John Hagel kicked off the Community 2.0 conference with a keynote titled "What's Possible? Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities".

John says:

"I'm very encouraged about the commercial prospects of online communities."

Me too!

Patty Seybold is doing a ridiculously good job of blogging about the sessions, so I'm linking and I'm not going to try and provide in depth coverage. There's too much going on!

John Hagel's keynote On the Outside Innovation blog.

I have to admit, the experience of listening to John was a little surreal (in a good way). The taboo surrounding the word "community", that lasted for me personally from 2001 to 2005, seems to have lifted for most everyone.

What's changed? My personal opinion:

1. It's cheaper to engage in community-building activities. We've gone from 7 figure portals to free independent communities to 5 figure deployments for customer, large-scale sites.
2. It's faster to deploy. Days and weeks, not months or a year.
3. Community already exists. The fact is, your org or brand already has a community. If your customers aren't talking about your products or services online, you might be in big trouble
4. Passionate customers have an appetite for engagement online (and to varying degrees, the flavors of less passionate customers). Customers have an expectation that your company is available and "present" online.
5. The value is starting to be measurable

More later. The content at the conference has been really great, and sessions have been good. Hallway conversations have been better.

More soon.