I spent the day at the Web 2.0 Expo expecting yet another conference. What I ended up with at the end of the day were a number of conversations that centered around passion.

Passion for what you do everyday, your ideas, and overall being happy. Perhaps this meme was sealed by one of the Web 2.0 keynote speakers today Gary Vaynerchuk, who basically outlined that if you are not doing what you love, stop doing it and start doing something you are passionate about. Charlie is helping people do exactly that with Path 101, while folks like myself and Matt are still deciding on what path to follow. You cannot discuss this topic without sounding a little cheesy – but I appreciate the dialogue and hope the conversation continues.

I met a number of entrepreneurs and people today who are passionate about their companies and others who simply work at a startup. You can tell the difference immediately. Gary’s advice was that even if you do not like 1% of what you are doing – change direction and do something else. I tend to agree with him, and find that most people have trouble taking that first step. What follows may be some ups and downs (lets face it, some big downs) but in the end you will be much happier.

There may not be an easy answer to find that one passionate path to follow – but you have to start somewhere.

It was definitely great to meet a number of folks today for the first time while meeting others in person that I have connected with over the Intertron. I enjoyed the talk Albert gave on cloud computing which prompted a number of subsequent conversations with many of the cloud computer companies present. Some were interfaces for current cloud platforms – others were platforms themselves with apps deployed on them. The final keynote was also great.

In the end, definitely a great experience. Like many conferences you get out of them what you put into them.