Conferences are a strange part of the Web's future, where important stuff happens offline. The big sessions might be streamed live, but there's a reason the in-person parts tend to be closed affairs: the real action happens in the hallways. There are always high-profile speakers and exciting events, but everyone in attendance is there to talk about a big topic, and not all of it can be captured. That's where we come in.

Today marks the beginning of the annual Web 2.0 Summit at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. This year's theme is The Data Frame. "We live in a world clothed in data," the introduction says, "and as we interact with it, we create more - data is not only the Web's core resource, it is at once both renewable and boundless." That's what Web 2.0 attendees will be talking about in the halls of the Palace Hotel. ReadWriteWeb is on the scene to loop you into this conversation. Here's what to expect:

The Data Frame: Who's Here & What's Happening?

The common theme at Web 2.0 this year is how the key players are leveraging the vast amounts of data on the Web. "Everybody's talking about how to leverage data and turn it into actionable information," organizer John Battelle told InformationWeek. Here's the summit's big vision statement:

"At the 2011 edition of Web 2.0 Summit, we'll use data as a framing device to understand the state of the Web. We know that those who best leverage data will win. So who's winning, and how? Who's behind? In each of our key points of control such as location, mobile platforms, gaming, content, social - who is innovating, and where are the opportunities? What new classes of services and platforms are emerging, and what difficult policy questions loom? And what of the consumer - will users become their own "point of control," and start to understand the power of their own data?"

We'll be here to report out on our conversations, and fortunately lots of the big events at the summit will be streamed live.

You can watch the whole show right here:

Check out the live stream schedule to see which events you can watch. We'd love to hear your reactions to any of these events. Share them in comments on the site or by mentioning Richard or me on Google Plus.

Here are the highlights I'm most excited about, which means I'm likely to blog about them:

Monday
I can't wait to hear from Tony Conrad, whose current venture at About.me was acquired by AOL. About.me is a free service to make a personal splash page aggregating all your various Internet presences. It's pretty Web 2.5, if you ask me. His Pivot session is from 3:40 to 3:45.

Right after that, there are High Order Bit sessions with Sean Parker and Christopher Poole - A.K.A. moot, founder of 4chan - who are both sure to be sensational.

Tonight at the dinner, we'll hear from Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter. That won't be streamed live, but we'll be sure to report back.

Tuesday
Anyone interested in commerce or gaming will have lots to watch on Tuesday (see schedule for details).

Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing from Dennis Crowley of foursquare. Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and Jane McGonical, author of Reality Is Broken, are sure to have an interesting chat about gaming.

Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer at Pandora will talk to Adam Lashinsky of Fortune Magazine. And I'm very curious to hear Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speak at the end of the day.

Wednesday
The last day has a jam-packed schedule. Here's who I'm going to at least try to see:

Mike McCue of Flipboard, Susan Wojcicki from Google will be my morning, and I'll be speaking to Rod Smith (now program director David Barnes) from IBM about emerging Internet technologies. At RWW, we're big fans of bit.ly's Hilary Mason, who also speaks Wednesday.

MC Hammer himself goes on at 11:25. Don't miss that.

The biggest session for me, though, will be Vic Gundotra and John Battelle at 2:00. Gundotra is Google's SVP of engineering, and he's one of the key people behind Google Plus.

To see what else is happening at the summit, check out the full event schedule.

Want to get a sense of what Web 2.0 is like? Here's a great video from last year of Mary Meeker (Morgan Stanley) talking about Internet trends:

Web 2.0: Seven Years Since An Update

The term "Web 2.0" was coined in 2004 at the inaugural conference of the same name. It was meant to connote life after the Dot Com collapse. In 2005, Tim O'Reilly published "What is Web 2.0," a seminal document about the technologies and trends that would shape what happened next. But no one can predict the future. While the broad strokes still feel right, there are examples of Web 2.0 in O'Reilly's paper that don't work anymore, and there are new platforms he couldn't have anticipated.

If Napster is Web Music 2.0, what's iTunes Match? SEO might be Web 2.0, but Google Panda is already in version 2.5. Overall, O'Reilly made a pretty good list, but important parts of the "Web as a Platform" have already evolved beyond what Web 2.0 anticipated.

We have adjusted our understanding of Web 2.0 over the years, and the conference this week will be full of discussions of how the notion has grown and changed, and maybe whether it's time to release a new version.

What about the term Web 2.0 itself? Is it still useful to us seven years on? Enter our contest and tell us what the term Web 2.0 means to you.

Follow Richard [@ricmacnz] and Jon [@JonMwords] on Twitter to catch their live updates from Web 2.0. The event's hashtag is #w2s. If you're at the conference, you can also contact Jon on iMessage using jon at readwriteweb dot com.