One of the bigger disappointments of the Technology Management Conference was Don Tapscott’s keynote speech Wednesday morning. Tapscott is co-author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. I really looked forward to hearing some profound reflections on how Wikinomics relates to the financial services industry. Unfortunately, the session was scheduled to start at 8 AM, and because of a collection of transportation issues, I just could not make it into New York from New Haven in time to hear what Mr. Tapscott had to say. I hope he did say something profound and enlightening and that others will write about it.

The most exciting high point of the show was talking with Michael Warner, CEO and Founder of Quantum 4D. Quantum 4D provides a data visualization tool using 3D models, that shift as a time series is played through it, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. It is still in an early stage and there were lots of things that I wish it had. For example, you load data into Quantum 4D in batches, instead of Quantum 4D connecting up to real time data feeds. Their presentation layer looks good, and they talk about the ability of users to collaborate in the three dimensional space that the data creates. We talked about taking the presentation object and incorporating it into other systems. Being the Second Life fan that I am, I suggested finding ways of presenting their model in Second Life so people could collaborate in a virtual world to work with the data. There was some resistance to this idea due to some of the bad press that Second Life has received.

We talked about using QWAQ as a collaboration tools and about looking at integration with other collaboration tools. We talked about pricing models and about different companies creating their own data spaces that they could share on a free or subscription basis. This was definitely the hottest software I saw there. My sense is that it is something that only innovators and visionaries are likely to get right now, and the challenge will be to see how it develops, scales, gets documented, builds its community, and on and on, before it becomes the tool of choice by early adopters and the early majority.

After seeing such an interesting and compelling presentation, I was wondering what the Open Source Update panel had to say. The panel was made up of luminaries, Roger Burkhardt, CEO and President of Ingres, Randy Hergett, director of engineering for Open Source at Hewlett-Packard, Roger Levy, SVP and General Manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell, Marcus Rex, CTO of The Linux Foundation, and Michael Tiemann, VP of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat. Unfortunately, it was too much like so many other panels, where the moderator asked lots of questions and didn’t really provide an opportunity to let these people shine. I left the panel without having heard anything new or interesting.

The final highpoint was the marketing effort of FTEN. They describe themselves as “an independent non-broker dealer application service provider (ASP) that offers these sophisticated solutions to Clearing Firms, Broker Dealers, Prime Brokers, Hedge Funds and Proprietary Traders.” They boast about their access, speed and control. Their swag was little stuffed pig toys with wings. They had women dressed as pigs with wings at their booth and they even gave away helium balloons to members of the press to try and get reporters to their booth. I didn’t find anything particularly exciting or innovative about their platform, but I do have to compliment them as having what seemed to be the most sought after and talked about swag.

Today is the final day of the Technology Management Conference. I’m working up in Connecticut today and won’t make it in. However, I was glad about what I did get to see, as well as the chance to connect with many old friends at the show and look forward to next year’s SIFMA Technology and Management Conference and Exhibition.