This post is a summary of a user group presentation in Fremont on Jan 30th, 2007, hosted by Hurricane Electric, a Managed Services web host.

I’m live blogging from The Silicon Valley Web Builder’s second event focused on the “Beyond Web 2.0″

I’ve graciously accepted Bess Ho’s offer to be the moderator for the panel, we have Sean Ness Co-Founder at STIRR.net & Business Development Manager at Institute for the Future, Dmitriy Kruglyak CEO & Community Steward, Trusted.MD Network, and Harry McCracken the Vice President/Editor in Chief, PC WORLD.

This is a unique event, unlike other conferences that focus on current technology. This is glimpse into the future of web, technology, information, and how society will mix with it. There were over 100 people there, I polled the audience and many were software engineers, developers as the primary bunch. Met some interesting and intelligent folks, great crowd.

Here’s some of the predictions from the panelists:

Sean Ness

Sean’s 2007 Forecast

1. The iPhone flops
2. A presidential candidate drops out of the race early due
to a scandal hyped within the Web2.0 community
3. Second Life peaks and slowly dies off
4. A news stories causes the Internet to crash
5. Red Herring enters the magazine Dead Pool
6. Mobile walled garden persist
7. Twitter mushrooms as its commercial uses are adopted
8. OpenID is embraced by a “big player”
9. Reputation (RapLeaf) becomes a valuable online currency
10. The $100 Laptop is a non-starter

Sean’s 5-10 Year Forecast

1. Simulation literacy replaces computer literacy
2. Open mobile ecosytems…finally!
3. Sensemaking replaces sensing
4. Virtual Worlds (having learned from the SL slide) thrive
5. Tiny Data Servers, Huge Capacities
6. Broadband Networks Available Anywhere*, Anytime (*nearly)
7. Ambient Displays at the Human-Computer Interface
8. Tracking Physical Objects Made Easy with RFID
9. Data Mining for Effective Decision Making
10. The end of cyberspace

Dmitriy Kruglyak

Dmitriy’s 2007 Forecast

Web 2.0 term becomes dirty word
Cool makes way for profitable
Blurring of media and business applications
Solutions to real industry-specific problems
Web 2.0 meets enterprise salesforce & ROI metrics
Search for a model to reward social media contributors
A major Web 2.0 player implodes over trust or privacy issues
Category fragmentation finds its limits
Push for interoperability of identities & user profiles
Majority of users still won’t care about technology

Dmitriy’s 5-10 Year Forecast

Mobile devices in unforeseen form factors
Linux will become a viable choice on the desktop
Limitations of long tail business models will be well-tested
Social media integrates into the fabric of Fortune 500 businesses
New platform technology that does not exist today will be ubiquitous

Harry McCracken
I’m especially impressed with Harry who flew back from Demo in Palm Springs to speak at this event, then return the following morning at 6:30am. Thanks Harry

Harry’s forecast Beyond “Web 2.0″

Sophisticated Web-based applications
Community-created everything
APIs
Cheap Storage
Cheapl, rapid, development tools

Harry’s forecast on “Web 3.0″ (or at least 2.5)

See screenshots for details

Additional images from the event:

Update: see Matt Jaynes coverege of the event and his question over the ‘Web 2.0′ debate. Quite a prolific first post

Update 2: Colleague Irina and Eddie check out this small mobile device that exists today called the OQO, pretty interesting demo, and a nod to what lies ahead.