While we have been thinking about and planning this unconference for the past 3 or 4 months, it always seems to come down to the wire with these sorts of events. As I mentioned in my post on Adhocnium, it seems that we are in a tough spot trying to take the chaordic path - blending some light organizational support/structure with the ad-hoc DIY grassroots organizing that makes the camps so much of a collective effort.

Just last week, I was seriously concerned that I personally was going to be on the hook for a few grand to pay for this one (the $32.95 participation fee does not cover the costs of the event). Thankfully, this week has seen some extraordinary advancements in securing new sponsors which I must thank briefly here. Chris and Ponzi from Lockergnome came through with $1,000 (a return sponsor from Web 2point1 and several BrainJams), Mark and Pascale from France Telcom stepped up with $1,000 and most importantly, the Israel Web Tour is now co-sponsoring the Web 2point2 Release Party and came through with $2,500!!! We also signed up new Alpha Release sponsors for $250 each, including Dave Winer, Factiva, MobiTV, No Starch Press and Photo Bucket.
Most importantly, we have over 60 registrations so far (including attending sponsors), with another 35-40 who have personally committed to us to be there. This will sell out, probably by the end of next week. A team of four from DeutscheDaten is coming from Germany, Martin Wells from Tangler is coming from Austrailia, and our Social Media Club co-founder Howard Greenstein is coming in from New York.

We had envisioned trying to do some really cool things with this one, like publishing a magazine for attendees and using a voting process to vet the talk topics, but some of these ideas may be put on hold for the next event. Regardless, this event is of by and for the people of Web 2point2 - we are just instigators and conveners. So what we really need now is some more people to step up and volunteer, help getting the right people invited and most importantly, we need more people suggesting Talk Topics by writing a blog post and tagging it ‘web22talk‘ or just suggesting it here in the comments.

This week, my concern turned to excitement - we are less than 2 weeks away from what will be one of our biggest unconferences yet. We have seen all the emails from those of you still trying to get into that other Web version conference, but there is no room at the “2.0 Inn”.   Instead, plan on joining other real people, who are doing the real work of this era, for some real conversations at our unconference.  We are really looking forward to talking WITH you at Web 2point2.