In the 32 days since the end of TDWI’s San Diego conference, one phrase has come to my mind repeatedly: “The soft stuff is always the important stuff,” uttered by Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. He was summing up a panel discussion, but the insight applies so broadly he could have used it for most other panels, too.

Leadership, persuasion, negotiation, generosity and knowledge and other such things all count at least as much as technology. The “soft stuff” is the axle grease, and yet the vehicle usually gets the credit. Bad grease makes any wheel worth a lot less.

Take one subject I wrote about in July, Government 2.0. It’s the idea that Web 2.0-inspired tools and attitudes will engender a new era of collaboration between officials and citizens. Each will benefit, and the public spirit will flower like it never has.

It’s a great idea and perhaps inevitable—despite an organization that promotes it. nGenera’s wizard is the visionary Don Tapscott, who does an admirable job of promotion. But when I probed for more than happy-talk, Tapscott’s little man behind the curtain—the Government 2.0 “program director”—did his feeble best to raise a stink when I didn’t accept his platitudes for my two BI This Week stories. Bad axle grease.

Take another subject: buying a house. My 85-year-old uncle tells about shopping for a house just north of New York City. Twenty years ago, he and his wife bought a house based on one visit in the dark. They trusted the agent. “We usually trusted others, and it usually worked out,” he says. Also, as a pioneering neurochemist and director for many years of a New York state lab, he erred on the side of generosity with those who asked for his help. He found that the goodwill generally comes back. Good axle grease.

If the soft stuff is so important, where does it fit on a balance sheet? Sorry, in the U.S. there’s no clear slot. You train a talented employee to analyze data, and you’re screwed if she leaves—as sure as if your warehouse flooded and several pallets of books got soaked. The books are written off like any asset, but not the valuable new analyst. Read all about it in Denise Caruso’s “The Real Value of Intangibles” in strategy+business magazine.

The “soft stuff is always the important stuff” quote was too good for the one place it would have fit in my story from San Diego. But I’ll find a fitting spot for it soon enough.

My friend Marco called me up scared of what Internet visionary Don Tapscott had said on Tuesday’s Talk of the Nation. Tapscott foresees a day when technology makes government—such as spending—directly accessible to the masses.

“Do you realize,” Marco said, “that all this Government 2.0 stuff, where just anyone could see where the money’s going and stuff like that, could make business really difficult for me?”

In the last few months, Marco’s business has grown like a bio-engineered fly. He no longer makes up false names for use by spammers, he has a crew of six teenagers doing that. Instead, he’s become a consultant for two companies he won’t name that have headquarters in Dubai and Sicily. I understand they’re into Indian casinos and gray- and black-market prescription drugs.

“Here, let me read this to you,” I said to Marco. I had a blog post by Tom Davenport, the big-time metrics maven, where he had just pooh-poohed Tapscott’s vision.

Marco’s busy these days, so I skipped over the first few paragraphs to the first sign of substance: “Davenport writes, ‘There may be a few hitches in this miraculous transformation.’”

I could tell Marco was already impatient. “‘A few hitches’!?” he scoffed. “Everything has hitches. The World Wide Web has plenty of hitches. I thought this guy had reasons it won’t happen. Come on, there must be more.”

I scanned down the long page. “OK, here,” I said, “he wonders how the federal government is capable of it. They can’t do much right.”

“They do some things right—stuff no one wants to hear about. It’s boring,” he said.

I could only imagine what Marco had seen lately. “OK, down a little farther,” I said, “he writes that these techno-visions are dangerous. ‘It might lead to disenchantment with the technology when it doesn’t lead to the promised result.’”

Marco was silent for a second. “What??” said Marco. “You read this guy? If he thought for two seconds he’d realize that means Microsoft is dangerous. When do they ever release anything that doesn’t disappoint just about everyone?”

“But—”

“I gotta go,” said Marco. “I’ve had enough of Pundit 0.2. — That’s 1.0 minus the wind factor. Bye.”

Update: Changed the lead.