The Web 2.0 Conference starts today at the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. This may be the first time I've traveled 3,000 miles without knowing why. Because really. No, seriously—what is Web 2.0?

I'm not a techno-malcontent, or a grumbling journalist who mistakes cynicism for character. In truth, I'm truly jazzed about all the new applications on the Web, from Ning to Writeboard, from Num Sum to WebNote. I've read O'Reilly's treatise, I've read Om Malik's obiter dicta. And Michael Arrington's. And Richard Macmanus'. And Keith Robinson's. You don't need memeorandum to tell you, the Web's got 2.0 on the brain.

But let me split semantic hairs for a minute. In one sense, I think the term Web 2.0 is a bit misleading. For one, "2.0" implies a teleological progression that doesn't really exist. "2.0" is an artifact of iterative software development, a process which O'Reilly himself rightly identifies as anachronistic. Furthermore, "2.0" seems like an arbitrary milestone that is hard to apply to events and features. At what point did we reach 2.0? When Google launched AdSense? When BitTorrent captured 30 percent of Web traffic? When Wikipedia began correcting the Encyclopedia Brittanica?

Of course, it's easier to be suspicious of the term than it is to understand and apply the lessons at its core. Indeed, I think that is O'Reilly's most salient insight: "Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core." O'Reilly visualizes Web 2.0 not as a feature set, but as a set or principles and practices.

Web 2.0 isn't AJAX. It isn't Flickr, or housingmaps.com, or whatever's new this week. It's an idea. It's an iteration.

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For those who don't have the bandwidth to peruse all 16 printed pages of O'Reilly's "What is Web 2.0," here's a quick cheat sheet of his principles and practices:
1. Web 2.0 applications use customers and their data to reach out to the entire Web, not just the biggest centers of activity. In a sense, this is an extension of Searls' and Weinberger's World of Ends.
2. Web 2.0 services get better the more people use them. Apps like Bittorrent turn users into servers, thereby amplifying download times. For a meatspace example, consider a grocery store that got bigger the more people walked through the front doors, or cars that drove better the more cars there were on the road.
3. Web 2.0 apps experiment in trust. You have to trust your users; they will give you the keys to market dominance.
4. Web 2.0 winners are the owners of data. O'Reilly points to mapping data companies NavTeq and TeleAtlas as the primary beneficiaries of MapQuest's tools.
5. Web 2.0 means the end of the software release cycle. Internet software requires constant care and rapid development.

So, what news will come out of the Web 2.0 conference? My bet is, not too much. But it's going to be exciting. There's a Launch Pad session today where a dozen new companies like Zimbra will be debuting and/or discussing their new services. We already know that NewsGator acquired NetNewsWire, and that Macromedia will be making an announcement about Flex 2.0. And Yahoo! acquired upcoming.org.

This conference isn't about news though, it's about galvanizing the troops. Because, at its most efficacious, the Web 2.0 meme is a call to action.

What's to look forward to at the conference then? Today I'm definitely going to check out the 8:30 a.m. (ouch) workshop titled Applications 2.0: AJAX and Beyond, which will include conversations with Jesse James Garret and Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path. They'll be talking to developers about business cases. (How great is this new-fangled Web 2.0 thing, when you can get code jockies to talk about business cases?)

Then I'll be checking out the Open Source Infrastructure and Web 2.0 Ad Models workshops. Or, rather, How to Build and How to Sell. Also of interest will be AttentionTrust.org's afternoon session, where Seth Goldstein and Steve Gillmor will be unveiling the alpha version of their Firefox extension that will let users record aspects of their "Attention data."

I admit, I'm not sure what "Attention data" means. But hey, it sounds very 2.0.

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