iMeme - The Thinkers Of Tech: The Net and Business Come Together in San Francisco

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When an old guard “all about the money” publication such as Fortune launches its first ever tech conference, as it did last week in San Francisco, there in one location is that nexus of ‘net and business that this blog is devoted to. The following recap is compiled from various sources in attendance.

What really made the conference instant article material here though was the incredible breadth of subjects and speakers in attendance. 250 tech leaders and visionaries from around the world ranging from Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old co-founder of MyYearbook.com, to Richard Dawkins, author of the current bestseller The God Delusion.

The event was hosted by Fortune Senior editor David Kirkpatrick. Right from the opening the mood was upbeat and enthusiastic, with the good news coming at attendees from reps from all across the net business spectrum. HP CEO Mark Hurd said there is an industry-wide rise in R&D spending.

From the up and coming side of the net China’s Bruno Wu, who is a key investor in Sina.net, that country’s largest portal, declared China’s internet is exploding, with one of the sites in his portfolio, HerVillage.com, already registering 40 million unique visitors per month, less than two years after its founding.

For an even rosier view, look no further than Vint Cerf, the 64-year-old Internet evangelist from Google, who conveyed his enormous optimism about continued prospects for the Internet, for which he co-developed the basic software underpinnings between 1974 and 1982. Cerf further explained how wireless broadcast techniques may prove key for addressing growing Net bandwidth bottlenecks. The idea, he said, is that broadly popular video content can be broadcast, bypassing the need for many infrastructure-hogging secure online connections. It was one of several reasons he curtly dismissed recent concerns that the growing popularity of video could overload the Net.

Lastly, Cisco CEO John Chambers expressed his view that Web 2.0 is only getting started. While it has been a mostly consumer phenomenon so far, it’s the prospect for business collaboration efficiencies which lead him to predict that Net innovation would cause U.S. GDP growth to rise as much as a 5 percent annually, significantly higher than the current level of around 3 percent. How’s that for optimism in the ever-growing relationship between the Internet and business and industry growth.

There is much more to look forward to for next year, when Fortune’s tech conference takes place July 21-23 at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, near San Francisco. My hope is that, although there will undoubtedly be more than a few clashes among the the players, major and minor, in the net industry, the generally positive outlook on continued innovation and collaboration will be the order of the day at next years conference.

tcs @ July 23, 2007