VON San Jose 2007: Day One Wrap-Up

I would have updated much more throughout the day yesterday from VON, but a combination of zero laptop battery, too many people to talk to and a somewhat shaky internet connection (or Twitter support) stymied my efforts. So, a highlight reel:

- Jeff Pulver led the keynote with an interesting statement: there's no more "IP Communications" anymore. From here on out, we who create and communicate in this space are merely "Communications." The good news is, we're now legitimate. The bad news is, we're now mainstream, and we're ripe for the disruption.

- Niklas Zennstrom from Skype unveiled their plans for world domination. I'm not kidding. Within a year, Skype will be a lifestyle.

- Many interesting speakers during the pre-lunch inundation of video information. I took 7 pages of notes -- many of them future talking points, inspiration or rebuttals to what's been said thus far. Best takeaway: Todd Herman from MSN asked, "Is anyone here interested in telling NEW KINDS of stories?" It seems some folks are starting to realize that we should be able to do more than old things in new media.

- Missed the Jeff Jarvis speech because I was recharging my battery, which led to meeting Kfir Pravda, who's evidently a huge STBD fan. (I understand Jarvis ruffled traditional media feathers AND new media feathers alike, as always.) We were then joined by the affably discombobulated Scottish comedian Mark Day, who had no idea why the hell he was here. ("What I really need is for someone to build be a website...")

- Jim Kirks, Sarah Atwood and I learned about VideoEgg, which may or may not be incredibly useful as an embeddable advertising app for web video. Uncertain about its impact on our futures, we instead led a group of podcasters to local restaurant Original Joe's, where Pulver proceeded to buy about 20 of us dinner and get us all drunk. Schlomo Rabinowitz also bought 5 of us gigantic shots of Jameson, which fueled the fire.

- After-party at the Fairmont Hotel. By then, I'd switched to water. Dozens of great conversations and interesting people. Plus, more suits than you've ever seen before playing Guitar Hero...

Today: I'm breakfasting instead of catching the opening keynotes because I'm still recovering from yesterday. I speak onstage in about an hour, and I have yet to trim my 15-minute speech to the prescribed 7 minute length. Asking a hungover man not to ramble should be interesting...

More updates as my battery and availability allow.