I got a sneak peek at the Web 2.0 Expo this week by signing up for the free Expo-only pass. It’s fun to see a web event in person, since so much of what’s going on in web culture happens with one person sitting in front of a computer screen. In fact, it was a nice relief to just sit and listen to people talk without looking at a computer screen for a whole day! In part this was forced on me by the very low-fi wireless connection, but it’s still good training to just listen instead of popping open a new Firefox tab every three minutes.

The expo-only ID — the yellow badge announcing that “I didn’t pay to be here” — only allowed access to the “Products and Services” track, which was basically a bunch of pitches that were not interesting to me. So, I opted for the “un-conference” going on in the hallways outside the conference rooms — the Web 2.Open. These sessions were quite interesting and much more intimate than the larger audience-of-hundreds format. In particular I enjoyed Nicole Simon‘s talk on a European perspective on Web 2.0, and a roundtable discussion on usability issues led by Chris Cole of Human Factors.

As far as the rest of the conference goes, I heard from other attendees that some of it was quite good. If anyone is interested in what was presented, LukeW has posted a very generous collection of notes from some of the sessions.