The MaRS Centre, Toronto, at 8:00 AM, Wednesday May 30th.

It is a perfect morning for the start of the MESH 2.0 conference - not that we'll want to venture too far away from the darkened MaRS auditorium. Today's speakers include TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, Deborah Kaplan from ZeroFootPrint, and, of all people, money-manager turned Liberal politician, Garth Turner. In between their talks will be a host of others all riding the wave of Web 2.0.

The audience is part of the mix of course. As Time Magazine noted, WE as in people power on the Net, are a monolithic force of radical change-makers who are disinter-mediating traditional media and politics in a way that no one truly understands. Yet. In spite of the hype associated with such ideas there is truth in the assertion. Companies that were cutting edge in the first Internet era are struggling to reinvent themselves. Cultural institutions who basically ignored the first Internet wave are now doing back flips to position themselves as change leaders. Some will succeed. Others won't.

The reason I like MESH is because it is not a traditional tech conference. The founders - all industry experts - came together to re-imagine what a conference would look like in a post-barcamp world. MESH 1.0 embraced that ideal. It looks as though 2.0 will do the same.

I'll be doing as much blogging as I can today, but I really want to absorb the major ideas presented here and have some time to reflect before discussing them on this site. Stay tuned.


The MESH 2.0 audience


Stuart kicks off MESH 2.0


Michael Arrington, TechCrunch


How many people filter the MESH conference, through their cellphone cameras


Micahel Arrington explains, patiently I thought, how to get covered by Techcrunch