Matt & I are back in the office after spending most of the week in San Francisco at Web 2.0 Expo last week. The show was interesting. Lots of extravagance and an interesting mix of people walking through the exhibit halls. We made a point to ask what brings people to the conference. Here’s a random assortment of why people came to the show and who dropped by our booth for a demo and visit:

1) Lots of people seem to be suffering from information overload throughout the year, fall behind on keeping up with what’s going on, and then use an event like Web 2.0 Expo to catch up over the course of a few days.

2) A lot of business development folks were wandering around, talking up the capabilities of their respective companies. In hindsight and depending on your company’s goals and objectives, I think this is the best ROI for attending a show like Web 2.0 Expo. If a primary goal is to establish relationships with potential partners, I think walking the exhibit halls is more effective than having a booth.

3) A handful of VCs and investment bankers came by to introduce themselves.

4) I was surprised by more than a few job seekers stopping by. Maybe there are cheap tickets to be found, but it seems a little pricey to pay for a ticket to Web 2.0 to walk around and look for a job.

5) Bill Lucchini and Alex Chriss of Quickbase stopped by for a demo of blist. Usually legacy incumbents discount and ignore the up and coming startups, so it was nice to be on their radar and that they made a deliberate effort to come check us out.

What was most interesting to me, however, is how many “web 2.0″ companies were not there. Where were Facebook, imeem, Scribd, meebo, iLike, Mig33, slide, Twitter, Mint, Mahalo, Xobni, TripIt, et al? The widespread absence of these early stage companies made it feel more like an enterprise software trade show than a web 2.0 “unconference.”

There were far more enterprise and web 1.0 companies than web 2.0 startups. Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon, Yahoo, Rearden Commerce, ABC, Rackspace, NetApp, AOL, Intel, Nokia, Novell and F5 Networks were all there. The handful of web 2.0 startups I remember include Sprout, Triggit, Morfix, LongJump, Mashery, Photobucket (although now part of Fox Interactive Media/MySpace). Also present were a few tweeners – companies I wouldn’t categorize as either legacy/1.0 or web 2.0. These are the “pick and ax” companies of the Internet creating software and services to allow enterprises as well as web 1.0 and web 2.0 companies to do their thing – Amazon Web Services, Atlassian Software, Jive Software, StrikeIron, Kapow, MindTouch and JackBe.

Web 2.0 Expo was an interesting event. We met lots of smart people and continued to spread the good word about the work we’re doing at blist. If we had it to do over again, instead of renting a full 8×10 (or bigger) booth, we’d either simply go as attendees or at most sign up for one of the modest kiosks in the Long Tail Pavilion. Because it was densely populated with a number of cool startups, the Long Tail Pavilion drew great traffic and it was half the price of our traditional booth.