Three years ago, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done seminal book on personal productivity. Finding ways to implement David’s extremely powerful yet deceptively simple workflow quickly became an obsession, and one of the primary motivations for developing the Office 2.0 concept. I later implemented my own version of David’s framework through the Extreme Productivity System, but it’s only when I met David and his team earlier this year that I really understood what the GTD was all about: it’s a way of life that goes beyond productivity, and can have a profound impact on one’s short time with the rest of us. Having made this discovery, all I wanted to do next was to share it with others. Unfortunately, David’s busy agenda and relatively small home office in Ojai, CA would make it difficult for my 3,000 regular readers to benefit from the very same experience. But I have some great news today: you will soon get a chance to meet David Allen in person, for he generously offered to open the upcoming Office 2.0 Conference with me.

The Office 2.0 Conference is all about personal productivity and group collaboration, enabled by cloud computing. But no matter how sexy our gadgets are, or how many cool applications we are using, we should never forget that productivity and collaboration are means to an end, nothing more than ways to dedicate more time and energy to the truly fulfilling activities in life: spending time with friends and loved one, donating our limited resources for helping others, or simply doing nothing, and enjoying the gentle flow of time passing by. This is some of what I hope David has written about in the upcoming Making It All Work, and I want to dedicate a fair chunk of our opening chat to these higher-level topics. We will also get a chance to hear more about the upcoming GTD Global Summit, which is definitely an event you’ll want to participate in next March (San Francisco, March 11-13, 2009).

Once again, the Office 2.0 Conference is shaping up into this great accidental gathering that was initiated two years ago by Ivaylo Lenkov’s generous (yet a bit crazy) contribution. The conference is less than five weeks away, and we still do not have a website (coming soon). I had hoped that my wife could dedicate most of the Summer to organizing the conference, but the Monolab|Workspace project came out of nowhere, and now she is working on it pretty much full time, while taking care of our 17 month old baby girl, who is having quite a hard time coping with her daddy’s insanely busy traveling schedule (Sydney one week, Tokyo the next, Singapore the one after).

Nevertheless, don’t get fooled by the absence of a website. As of today, we received over 100 speaker submissions, signed more than 20 sponsors (less than 25 spots left), and registrations are going strong. We’re also in the final stage for selecting the device we will use this year, and the choice between the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC and the Gigabyte MID M528 should be made sometime next week. In the meantime, today is the last day to benefit from our early-bird rate ($1,195 vs. $1,495), so make sure to register now and to book your hotel room promptly if you want to save some money for buying David’s books or surprisingly effective wallet.

Looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.