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In reflecting back on this week's second annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston I think what we saw addresses most of (Burton Group colleague) Craig Roth's points when he asked:

"I’m really holding out for the next E2.0 presentation that moves the concept forward, not just goes deeper or jumps on to a new set of technologies."

When Steve Wylie, Conference General Manager, started talking with Advisory Board members months ago about themes and keynotes he was most interested in telling Enterprise 2.0 stories from the trenches and this year's conference delivered on this vision.

Some observations and comments about the conference:

• Attendance was incredible. Interest in Enterprise 2.0 is clearly growing. I heard estimates as high as 1,400 people in attendance, which would be a 50% increase from last year.
• The "Rock Stars" of the show (a label given by Jessica Lipnack at the closing town hall meeting) were Sean Dennehy and Don Burke from the CIA. Their Intellipedia presentation was really good. The press and blog coverage is extensive.
• The Monday evening Cloud Computing session hosted by David Berlind was surprisingly good. I was afraid the topic might not interest the E2.0 crowd but the Harbor Ballroom was packed. The dialog between the vendors (Amazon Web Services, Google, SalesForce) and the enterprise customers on stage was informative, provocative, and entertaining.
• Tony Byrne's sessions about evaluating E2.0 tools had some really good practical advice.
• The Wednesday morning keynotes from end users were excellent and reflected Steve Wylie's vision for this year's conference. We heard from Pete Fields (Wachovia), Simon Revell (Pfizer), and Ned Lerner (Sony). Simon's frankness was refreshing, as were Ned's details.
• These three then joined Andrew McAfee, along with Sean Dennehy and Don Burke from the CIA, for a discussion about implementing Enterprise 2.0. The discussion highlighted the different paths each of them took and the challenges they are facing.
• Although I missed the session, we heard glowing reviews about Lockheed Martin's E2.0 success story at the closing town hall meeting. I am looking forward to seeing the slides.

David Sparks covered many of the sessions. His blog posts are summarized here. A personal favorite is this interview with the CIA guys.