All Things Digital

Here’s some video from the halls of Web 2.0 Summit, which is taking place this week in San Francisco.

As you will see, it is quite the Bubblefest, with all sorts of geeky bonhomie and aspiring hopefulness of also landing a $15 billion valuation, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg noted he was about to do onstage yesterday.

Other luminaries onstage yesterday included Google exec Marissa Mayer, Nokia’s Anssi Vanjoki, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and super-VC Mike Moritz. Today’s slate: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, eBay’s Meg Whitman, Philippe Dauman of Viacom and other various and sundry Web poo-bahs.

Of course, most of the action–as always–takes place in the halls of the Palace Hotel, where the schmooze factor is always ratcheted up to 11. There’s nothing a bunch of nerds likes to do more than debate each other over code and funding and which start-up is about to tank (not theirs!).

Here’s a video of the scene from Day 1:

I first ran into Sequoia Capital venture capitalist Roelof Botha in the green room of our recent D5 conference, where he was there to see the demo being done by Jason Calacanis for Mahalo, a “human-powered” search service that Botha had recently invested in.

Though I jokingly congratulated Calacanis on the investment from a “toddler VC,” because of the 33-year-old Botha’s freshly-scrubbed and youthful looks, I’d be pretty pleased if my two sons–2 and 5 years old–could be involved in a multibillion deal after only a few years on the job.

“You have to put yourself in a position to be lucky,” said the South African-born Botha over lunch at the Sundeck on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley recently.

Here’s a video I did of my visit with Botha, where I both incorrectly note the address of Sequoia and willfully refuse any effort at pronouncing his name with any grace:

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In my first post about the SDForum’s annual Visionary Awards, I forgot to add a few things that were interesting to me, including a short snippet of video I forgot to put in the first one, which appears after the jump.

First, Heidi Roizen–at whose luxe house in Atherton, Calif., the event took place–was also honored. Roizen’s close friend and onetime VC Ann Winblad gave her the award, and Roizen gave a gracious speech about her house, the award and the need for community and connection.

It was good she got an award, too, as I made a joke onstage right before about the diversity of the honorees this year (four middle-aged white guys whose differentiating elements were blazer colors and facial hair) and throughout the awards’ 10-year history. Most of the nearly five dozen SDForum honorees overall have been men, which is no surprise in the tech industry.

But the accomplished women are: Donna Dubinsky and Esther Dyson (1998); Ann Winblad and Kaye Caldwell (1999); Cate Muther (2001); Sandra Kurtzig (2002); JoMei Chang (2003); Carol Bartz and Carly Fiorina (2005).

Second, Mike Moritz wasn’t quite as flat as some reports noted, such as here (and note to Valleywag: I am not kissing up to the uber-VC).

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Last night, party animal that I am, I also went to the SDForum’s 10th Annual Visionary Awards, which was held at the house of well-known venture capitalist Heidi Roizen in Atherton, Calif.

The not-for-profit group for-profit gave out its yearly awards to four tech figures, including The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg, who is also my partner in the D conference and the AllThingsD.com site, and, more important, my close friend. I was there to introduce him.

Other recipients were big tech players including wireless legend Craig McCaw (now running Eagle River Investments and Clearwire); game pioneer Trip Hawkins, now CEO of Digital Chocolate; and supercharged venture capitalist Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital.

There were cocktails, food and high-level schmoozery, along with the expected speeches and handing out of heavy glass awards. This was no Oscars, of course, given the distinct lack of evening gowns and no red carpet–the closest thing to glamor were discussions about the functionality of the iPod.

Here is my longish video of the event, with some snippets of speeches by Hawkins, McCaw, Moritz and Walt at the end: