A Tale of Two Web 2.0 Events

In the last seven days I have had the opportunity to attend two very different events about Web 2.0 on behalf of my employer, Sun Microsystems. The chasm between the tone and content of these two outings that were theoretically covering the same topic illustrates (for me, at least), the conundrum of "web 2.0" and all the fun that comes along with that.

The first event was a Mashup Camp at MIT. These event was an unconference, which all alone is an invigorating environment. The place was full of people actually doing mashups and using web services, feeds, AJAX, wikis and the like to create some interesting new offerings. The SpeedGeeking sessions were like show-and-tell for hackers and I came away from the event really energized about the possibilities that Web 2.0 could bring even to a half-ass HTMLer like myself. Business plans danced in my head and I found myself constructing RSS feeds from scratch, installing wikis on free hosting servers and touching JavaScript for the first time in ages.

Then yesterday I went to the Mass Tech Leadership Council breakfast, which also had a Web 2.0 theme. In an audience filled with VCs and CXOs of the companies who are making the decisions on whether to invest in this technology, there was not a scrappy young developer to be found. Instead the well-dressed crowd was treated to a series of self-serving lectures on Web 2.0 from a panel of technology retreads that had resumes dating back to the 1970s. At best, these folks are somewhat informed observers, commenting on the trends from afar. And they had little insight to offer that these same suits in the crowd couldn't have garnered from an article in the Wall Street Journal. Their message was simply "you can't do business like you used to," but with no marching orders or insights into exactly what it is they should be doing tomorrow.

After an hour-plus of this, Dave Girouard, VP & GM, Enterprise, Google, gave a second keynote (the new governor had given the first one, publicly wrangled a new set of BOSE headphones from the sponsor and then fled the scene). This was inspiring, however it also made it clear that if you're not Google, well, you might as well not bother doing anything they've got their fingers in already because they will crush you mercilously. Basically, with all of the Google apps, there is no reason to have an IT department take care of lots of mission-critical items like email, calendar, etc. You can just outsource it to Google, who has more scale than you ever will, and it will be way cheaper and they will still have huge margins and everyone wins... unless you don't have Internet access and want to get at that email or calendar.

Dave then changed gears and spoke about Massachusetts specifically. Before he landed at Google he'd done a bi-coastal job search and basically said that the East Coasters just don't get it. VCs and start-ups here expect people to have already done what they're being hired to do and to not be well-compensated up-front, but rather slave away on ramen until that potential liquidity event. On the West Coast, according to Dave, the hiring types want people who have skills and experience but haven't necessarily done the same exact job already, plus they are giving people a decent salary and benefits from Day One. This might have something to do with more competition for talent in California, but it seems to make sense to me. His point is that once you've been a VP of Marketing, you probably don't want to be one again, but are rather looking for a new challenge. He also commented that VCs on the East Coast all said they would have never invested in YouTube or Google and that kind of conservative thinking will hurt Massachusetts long-term. Investing in consumer-oriented businesses that don't have a business model from the start is important, in his mind, because you don't know where those technologies and talents will take you.