There are a series of paradigms that work together to redefine how leading companies are unleashing the power of the web:

1. Integrated Online Marketing - SEO, PPC, social media, viral marketing, online pr
2. Web 2.0/3.0 Websites – social media, blogs, wikis, semantic web
3. Enterprise 2.0 Intranets – collaboration, knowledge management, community building
4. Open Source – development by self-organizing communities with a wide breath of knowledge
5. Agile processes – continual improvement where team empowerment and new ideas are embraced and bureaucracy is minimized.

Sometimes I forget that you can remove the last two and still end up with a state-of-the-art business model. The question is...why would you?

Most of my world is open source camps and cons. I love open source seminars & un-seminars. They have a very different feel. There is a very strong sense of community. A sense of we are all in this together so let’s collaborate on solutions. In other words, there is a distinct openness to open source groups.

The other great thing about open source seminars is they are cheap. A camp is typically less than $50 and more formal conferences are only slightly more. For example, DrupalCon DC was $150 to $250 – and it profited $185K (see the numbers), which will be donated back to the community.

I was looking into sending a few LevelTenians to the Enterprise 2.0 conference – only $1,995. After getting used to open source cons, that seemed a little steep. Then I noticed a sign of the style of conference - the list of sponsors. Most build or support proprietary Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

$1,995 during the worst economy in generations? I think of all the great people I have met at open source meetings. So many smart people making great contributions to various open source projects. Few of them could or would pay $1,995 for a chance to collaborate and learn.

Now I don’t begrudge making a profit. The irony here is the subject, Enterprise 2.0. It is about community building, social tools and empowering collaboration without bounds.

So where’s the love? Where’s the community? What about all the students, the cutting edge young innovators and techies that are more intelligent than they are well-heeled? What about those who are defining and driving 2.0? What about those whose interest and knowledge add dimensions beyond what the shrinking in-house enterprise development departments bring?

They will be at home developing great open source code, creating tutorials & screen casts and providing support - and putting the final nails in the coffin of proprietary social software.