I came away from this years Venturefest with the impression that the majority of funding available at the moment is government funding - last year there was a lot of talk about bootstrapping and self funding companies, but even that had disappeared this year.
I didn't see any major themes to where the excitement is at the moment, the organisers had tried to generate some by splitting things into four 'cluster' areas, motorsport, cryogenics, digital industries and biotech, but for me, none of these had much in the way of general excitement around them - though of course within each there were a few highlights.
My overall take home on the day was quite depressing.