is that companies build applications that will provide value to end-users in exchange for the stream. SXIP might be on to something by tying identity to a real world problem with sxore, a distributed identity system to combat blog spam.

Investors. The VCs are out in force despite other pressing business in San Francisco this week. While they are aggressively turning over every rock, they are complaining about Web 2.0 companies being undefensible businesses with small market opportunities.

So are we in for Trouble? Tragically, we will have to wait for Web 2.0 Act II.

Kurzweil laid out the thesis of his new book, The Singularity is Near. Using 88 slides, most featuring that favorite of professorial obfuscating visuals, the logarithmic chart, he outlined significant events in technology and human evolution, both straight diagonal lines. His point being that change is accelerating, not just in technology, but in human evolution. The next leaps in human evolution will be the understanding of the human body as an information system, and miniaturization technology that allows nano-implants. Extrapolating from this thesis he sees the following developments.

By 2010 Computers disappear into wearable devices, images are written directly to our retina and we interact with computers through virtual personalities.

By 2029 the human brain will be reverse engineered. Humans will have millions of nano-neural implants in their brains. The result is an “intimate merger” of human and machine intelligence and the ability to reprogram our biochemistry to enable extremely long life.

By 2045 we will have reached the singularity, where we are more machine than man.

Sounds good to me, but the timing seems just a bit fast. 2010 for computers to miniaturize and be able to write to you retina – so that’s in Service Pack 2 to Windows Vista? Yes, there are exponential progressions all around us and humans are poorly designed to notice them. However, capital sources, governments and other large organizations are not on an exponential change curve. As one person in audience asked – why did it take 7 years to get to the moon in the 60′s but NASA just announced plans to get back to the moon, in 13 years. Kurzweil’s response was that just because it can happen, does not mean it will. It is a matter of focus and resources.

With significant ideas, criticism is just a drop in the bucket.

This is not a small announcement. Note that every analyst and every major technology and business publication had been briefed. Their demo and presentation was very slick and thoroughly rehearsed. They were prepared for questions.

My guess on the announcement – Longhorn needs a value proposition beyond a faster UI for people to upgrade. And RSS is a great value proposition. Prepare to be saturated with Longhorn advertising stressing RSS benefits next summer. It started today with their positioning on the evolution of Windows – Browse, Search, Subscribe!

The announcement has this, blogger and RSS start-up heavy, crowd feeling very happy. And not only is Microsoft behind the conference in providing a big announcement, but they are heavy financial supporters – “Microsoft Presents GnomeDex 5.0.”

Last Fall the conference was fun, but it was held at the dim and seedy Harrahs’ Lake Tahoe. Today the conference is at the pristine Bell Harbor convention center. Tonight’s party is at the brand new Seattle Public Library. The money is starting to flow in RSS.