Battelle’s search for the perfect Web 2.0 conference tagline

I read with interest John Battelle’s request in a recent post about his search for a tagline for the upcoming November Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. His idea is Year of the Disruption, a title which for him highlights how much disruption and shake out the IT industry has before it as the Web 2.0 revolution continues to fundamentally alter the way applications and the web are served up to the user. In thinking about Web 2.0 and how it is affecting the everyday user or business, I find that sadly, as Battelle points out we’re still in the beginning innings of Web 2.0, there still isn’t enough disruption. For example, I am consulting for a small business here in the DC metro area and the ideas and advances offered by Web 2.0 -Web as a platform- aren’t even a twinkle in the IT manager or COO’s eyes. Online anything, even here in DC, isn’t something that they are plugged into and are without an idea about how to leverage any of these new technologies. And part of it is because they haven’t heard of them and don’t know where to find out about them.

I’m hoping that this small business will leapfrog past the traditional, incredibly expensive, intermediate steps that many smaller businesses have had to make to achieve security, scalability, and efficiencies. Instead, I hope to see them move forward and consider newer technologies, like online storage. But these are thoughts for tomorrow’s post.

But back to John Battelle’s search for a tagline. Web 2.0 is still in its infancy with an exciting and brilliant future that still has not made it into any type of mainstream consciousness or trend. But it will. So what tagline will do?