Except for Ruby Conferences, I go to conferences for the people I can meet more so than the actual content. At Ruby Conf, the content is as interesting as the people. What can I say... I'm a wanna be geek.

In terms of really interesting people, FastForward'07 certainly did not disappoint. Here is a quick sampling of the people I met and what they taught me:

Sue Feldman: Sue works with IDC. I sat across from her during a break out session run by Andrew McAfee. She is a brilliant woman, and very interesting. She has some useful papers on how much time people spend search. IDC's studies of knowledge workers indicate that they spend an average of 10 hours a week searching for information. And the number of hours is going up over time. This might indicate that search is exactly what knowledge workers should be doing as they combine and sort information. However, if probably also indicates that as our business relationships become more networked, we need to do a better job of networking the productivity tools that knowledge workers use. To me, this says that blogs and wikis combined with search tools and social bookmarking tools are going to help reduce the amount of searching.

Sue also talked about something else that really struck me. She talked about IBM's new approach to partners. Their objective is to facilitate "Partner Networks". Sue described this as connecting the nodes at the end of the spokes.

This business approach makes huge sense to me. In a networked world, there is not strategic advantage to hub and spoke model. People will go around you anyway. Google, for example, does not insist that all companies work directly through Google to be included in Google search. Instead, Google hopes that value is created by a vibrant network of links independent of Google. In a networked world, you need to figure out how to thrive as a business as the network improves. If the network is a flood of water, you need to figure our how to make money being a boat that increases in value as the water rises, rather than a damn fighting to hold back the flood.

Euan Semple: Euan built enterprise 2.0 within the BBC before anyone had put a label on it. His insights, especially when thinking about how to foster an environment that encourages dialog, are simply brilliant. And on top of it, he is a very genuine decent guy. Good luck catching him, as he has clients all over the world. One way is to attend one of his work shops.

Jacques Bughin: Jacque works at McKinsey & Company and has written books such as Managing Media Companies: Harnessing Creative Value

Adam Carson: Adam works at Morgan Stanley and is working on an effort to leverage Enterprise 2.0 technology within the bank. Adam swore to me that he would start to blog again. He has great insights and knows what he is doing. I hope he does start to write again, as I would certainly include him as one of my RSS feeds.

Chris Heuer: Chris is a co-founder of the Social Media Club, he's a journalist, a blogger and he was delighted with the simplicity of the explanation for Teqlo - "Teqlo makes widgets work together".

Kristie Wells: Kristie is just about to join Joyent. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Joyent Rocks! The Joyent Team Rocks! I use Bingo everyday and love it.

Puneet Gupta - CEO of Conenctbeam. Connectbeam is social software for the Enterprise. They sell a first rate enterprise class social bookmarking solution.

Sharon Wilson: Sharon works with The Boston Consulting Group, where she is responsible for both their knowledge management systems and their Intranet. Sharon has obviously produced some tremendous results for her firm. I introduced her to Andrew McAfee. Andy told her that whenever he asked his Harvard Business School students if they had ever seen an Intranet and Knowledge Management solution that was actively used, the only people who raised their hands were people from BCG.

James Conley: James is a senior executive working on a stealth start-up. And... unfortunately I can't say much more, other than that I really enjoyed my conversation with him.

Jerry Bowles: Jerry runs Enterprise Web 2.0 and is the founder of the Social Media Collective, which runs Social Media Today. I was delighted to see Jerry's business card, which includes the logo I designed for the group. Seeing a logo you designed printed on a business card is just flat out cool.

David Lavenda: David is the VP of marketing and product strategy at WorkLight / Serendipity. I had been hoping to talk to someone from WorkLight because of my work at Teqlo. Worklight sells a server that makes behind the firewall data available in secure widgets that can be used outside the firewall. It's a great fit with Teqlo because Worklight can help our mutual customers to combine generic web services with company data all with a powerful Do-It-Yourself, highly customizable Teqlo application. That, to me, is cool. David is a great guy. We met in the FastForward'07 press room. There were only a few people there - I introduced myself to one of them, and in a stroke of true serendipity, David jumped up and said "Hey, I've been trying to track you down".

Jevon MacDonald: Jevon is the founder of Firestoker. Firestoker is a Toronto based company that provides Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Jevon has a successful track record producing powerful results for his clients. One of his Canadian clients runs a franchise restaurant operation. They were able to go from around 600 stores to over 1,800 within having to hire any additional head office staff. Firestokers product helped that happen by making sure that the entire network of franchisee were able to leverage existing know how to get up and running quickly.

Chase Norlin: Chase is the CEO of Pixsy. Check them out. They do visual search.

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