For me, producing the Office 2.0 Conference is nothing more than a hobby, and the reason why we organize everything in the last two months that precede the event is just so that we do not get distracted by it during the rest of the year. This also contributes to create a sense of urgency, which from the outside looks like momentum, and momentum is a critical success factor for any conference business, or any business for that matter. In other words, we’ve got a perfect example of self-fulfilling prophecy at play. Unfortunately, this also creates a situation where a lot of things have to be done in a record time, and the need for speed is never felt so acutely than during these two Summer months. Here come EchoSign and the iPhone, two perfect examples of Office 2.0 productivity tools that will help you get things done, faster than you ever thought was possible.

Earlier today, I was shopping at Whole Foods Market in Palo Alto, CA, filling my bag with mission critical supplies for the week end, such as levain bread, morbier cheese, and chocolate (85% cocoa). After having called my better half to verify that I did not forget anything, I checked my email and saw a notification that I had to sign a contract on EchoSign. The contract was for Caspio to join the conference as a Gold Sponsor. I had exchanged emails with their CEO Frank Zamani earlier that day, and I knew that I should provide as much love and care as possible to keep them as a sponsor for the years to come. Counter signing a contract immediately after receiving it is definitely part of it, and using the iPhone’s amazing web browser, I initialed the document immediately, before checking my groceries out. This was the first time I used EchoSign from my iPhone for a real business contract (last week’s was a demo sent to me by EchoSign’s CEO Jason Lemkin). The contract negotiation took a day, but contract signing was done in less than an hour, from the time the contract was sent to the first party, to the time when both parties had signed it. This is fast!

Now, a couple of words on Caspio. If you’re familiar with Dabble DB or Zoho Creator, think of Caspio as their high-end counterpart. If Dabble DB is like Access, Caspio is like Oracle, but with a user interface more like FileMaker or FoxPro, which is why 30 of the 100 largest online newspapers use it for their websites. On our side, we are currently building a public version of My Office 2.0 Setup using it, and have many other ideas for this amazing product. Today, we’re proud to welcome Caspio as a new sponsor for the conference, and look forward to a great show with them, very soon…