The most challenging part in starting any new venture is to reach what some call escape velocity. I would define it as the speed at which a projectile will reach its intended destination — usually referred to as ’success’ — without any additional kinetic energy input. Over the past couple of days, it looks like our proposed Office 2.0 Conference reached its required escape velocity, thanks to the help of a core group of contributors.

On the sponsor side, I am pleased to welcome CollectiveX and EchoSign as new sponsors for the event. True to our eat-your-own-dog-food beliefs, we will use CollectiveX to enable collaboration among contributors. All participants, speakers, and sponsors are invited to join the office20.collectivex.com group (invitations coming soon) in order to hold discussions, share documents, and facilitate introductions. And when time comes to get any contract signed with sponsors and service providers, EchoSign, and their one-click approval process, should come in handy. This is described in more details on the conference’s setup page, which outlines how we are using our sponsors’ services.

On the speaker side, we’ve added some very interesting contributors to our list: Vassil Mladjov, CEO of Blogtronix, Rafe Needleman, Category Director at CNET, Greg Olsen, CTO of Coghead, and Ken Rudin, CEO of LucidEra. I’m really glad to get Greg’s partipation, for I mentioned Coghead — previously known as Versai — as one of the companies to watch six months ago, and what I saw today far exceeds my original expectations.

On the website side, we’ve developed a couple of interesting resources. First, we are now outlining the different services used to organize the conference itself, through an Office 2.0 Conference Setup based on my own setup. We also developed a list of participating organizations, which gives a nice profile for the conference’s expected audience. For those willing to receive regular updates on the event, we have setup a blog for the conference, with its own RSS feed. And last, but not least, we have developed a credits page, which is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to all the people who are helping organize this event.

On the registration side, we now have more than 75 confirmed participants, before we even announced the actual location for the event. We were originally shooting for 100 to 200 participants. But based on the feedback we have received so far, we decided to book facilities that could accommodate up to 250. What this means is that you should make sure to register as soon as possible if you want to secure your spot for the event, for we won’t be able to go beyond 250. And if you register before September 1st, you’ll save a cool $100.

And before you ask, the actual location should be announced this week.