Kareem just passed on this reaction to the conference so far. I agree with most of it, and it’s rather disappointing. This conference, including the mingling and networking going on around here are focused on monetization and investment. Which is fine, but it isn’t what the conference was billed as.

The most interesting session so far was the tagging workshop early and the various little “Show Me” sessions. As I complained yesterday, the big names are cool, but they aren’t interesting. We haven’t done enough to discuss any of the bigger issues coming up with the new APIs. Might’ve been interesting to talk about how big companies like ESPN.com or CNet or CNN can participate in this space, but maybe I’m being a bit selfish. Of course, I find it telling that CNN.com, one of the biggest content portals/sites only sent one guy.

Overall, I’ve found the conference to be a bit too insular, the San Fran/Silicon Valley “in crowd” talking to each other about, well, each other. And, talking about products directed at each other and not my sisters or my friends or whatever. Established companies and startups looking for cash all telling us how cool they are without talking much about how interesting the space is becoming. What’s missing is how we move from where we are today, where Web 2.0 is almost blasé, to real conversations and what the implications are of tagging and open APIs and whatever.

Some areas I wish we had covered more in official conference sessions: opening tagging to the wider community (to non-techies/non-bloggers)… what functionality would we like to see in browsers to augment Web2.0? What are the characteristics of a Web 2.0 app this year vs. last (a workshop on this topic isn’t enough).

Just some ideas. Given some time to think about it, I’m sure I could come up with a ton more…