Large brands spend billions of dollars every year on advertising. More and more brands are migrating their ad dollars online, following their target audiences from print to digital. A few of those large brands talk about how much they are allocating to social networks. Find out what has worked and what hasn’t as well as the hurdles for brands getting on social networks.

Why, yes, I think I’ll shuffle right on through this recap of Web 2.0 this week.

To begin with, my participation at the conference was entirely fortuitous. Were it not for the incredible generosity of Connie Bensen offering her ticket up on Twitter last week, and my luck at being the first to respond, I would not have made it. Such as it is, hat tip to the wonderful Connie Bensen for providing a ticket to allow me to be a part of the Viget Labs crew at the Web 2.0.

While I stuck primarily to the Media & Marketing track, I did venture out to so of the more intriguing design, strategy and development session. Perhaps the most fascinating was Dan Saffer – formerly of Adaptive Path fame now heading up his shop, Kicker -  who gave a talk about designing for gestural interfaces.

Seffar shared two really cool quotes during his talk:

“We’re using bodies evolved for hunting, gathering, and gratuitous violence for information-age tasks like word processing and spreadsheet tweaking.” – David Liddle

“The best designs are those that ‘dissolve into behavior.’” – Naoto Fukasawa

As technology and our interaction with devices continues to evolve from simple keyboard and mouse to more immersive interfaces like the iPhone and Surface Sphere, our understanding of good user interface design has to change as well.

While several talks stand out, Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction presentation on “Customer Service is the New Marketing,” was easily the most impressive. Three big ideas in Becker’s talk:

1. Conversations are at the core of business.
2. Reduce your sphere of control.
3. Smash silos. 

A few other noteworthy talks were:

• The Partovi brothers at iLike hosted another great session, talking about the disruption of social tools in the music industry.
• Brian Solis gave a killer overview of how PR and marketing are experiencing a revolution in the shift brought on by social media.    
• And finally, a talk I had been looking forward to for quite a while, David Armano at Critical Mass presented, “Micro-interactions: How Brands Can Influence Consumers in a 2.0 World.’

Of course, it wouldn’t be a web conference in the Big Apple without some great times out on the town. Especially if the boys at Redmond were picking up the tab.  But more than an open bar courtesy of Microsoft (we’ll buy you drinks if you use IE8!), Thursday night’s Wine 2.0 with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk was a sweet event. Cool venue, plenty of web and wine geeks plus Gary doing a live recording of Wine Library TVand you’ve got the ingredients for a lively night. And on a side note, Gary just continues to blow me away.The man just flat out hustles. It’s inspiring to watch him, and I hope that he is motivating others to find their passion the same way he has discovered his own.

[Update] Gary’s keynote from Web 2.0 is now available:

Friday’s session wrapped up with a cool talk from Jackson Wilkinson on “Design and User Experience in an Agile Process,” and then a closing marketing session on understanding Agency 2.0. Moderated by Rick Webb of the Barbarian Group, the panel wrestled with the growing pains in the industry, but provided hope that some agencies are realizing that it’s not about just specializing in fat media buys, but simply being creative problems solvers to help build brands.

Overall, I was really pleased with the quality of the content at Web 2.0, and may even try to submit a talk for next year. In the end, I walked away with the continued affirmation that conversations matter more than ever. And no matter what, you’ve got to hustle – even if it is on the Time Square Shuffle. 

Sponsored by Livingston Communications, Viget Labs, and WordBiz.com, Inc., BlogPotomac brought together a great lineup of speakers to talk about some of the latest trends in social media marketing. But without question, Frank Gruber’s simple but entertaining lunchtime chat about social media tools that make life just a little better was the most entertaining session of the day. He’s posted a recap of his talk along with the list of recommended services.

If you weren’t able to make it, you can check out the of images from the event, along with the rundown of conversations on Twitter, thanks to Summize.

UPDATE – There is now a collection of great videos of each speaker available on YouTube, along with a great recap by Geoff over at Livingston Buzz.

RefreshDC – Wednesday, April 23 @ Strategic Analysis
Focusing on the world of startups, this month’s Refresh will have a great panel of folks in the DC startup scene, including Andrew Lee of Publi.us, Sean Greene of LaunchBox Digital, Eddie Frederick of Hungry Machine and of course, Brian Williams of Viget Labs (my employer).

TECH cocktail DC 2 – Thursday, April 24 @ MCCXXIII
Back after an almost a year since the last event, TECH cocktail’s aim is to “amplify the technology signal in under served markets and have fun doing it.” This is going to be an excellent event, and you can register for free here.

If you’d like to meet up at either of those, you can drop me a line at [ryan dot moede at viget dot com] or hit me up at twitter.com/rmoede

[Update}

So Q was fantastic, and as much as I would have loved to have live-blogged the whole event, I simply got too wrapped up into the presentations. Thankfully, there were other great people who managed to document the sessions. Check out Scott Hodge’s collection of posts, and get your Flickr fix of the event here.

The un-conference has a solid lineup of speakers for the day, including:

• Lionel Menchaca, digital media manager and chief blogger for Direct2Dell
• Frank Gruber, community manager, AOL and author of Somewhat Frank
• Author KD Paine
• Social Media Group’s Maggie Fox
• Kami Huyse, Communication Overtones
• Jeremy Pepper, Pop! PR Jots

I’m excited about sharing ideas with some of DC’s best, and I’ll relay more details as the event draws closer.