I knew going in that one of the highlights of the Web Expo would be hearing Jason Fried speak.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Jason, he currently runs 37signals and also developed Ruby on Rails.  His talk was great, very informative, precise, and to the point.

I also attended sessions on “The reinvention of marketing and PR” and “Lesson’s learned in scaling and building social systems”.  Both were interesting, but I was still hoping to learn more.  I still haven’t had that “wow” moment yet.

After the sessions ended, there was a “Booth Crawl” where exhibitors had the opportunity to showcase their products and hand out free booze.  I thought there might be some cool startups, but it was mostly large corporations.  The coolest gadget is the Microsoft Surface platform.  It a table-top touch based interface and it is awesome.  I’m curious to see what practical applications it can be used for.  

Later that evening, I met up with my friend Liz from LMU and her friends.  Liz works for KPMG and was transfered out here from LA a few months ago.  It was great to get out and experience the city with real New Yorker’s even if they are LA transplants.

Tags: 37 Signals, Jason Fried, Liz, LMU, Microsoft, Ruby on Rails, Surface, Web 2.0