Click here for more coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit

One of the great indicators of the state of play in the high-tech world is what's happening in the decidedly low-tech realm of conferences. Back in the Industry Standard days, our conferences – and especially our flagship, the Internet Summit – were huge events, with four or five hundred top-level execs paying three or four thousand dollars each to attend and sponsors clamouring to be listed as a supporter.

It's only fair that the Internet Summit mantle has now been assumed by the Web 2.0 conference, the fourth edition of which was held last week in San Francisco and, though I wasn't there, I can only imagine. The impresario behind Web 2.0 is John Battelle, my former compatriot at the Standard, and his line-up this year included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch, and Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, among many others. From all accounts it was packed, and a very good show.

But perhaps even more telling than the success of a recently established event like Web 2.0 is the proliferation and success of events in related areas. There was, just a few weeks ago, the TechCrunch 40 Summit, put on by the blog TechCrunch, which has become an industry arbiter similar in a way to what the Industry Standard once was.

In a couple of weeks is a promising new event in Denver called Defrag, which my friend (and NewWest.Net investor) Brad Feld is helping to put together. It's described as "the first conference focused solely on the Internet-based tools that transform loads of information in layers of knowledge, and accelerate the ‘aha’ moment."

There is also something called the New New Internet conference in Washington DC which, in an odd and perhaps dubious effort at rub-off branding, calls itself "Web 2.0 for business." At about the same time, fellow journalism entrepreneur Rafat Ali is doing his next PaidContent event on "Future of Business Media" in New York, and shortly after that is the Blogworld conference in Las Vegas.

My personal conference circuit recently has included speaking gigs at the Networked Journalism Summit, the California Media Project, and next month something called Interactive Local Media in Los Angeles.

Tech conferences are not your typical trade group annual junket, nor are they trade shows with vendors explicitly hawking their wares; the reason they are such a big business is because in a new and fast-changing industry there is a powerful need to learn what others are doing, make contacts, let others know what you are doing, and collectively establish a pecking order on who and what is important. And because the culture of the tech conference is so well developed – Agenda and PC Forum, the now-defunct pioneers, both started more than two decades ago – the events can be a lot of fun too.

I've got conferences on my mind this week because we're in the home stretch of putting together own conference, the second annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies (link:www.newwest.net/conferences). Obviously this isn't about tech or the Internet (and it's quite inexpensive by Web 2.0 standards) but it's also about a fast-growing, fast-changing business where there is a palpable information deficit – and where better information will clearly enable you to be more successful. That's one definition of a good conference opportunity.

The tech industry conferences are a great model. If you can persuade the key people in your industry or niche to come and speak, you can then persuade sponsors to help support it and people to buy tickets. And if you also identify and structure the content well – an editorial function – you'll have an interesting and useful event.

In the meantime, you think of the event itself as a party. Work on the right mix of people. Make sure the space is nice. Have plenty of food and drink, and avoid rubber chicken. Pay attention to the details – the signage, the program, the name badges, the music, the tablecloths. And think of the on-stage part of the program as a show, not a meeting. Information may be the draw, but entertainment will keep people coming back.

Of course, conferences are expensive to produce and expensive to attend – in both money and time – and that's why they tend to be a bull-market phenomenon. And they're also part of what makes bull markets fun.

---

Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard