The Web 2.0 Expo, co-produced by TechWeb and O’Reilly Media, is a global annual gathering of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation web. It just wrapped up it’s East Coast run today. The conference featured a number of phenomenal keynote and general session speakers.

Among the keynotes was one of my favorite authors and presenters: Clay Shirky. Shirky is an adjunct professor at NYU who studies social media, and author of the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. During his keynote Thursday at Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Shirky examined the problem of information overload. His premise was the fact that the problem is not that we have too much information to process. The problem is that our filters are inadequate. And privacy breakdowns are a similar problem — privacy is threatened because the filters we relied on to keep our private data confidential are broken, and we haven’t evolved good mechanisms to replace those filters yet. I thought that it was one of his best presentations and I’ve shared it below.

For a thoughtful summary and evaluation of Shirky’s presentation, take a look at Mitch Wagner’s post on Information Week’s Digital Life Blog titled: Clay Shirky Busts The Myth Of Information Overload At Web 2.0 Expo.

To take a look at other great presentations from the Web 2.0 Expo, take a look at the videos here and the speakers presentation files here. Definitely looks like it’s a well run and worthwhile event to attend.

There is no doubt that social media has gained a foothold in our personal and business lives. Yet despite the fact that many businesses and associations are embracing it’s use and realizing the qualitative and quantitative results/benefits from adopting specific tools for specific purposes, for many the decision and choice are still a crapshoot. Having a clearly defined objective is essential for choosing the right tool/service/media.

This video from Will It Blend with special guest Forrester analyst and Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff reinforces that thought.

It’s all about having clear objectives and using the right tool for the job. Otherwise, as the video illustrates you end up with nothing more than a pile of dust. If you need a refresher to help you get focused or even a starting point take a look at a few of these eBooks:

• Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter - Geekpreneur
• The Zen of Blogging - Hunter Nutall
• What is Social Media - iCrossing
• A Primer in Social Media - SmashLab
• We Have a Website. Now What? - Craig Rentmeester
• Social Web Analytics - Social Web Analytics
• Blogs & Social Media - PRSA

For a number of other great eBooks on Social Media, check out Chris Brogan’s recent blog post: 20 Free eBooks About Social Media.

No matter how busy I am or how little time that I think that I have, the one website that I find myself frequently visiting/revisiting is TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and its genesis in 1984 was as a conference that brought together individuals representing those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

While I have never had the opportunity to attend one of the conferences, I have been able to reap many of the benefits through their website which makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free, called TEDTalks. TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens at TED with the world. Under the moniker “ideas worth spreading,” talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. In fact, the reaction was so enthusiastic that the entire TED website was re-engineered around TEDTalks, with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices.

As of today, more than 250 talks from their archive are now available, with more being added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. With 50 million views since the debuted online two years ago, TED talks have become a powerful cultural force. To celebrate this milestone, they have released a never-before-seen list: the Top 10 TED talks of all time, as of June 2008. You can watch the video below:

The top 10 TED Talks of all time include:

1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other “Mathemagic”
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you’ve ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote

I have seen many of these Talks, but a few I had never seen and will be heading back over to TedTalks to watch them. What I like most about them is that they are intelligent, on-point, and full of wisdom and inspiration. They are perfect for getting an idea of what is going on in the world today and more importantly what is possible. If you have some time, I’d highly recommend spending it there.