One of the highlights of the trip for me: a very smart and engaging talk from Clay Shirky at the Web2.0 conference.

I must admit I only heard about Clay Shirky and his new book Here Comes Everybody a few weeks ago in London, while it is apparently already all the crave in San Fran, in the lineage of other fundamental social media books such as The Long Tail or the Tipping Point.

I just bought the book so will talk more about it after I finish it, however I think the subject of Shirky's talk at Web2.0 was slightly different. In a very entertaining way he laid out his theory of the "cognitive surplus": participative media such as blogging, wikipedia, ratings, reviews, etc are the result of people shifting their cognitive surplus time from watching TV to doing something more interactive. Therefore participative media are here to stay and users expectations vis-a-vis entertainment and media are shifting from just Consume to Consume, Produce and Share.

The outline of the speech is on Shirky's blog and the video of the full speech is below. I highly recommend watching it, they guy has a good caustic humor too!

Ok, it has been so busy that I had absoutely no time to post anything. But I took lots of notes, and I will deal with the backlog any time soon :)

Reporter Ashley Norris has been watching Web Mission 08 and getting to know the UK tech start up representatives as they meet and greet some of the names of Silicon Valley. The article mentions Sonia, as well as all the other reps. Sonia's comment on the article was that it's a very interesting and sharp summary. It's worth a read

The Agenda for WebMission looks to be incredibly busy! With lots of meetings and presentations packed in, plus some socialising down-time too!

Today the Web Missioners are learning about the intricacies of business in the US before farewell drinks and then partying til dawn...

Today was probably one of the highlights of the trip, although we're only just at the beginning! The whole WebMission party got spoiled with a fantastic brunch reception at the home of Craig's list CEO Jim Buckmaster and his partner Susan Best, owner of Best PR and director at the Glasshouse.

It was amazingly cool! Jim and Susan were stunningly generous to welcome a party of 70 people (maybe more...) into their own home. We completely invaded! They invited some great American guests to give the WebMission party a sense of how informal networking works in the Valley.

There were lots of very interesting people around. I briefly met one of the whiz kids from Auctomatic, Brit Harjeet Taggar who moved to San Fran a couple of months ago and just sold the company to Live Current Media. There seems to be an active UK network around here: Susan is Scottish, Michael Birch from Bebo is British, the people from the British Consulate / UK Trade & Investment seem to be very active...

I also met Richard Tyler, Enterprise Editor from the Telegraph and Mark Prisk, MP Shadow Minister, Business & Enterprise, to whom I could not resist to mention how the Centre for Policy Studies is using Webjam to create an online community and discussion platform

:)

The whole Webmission party is staying at The Clift, a very hip hotel from the Morgans Hotel Group (that also owns the Royalton and the Hudson in New York).

The view from my room is quite nice and best luxury of all, there is a nice Bose loudspeaker for my Ipod :)

a quick glimpse at my toolkit for the trip

Less than 24 hours after having landed in London back from LA, I learned I would be just go straight back to California 3 days later! Webjam made it to the Web Mission 08 trip and I am off for a packed week of business meetings and networking events.

Webjam is joining 20 UK Web 2.0 companies to travel to San Francisco and explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley. The organisers seem to have done a fantastic preparation and the program looks very promising.