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

Innovation guru and author Scott Berkun held a workshop and keynoted at the recent Web 2.0 Expo and blogged about the experience on his website.

Scott shared that he saw similarities between the current web 2.0 and social media buzz and the push technology hubub of a decade ago. He also pointed out that for the most part, vendors now, as then, fail to distinguish themselves from one another because they don’t take the time to explain how the potential of their gadgets/software/services deliver real value.

To that end Scott offered up a golden nugget of insight that anyone can use to make sense of the benefits of web 2.0 and social media:

We have always been collaborative. Always been social. It’s in our genes and it’s what we have evolved to do well. Good technologies enhance our natural abilities, give us useful artificial ones, and help us to get more of what we want from life. Web 2.0 and social media make the process of collaboration and developing relationships more fun, efficient, powerful and meaningful.

Scott’s slides from his Web 2.0 workshop on How to innovate on time are here (pdf).

Team Octopz at Web 2.0 Expo

Our Web 2.0 Expo team is back from San Francisco, with lots of insights and customer feedback on the latest version of Octopz. Here’s what they’ve shared so far.

This year’s show was attended by more than 10,000 people and had nearly double the number of booths as last year. Overall, the show attendees’ mindset seems to have shifted from asking what Web 2.0 is (last year’s big question) to how they can use Web 2.0 services and solutions to be more effective in their organizations.

Many more of those visiting our booth this year were end users, particularly from the industries and segments that Octopz is designed for, including marketers, designers and other creative pros.

Visitors loved the ease and immediacy of use that Octopz offers, and were particularly impressed by our integration of video and Flickr as well as our industry-leading support for interactive 3D models.

The new built-in Text Editor was very well received as was the news that we will be offering a Day Pass pricing option for Octopz at the end of May.

Many of those seeing Octopz for the first time assumed that our application only supports real-time (synchronous) collaboration, so they were thrilled to find out that all the files and markups are saved in a room for asynchronous collaboration as well.

This is just one of the major differentiators between Octopz and competitors in creative collaboration software. Another one is participants’ ability to use any combination of text, voice and video chat while collaborating in an Octopz room. This feature was also a big hit with show visitors.

A number of representatives from large and established technology companies also stopped by our booth and expressed an interest in partnering with us. They praised Octopz for its clean design and polished execution.

So all in all, Web 2.0 Expo was a great opportunity for us to showcase the latest version of Octopz.

To see our collaboration software in action, including all the new features, sign up for a free trial online.

Click on the image above to watch a video overview of the new Octopz features.

Lots of news about Octopz to share today, so lets get right to it. The official new release announcing the next major version of Octopz went out earlier today. Here are the highlights:

• Industry-leading support for fully interactive 3D content, available now
• Access to external web services, including Flickr, Yahoo! Maps, available now, and shortly, Floorplanner
• Real-time co-creation with the built-in text editor, available now
• A new Day Pass pricing option as a convenient alternative to monthly subscriptions, available late May, 2008

A second news release provides more details on support for interactive 3D in Octopz. The highlight are:

• Anyone working in a 3D application, such as Autodesk’s Maya and 3ds Max, and Softimage’s XSI can upload their 3D content directly into an Octopz Meeting Room
• Fully textured 3D objects can be imported, shared, manipulated and marked up in Octopz just as easily as any other document
• Additional capabilities will be added in the coming months, including advanced lighting and shading control, character animation, texture swapping, scene editing, and support for Google SketchUp models
• Interactive 3D support is provided by combining Papervision3D with the proprietary Octopz code base

A third news release details the integration of Flickr and Yahoo! Maps into Octopz. Highlights:

• Access Yahoo! Maps and Flickr (either an individual photo collection or the entire Flickr library) from within Octopz
• Upload the desired images and map information directly to an Octopz meeting room
• View and markup the images and maps in real time or asynchronously
• Archive all work — including all markups and notes — in a highly secure environment

To see Octopz in action, including the new features, sign up for a free trial online.