The New New Internet: Web 2.0 for Business Conference was last week, which I had the pleasure of helping to organize.  Ken wrote a good recap on the Viget blog, as did others like Geoff, Brad, and Frank.  As an organizer and judge in the app competition, I had a unique perspective (not all positive — I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions, for example, but it comes with the territory).  Some highlights for me were:

• Pre-Conf. Happy Hour - On Wednesday night, I was crammed around a table with Brad, Om, James, Frank, Rohit, and Gary.  It was cool to chat with all of them informally.  We teased Brad for wearing a suit (he’d been in meetings in NYC all day) and Om seemed genuinely excited to talk with James.
• Pre-Conf. Dinner - After drinks, we jumped over to a private dinner room that JD scored, where Ryan and Tim joined us.  Gary picked out some great Australian wine, and proceeded to preview his major point of the following day: “it’s over!”  Brad shared some stories about negotiating deals with Google.  Fellow authors Rohit, James, and Tim chatted — presumably about being authors.
• App Competition - There were a number of companies shooting for a 5 minute spot to address the crowd, and the stellar group of judges selected 3: Empressr, Honesty Online, and Spigit.  I enjoyed hearing the pitches and wished each had the chance to present.
  
• James Surowiecki - Author of The Wisdom of Crowds gave an engaging talk that covered the topics in his book, and related them to how crowds operate online.  He made a key point that stuck with me: that crowds are good at evaluating ideas and filtering out the bad ones, but they can’t really innovate.  Crowds are reactionary, while individuals are innovative.
  
• Future Panel - Ryan moderated with Brad, Hans, and Alex participating.  As I mentioned, I was really looking forward to this one, and it didn’t disappoint.  In reality, Brad could have been a keynote — he has a great way of communicating complex ideas in a clear and entertaining way.  Attendee Debbie Weil (who was invited to speak but initially had a conflict) grabbed a quick video nugget with Brad after his panel.
  
• Tim Ferriss - Author of The 4-Hour Work Week did the lunch keynote.  As he does in his book, he offered good advice about valuing your time and focusing on high-value tasks, while eliminating (or delegating) the less important stuff.  I’m not sure his story about outsourcing his social life struck the right chord with the older DC audience, but he was nothing if not entertaining.
  
• Marketing Panel - Rohit did a great job of keeping this panel on track, even with Frank wearing a camera and Gary loudly striking fear into the audience (appropriately).  The overall message was that marketing is completely different than it was even a few years ago.  Gary gave a great example of ROI: he spends several million dollars marketing winelibrary.com with billboards and other traditional media, but spends almost nothing on traditional marketing for winelibrarytv.com, which grows through social networks and word-of-mouth.  The TV site, though, has suppased the store site in traffic and continues to enjoy explosive viral growth.
  
• Back Room Interviews - I actually had some work to do, so I snuck into a back room to jump online.  In doing so, I inadvertently sat in on a couple interviews the local trend junkie Greg was putting together.  More good stuff happening on the sidelines of the conference.
• Post-Conference Dinner - After the conference happy hour, I grabbed dinner with the Carsons as well as Mike and Sunir from FreshBooks.com.  We talked about management styles and kicked around creative ideas for keeping a growing company feeling small.  We also swapped travel stories, and I told my River Phoenix haircut tale for the first time in a long time – felt good. 

A ton of work went into putting the conference together, most notably by Suzanne at ExecutiveBiz.  Nearly 800 people made it out and I heard lots of great comments on the way out (and follow-up emails since).  While my day at TNNI was unique (and exhausting,) I must say I had a blast.