By: Karen Song

Today, we happened to be at a YIPEE mixer with a friend and there was a raffle drawing for business cards that attendees had dropped into the bucket. Alas, neither of us had a business card to drop, but when I opened my purse at least 7 dropped out. 7 business cards I had attained at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Expo without realizing it. I joked that I could have considerably increased my odds of getting the prized manicure by impersonating a few business developers and marketers.

As I sipped my Shirley Temple, it occurred to me how representative this overflowing purse of business cards really was to the world of Web 2.0—how easy it was to make connections and how random the Valley was. In other parts of the world, meeting strangers can mean gleaning through the weirdos of the planet; but in the Valley, everyone is weird, weird in their beliefs about technologically driven social change and obsessed with making a faster, better, smaller world a mere mouse click away.

Lights, camera, action. The stage was set for information overload. In fact the whole Expo was. Keynote speakers compared Web 2.0 to the industrial revolution, encouraging consumers to direct their “cognitive surplus” towards generating content. Crowds of people streamed through the showcase, clapping their hands for the next installment of Web 2.0 rockstars.

I was in geek heaven. And perhaps a tad out of my comfort zone. Buzzwords, phrases teeming with self-aggrandizing ambition thundered in my ears. I needed to be doing more. It was like a religion, a cult. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t go home and watch mindless television, I had to go home and post on wikipedia and obsess about why Pluto wasn’t a planet. I had to go home and be an innovator. The edgy men in their late twenties hunched over their laptops suddenly became the wave of the future. A wave I had to surf.

Disoriented and overwhelmed, I stumbled into a room called the “Blogger’s Lounge,” thinking I could find some kind of solace amongst the writers at the conference. Alas, a haggard looking man in a plaid shirt suddenly leapt out of his seat and made a scene. “NO I AM NOT OKAY!” He screamed before mumbling to himself rather crazily. A security guard kindly suggested I move myself out of the doorway for my own safety instead of standing their open-mouthed and gaping.
While they called in reinforcements, I decided to leave. But before I could…

“Karen Song! Is that really you?!”

A friend from Stanford intercepted me. He was a business developer for Ustream, a site that broadcast live streams alongside user chat, and he happened to be presenting for his company in the lounge. He made room for me at a table where I picked up a copy of “We Are Smarter Than Me,” a book on crowd-sourcing.

It was nice to see a familiar face in the crowd. But I saw several others that day. Another friend happened to be working for TellMe, a blackberry voice service that looked up directions, weather, and restaurants when you asked. He seemed excited and rushed over with a warm hug as soon as he singled me out from the throngs of anonymity flocking to his showcase.

By day’s end, I was more excited than agitated. The exchange of ideas, the exposure to what was out there, was quite refreshing. And ultimately I decided that I was finding more familiar ground in what I had originally perceived to be unfamiliar territory.

Scott Berkun, who spoke on “The Myths of Innovation” conveyed that real innovation wasn’t necessarily about the blue sky territory but solving problems. Edison wasn’t the first to invent the lightbulb, but he was the first to worry about the power supply. Gutenberg wasn’t necessarily looking to “democratize information” but simply to print a better book.

That’s what true innovators are about—not pumping themselves up with fancy terms or allusions of social instigation, but enacting real change through fixing concrete problems. I had to admire that. And I ultimately decided that although I was distracted by the hype, I could admire the larger vision of this convention.

But I had more to smile about. Before I left the Web 2.0 Conference, I met a kindly Indian man named Mukesh Ahuja from Yugma.

“You work at Kosmix!” He exclaimed. “I know Sesh! His son goes to the same school as mine! Tell him and Venky I say hi!” He warmly pressed his business card into my hand.

That’s when I decided to say goodbye.