So I was missing something new and interesting at Reboot, but later I was talking to Dalager and he reminded me of ActiveGrid (that I didn't remember knowing about at the time) which would have fit right into the conference, possibly along with this Adam Bosworth talk.
Basically ActiveGrid + what Bosworth is talking about is the "Small is the new big" of data. It's about not going big, but just using the network to build big applications fast on a free platform and lots of cheap hardware. The free availability of easy to use quality tools (To Be Evaluated) for this kind of thing is to my mind what makes for exciting times.