Update on Web 2.0 in Australia

By

The Web 2.0 in Australia event announced a few weeks back, to be held 6 June, is shaping up to be an absolutely terrific event. BEA Systems is the Gold sponsor. BEA acquired the major content management system vendor Plumtree in October 2005, and has made a number of other related acquisitions since then, positioning the company in the content space in addition to its traditional middleware offerings. BEA is now readying an Enterprise 2.0-style suite of products, which it will providing a brief preview of at the event. KPMG has shown its thought leadership by taking on the role of Venue sponsor, providing their sleek conference site as space for the event.

The panelists will be absolutely awesome. I’m particularly excited that Richard MacManus, editor of Read/ Write Web, one of the top 10 technology blogs in the world, will fly in for the event. He knows the Web 2.0 space like almost no-one else. We also have Sheryle Moon, CEO of the Australian Information Industry Assocation (AIIA), the premier industry body in the country, Allan Aaron, General Partner of Technology Venture Partners, one of the top few technology venture capital firms in Australia, Brad Howarth, who I consider the journalist in Australia who understands this space the best, and a few more of similar calibre to be announced soon.

Event partners now include AIIA, Australian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association Limited, Smart Internet CRC, and Innovation Bay, with several more expected soon.

The showcase members won’t be announced for a while. Right now we’re looking at the more obvious examples. However we’re actively tyring to look beyond that, so please provide suggestions or put your hand up. I will be posting specific criteria on what we’re looking for shortly.

The Web 2.0 Strategic Framework will follow in the footsteps of the extremely popular Future of Media Strategic Framework (over 60,000 downloads) – I think this will help provide a useful map of the territory. It will be released before the event.

The major challenge we’re going to have with the event is that it is an invitation-only, closed door event with limited capacity, and we will have to turn away the vast majority of the many requests for invitations we’re receiving. The event is designed to be primarily for very senior executives to provide them with a pragmatic understand of the field and state of play.

So… we’ve decided we will also run an informal Web 2.0 in Australia drinks function that evening, including a little discussion, likely a broad-based showcase, and much conviviality, open to all. Details later, but you can put it in your diaries now.