ReadWriteWeb

The startup launchpad conference DEMO has just begun here in Palm Desert. Word on the street over the past few years has been that the conference is losing its luster -but here on site it's feeling pretty relevant still today. You can judge for yourself via live streaming video embedded here below the fold. The conference runs through Wednesday night.

You're likely to see a lot of press about DEMO over the next few days, we've posted a toolkit for tracking the event, but below are some of the arguments for and against the continued relevance of this high-profile event. The live video player below from BitGravity may make you want to turn down your volume but that's what it's like here at the event, too.

Blogger Aditya Mahesh has managed to corral some of the biggest names in blogging to contribute to the BlogOnExpo, an event Mahesh describes as an online conference aimed at helping bloggers improve their blogs.

Starting yesterday and running through the 18th of January, the BlogOnExpo includes interviews and short tutorials from names many readers here will recognize.

This week the Defrag Conference was held in Denver, with the theme of 'The Implicit Web'. It was a great event and lots of big ideas were discussed. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to share the five big themes I walked away thinking about after Defrag; and my current take on each of the five big themes.

Note that Charles Knight live blogged most of the Defrag conference at AltSearchEngines. So if you want the play-by-play, I'd encourage you to check out his posts.

Today at the Defrag Conference, Kevin Marks from Google gave a presentation on OpenSocial. Before working at Google, Kevin was Principal Engineer at Technorati. He's also well known as one of the founders of microformats.

Kevin's speech wasn't on the Defrag agenda, but it was squeezed in due to the timeliness of the topic. Plus, tongue in cheek, it was suggested that Brad Feld and our own Alex Iskold's launch of ClosedPrivate the day before may have compelled Kevin to get OpenSocial on the agenda!

While a lot of the material was repurposed from Campfire, Kevin also sat down with Jerry Michalski and the conversation turned very interesting. There were a few nuggets I wanted to share with the Read/WriteWeb audience.

Charles Knight from AltSearchEngines is blogging up a storm at Defrag. Here are his latest posts from the conference:

• Disruptive Technologies & Innovation
• Google and OpenSocial
• Next-Level Discovery Panel
• Enterprise 2.0 (Andrew McAfee)
• Web 2.0 ‚ÄúMade of People‚Äù (Ross Mayfield)
• Customer Reach vs. Vendor Grasp (Doc Searls)
• Discussing Attention (Esther Dyson)
• Defragging Identity (Dick Hardt)

There are more posts over on AltSearchEngines.

Last week we told you about some upcoming Web Conferences. We also gave away a ticket to Defrag, which is on right now. The winner was Kevin Cawley, so hope he is having a good time :-) R/WW has a few people at Defrag - Sean, Alex and Charles Knight (of AltSearchEngines) are all there. The Web 2.0 Expo is on this week too, in Berlin - give us a shout if you're attending, it'd be good to have some coverage of it on R/WW.

We had some follow up messages about other events, so here is an update...

The GigaOm Network is presenting a one day event called NewTeeVee Live, to be held in San Francisco on 14th of November. The event will showcase the online video industry. NewTeeVee is a similar blog to last100 (a Read/WriteWeb Network blog), so we will be closely following the action. R/WW readers can get a discount on NewTeeVee live tickets by clicking here.

Note: if anyone would like to provide some live coverage of NewTeeVee Live for last100, please contact us. We may be able to get you a free press pass to the event.

It's conference season for the Web and below are some upcoming events that may interest you:

Defrag - 1 free ticket available to R/WW reader; discounts too

Defrag has been sponsoring our Weekly Wrapups for the last few weeks; and we are a Media Sponsor for the event. The focus of Defrag is 'The Implicit Web', a topic we've explored a lot on R/WW - see for example The Attention Economy: An Overview.

Defrag is a two-day event being held in Denver, Colorado, from November 5 - 6, 2007. To register with a $100 discount, click here.

Also Read/WriteWeb has one free ticket to give away. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post giving us a 1-sentence definition of The Implicit Web. The best definition, as chosen by myself, will receive a free ticket to the event - valued at $1,495. (Note: if you purchase a ticket using the discount link above, that will be refunded if you win the free ticket)