Last year as a bright-eyed netizen I was able to attend the Supernova conference and this year I’m going to attend again. I’m really looking forward to it. Supernova is put on by Kevin Werbach, a highly sociable internet policy wonk who has straddled so many sectors of the internet economy for so long he’s pretty much a Kevin Bacon. The whole purpose of his event is to bring as many minds from as many sectors and as many countries as possible and let everyone share, update and inform each other of what they are seeing.

Besides some formal panels it’s mostly one big conversation, which is great as the unscripted dialogue at moments can lead to room-wide a-ha moments as collected threads are simultaneously woven up into a new understanding of how things will be. The fact that hard core geeks, IP lawyers, policy makers, visionaries, academics, and roll-up-the-sleeve doers (my personal favorite ;) are all in the room, and the hallways and the meals together really pushes topic as far as they are able to go on that day.

Last year I saw presentations by Dodgeball and Oddpost, both of whom I had never heard of before, both were at-home start-ups made by a handful engineers and both of which have since been acquired by Google and Yahoo respectively because in both cases the giants knew these little shops were making something that they simply couldn’t for less than the purchase price. And this was during a year when many internet investors were still just getting off the sidelines.

IT Conversations recorded and have available all the panels and presentations from 2004. Another participant, Jonathon Marks, made an excellent video capturing what the event is all about. (quicktime and wmp).

Anyone going June 20-22 in San Francisco let me know. Should be superduper.