BoomTown was one of the tech writers on the panel, which was talking about what the big trends in tech in 2007 were and what they would be in 2008. The others were: Victoria Barret of Forbes, CNBC’s Jim Goldman, Business Week’s Rob Hof, The Wall Street Journal’s Don Clark and Robert Scoble of Scobleizer. (USA Today’s Jon Swartz could not attend.)

Venture capitalist Ann Winblad moderated the event.

Here is the whole thing:

And here is my video of the event too (and here is the post):

(I still am having problems with the Brightcove player, so I uploaded the video to YouTube.)

The event–this year at Foreign Cinema in the Mission District of San Francisco–is held to elicit feedback from the Internet’s movers and shakers about the new directions the conference, set to take place in San Francisco in mid-October, should head in.

Except Battelle and O’Reilly already came up with a theme: “The Web’s Edge.”

I am not entirely sure what that means. Is it that it is at an edge? Or that we need to look at the edge? Or just that things just feel all pointy lately? Big thoughts all!

In any case, the party was a lot of fun and filled with digital personalities, like Mitch Kapor and Ann Winblad, as well as a few folks I interviewed like ex-AOLer Jon Miller, ex-Fox exec Ross Levinsohn, VC David Sze, Tina Sharkey of BabyCenter and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.

Here’s the video:

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).

His speech was too short, but he did get a good line off about his more nearsighted qualities as an investor, noting some of his bad choices by saying it took “a lot of vision to fund Webvan, PlanetRx, eToys and RedEnvelope.”

And it was nice that wireless legend Craig McCaw was introduced by his wife, Susan, who is also a big wheel in her own right as U.S. ambassador to Austria. She was diplomatically gracious–as in no really juicy stories–about McCaw, who is unusually sassy compared to a lot of tech figures.

And games exec Trip Hawkins got off two good ones. First, he noted perfectly deadpan that the disaster at his once-hyped 3DO “enhanced my faith in God.”

And he poked fun at former boss Steve Jobs, telling a story about how the computing legend asked him one day: “You’ve never taken LSD before, have you?” Then, without a pause, Jobs added, “No, I didn’t think so…”

Lastly, as the clever Tom Foremski writes about the event in this post on his great blog, Silicon Valley Watcher, that I “looked very rock star, arriving in black shades and jeans, in a rebellious disregard for the smart attire suggested for the event.”

Actually, Tom, if I am what passes for glamorous in Silicon Valley, we are all in trouble. And it was totally unplanned.

I had just come back directly from a trip to Los Angeles, where I stayed out too late at the Joost party there Tuesday, where I learned about some interesting new content initiatives for the online video site from budding entrepreneurs, and then elsewhere (this is L.A. after all–hence the much-needed sunglasses). I also simply forgot to pack my power suit, because I am really absentminded.

Also here is another piece on the event from Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News.

And here’s one very short video snippet I left out of Walt, Craig and Susan McCaw and former Microsoft resident brain Nathan Myrvold yukking it up, with me not being able to get a word in edgewise (which can, I realize, be seen as a good thing).