The Pond, an Octopz blog on communication, collaboration and coworking online.

Next week we’ll be traveling to New York to take part in the first east coast edition of Web 2.0 Expo. The show, which runs September 16–19, will feature a full program of keynote presentations, workshops and panel discussions as well as more than 100 exhibitors in the Expo Hall.

Octopz will be showing the latest release of our award-winning collaboration software. New in this version are expanded customization and branding capabilities, including the ability to embed an Octopz button within existing applications and workflows.

If you’re attending Web 2.0 Expo New York, be sure to stop by our booth (#1816) to get a first-hand look at the latest Octopz.

We’ve just learned that Octopz is among Canada’s 20 Hottest Innovative Companies that have been chosen to present at the upcoming Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX), to be held in Toronto, April 29 and 30.

CIX is a two-day event that showcases new and innovative Canadian technology companies and attracts a who’s who of potential investors from around North America. It’s an ideal opportunity for fresh startups and well as more mature new companies to show off what they’re up to and seek seed money or additional funding.

Toronto’s very vibrant unconference community is also working with CIX to hold a StartupCamp on the evening of the 29th. Judging by the sold out status on tickets this will also be a very well attended event and another testament to Canada’s thriving technology startup scene.

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2007, originally uploaded by World Economic Forum.

From January 23 to 27, 2008, business, government, civic and media leaders from all over the world will gather in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum meeting. These world leaders will discuss and debate a range on issues that affect the global agenda, including scarce resources, competing interests and the increasing complexity of our interdependent world.

The principal theme of the 2008 meeting is The Power of Collaborative Innovation. This focus on collaboration and innovation will be used as the guiding framework for the five main topics of the meeting, which are business, economics and finance, science and technology, values and society and geopolitics.

In the past, the World Economic Forum has come under criticism for being too closed and secretive with the meeting, with little information about what goes on there getting out to the larger public. In an effort to buffer some of the criticism, the 2007 meeting organizers worked with bloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Loic Le Meur, along with established and new media organizations including Guardian Unlimited and The Huffington Post, to create Davos Conversations and Forumblog.org, public portals of information and links about the gathering. They’ve even invited YouTube star Peter/Geriatric1927 to next year’s annual meeting. He seems to need some convincing that he should go.

cocreation, collaboration, Davos, geoperdis, Octopz, online collaboration, web2.0, World Economic Forum