Report by Kyra Aylsworth, Special Correspondent, PRGirlz.com

Canada’s premier Web 2.0 conference, mesh, strives to ‘connect, share and inspire’. It’s a mighty task, but mesh delivers. This event is packed with interesting people and topics and if you’re like me, you don’t want to miss any opportunity to make connections with people and highly nuanced trends and ideas. Today I spoke with public relations professionals, venture capitalists, computer people who went into advertising and startup wonders from all over the map.

I forgot how much energy and focus conferences require. By midday, the conference starts to feel like you’ve been at an interactive art gallery or a museum of modern thought – and it feels like you have a lot to catch up on. I highly recommend it. (Disclosure: I am a mesh volunteer.)

I volunteered at last year’s mesh conference, and from what I can tell, this year’s gathering seems to consist of far more people outside of the tech loop (or I’m just finding myself in sessions that appeal to communicators). More people from public relations and marketing backgrounds are interested in what is happening now and what they can do to incorporate social media into their practice. Last year the scene seemed to be dominated by tech insiders and blog personalities. It’s heartening to see that there are more people in our field who want to make these technologies ‘work’ in the business world.

Of course, this conversation means that there is a lot of talk about ‘authenticity’ and how to manufacture it. Public relations practitioners and marketers keep asking, “How do we connect with our audiences in an authentic way?” Community builders and bloggers usually have the same response to this question (no matter how many different ways we phrase it) and that is, “Be authentic.”

From the perspective of the communications field, it’s social rocket science.

Here’s an example of authenticity (coming from a person who is making their debut in the Toronto public relations community): I would have more details about speakers and what they said if I hadn’t forgotten my notes at MaRS. There it is. Complete disclosure. However, given that my notes and camera are in tact tomorrow, I will be posting here with more quotes and details then.

That said, I need to reference ’someone’ who made the point today that social media isn’t going anywhere. In fact, they said that although we talk about ’social media’ as a separate entity now, that in the future, all media will be social media. This means that we should prepare to enter into dialogue with our audiences with the expectation that this dialogue will continue for years to come.

Stay tuned for more mesh musings tomorrow, when I’ll be talking more about who I met and what they are thinking now.