It would be an understatement to describe the Javits Center as humongous. The glass beast that stands on the shore of the bay seems to be an endless labyrinth of booths and rooms and signs – it’s just massive.

Once I finally figured out where I was though, I made my way to this morning’s first talk, which covered Web Search and the progression from static to social to real time results. Hosted by Eric Schonfield, Akhil Wable, Tobias Peggs, Vik Singh and Gerry Campbell, it was more of a discussion about the idea of realtime search and what it should be. The big idea that struck me was the concept of “freshness over timeliness.” This speaks to indexing content based on what is the most fresh and useful versus what is the most recent. I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about this within the next few months.

After a brief lunch I was able to sit in the fourth row for the Keynote presentations – wow. What an experience. It started off with Tim O’Reilly and his War for the Web analysis. He said some really great stuff about how companies need to focus on development for the greater good versus creating new technologies that lead to a monopolized system. From there, we enjoyed an interview with the CEO and Founder of Digg.com, two super young-looking gents with so many ideas – it was a tough act to follow. And yet…

Chris Brogan is a guy who never really charmed me. I heard all of these wonderful things about him, but it just never really clicked with me I guess. Until today. When Brogan took the stage he commanded the audience’s attention. His ideas were simple (worry about listening more than you worry about what to say), his delivery eloquent (“The difference between an audience and a community is which way you turn the chairs.”), and the response was noticeable (an applause that was more than animated). I have been converted. Mr. Brogan, you do know what’s up.

Caterina Fake, the genius gal behind Flickr also spoke quite a bit about start up companies, her new project Hunch.com (so very cool!) and “the power of less,” a running theme of this year’s expo.

Now I’m off to another seminar, so I bid you farewell!