1. The blatant sales pitch in most of the “keynote” presentations was pretty obnoxious, and a real turn-off. I’ll remember that for future conferences, and I’ll be sure to warn anyone I know to avoid them like the plague.
2. At least one or two product-related keynote presentations were okay, because (a) the products play an important role in the marketplace, and conference attendees did want to hear about them, and (b) they were presented without the blatant sales pitch. The best example of this was Microsoft’s presentation about Sharepoint 2010, by Christian Finn, which was titled “Seven Essential Truths About Enterprise 2.0″.
3. Several of the vendors and presenters gave interesting case-study examples of massive adoption of E2.0 tools and products in their organization. The afore-mentioned Microsoft was one: they’ve got 92,000 employees. And IBM was another: they’re rolling out their E2.0 products to a global workforce of 400,000 employees in 170 countries.
4. There are now lots of knowledgeable consultants in the E2.0 field, many of whom gave excellent presentations, and/or participated in various panel sessions, about real-world experiences helping their clients implement new tools/products, and dealing with the political and culture-change issues. On the exhibitor’s floor, I saw an Infosys booth, and I’m they had plenty of people ready to provide such assistance; but I didn’t see any booth staffed with people from Accenture, or PwC, or various other large consulting firms you might have expected to see.
5. Many of the small vendors who exhibited here last year are gone (or at least they’re gone from this conference). And I suspect that several of the small vendors I saw this year will be gone soon, too. This is not lost on the large customers: they obviously like the security and stability associated with large vendors like IBM/Lotus, Microsoft, Cisco, etc.
6. Most of the discussions and presentations seemed to concentrate on E2.0 products and services behind the firewall — e.g., how to use such products/services to enable better collaboration among employees, faster response to proposals, business opportunities, and/or problems. There was much less discussion about reaching outside the firewall to interact/collaborate more effectively with customers, suppliers, and business partners.
7. Microsoft had the most amusing give-away toy: a flying pig, which could be launched in a slingshot fashion, and which “oinked” as it flew through the air. I brought one of them home, and our dog has been looking at it suspiciously ever since he laid eyes on it.

As growing evidence of the popularity and acceptance of Enterprise 2.0, the conference organizers will be hosting another conference in Santa Clara, CA on Nov 8-11, 2010. You can get additional details here.

Enjoy!

While I’ve been here this week, I’ve also had a chance to wander around Rome (when it wasn’t raining) and take some pictures. You can see an overview of the entire Rome photo-album; here’s one example:

Enjoy!