The meeting was billed as a chance to consider the role that digital advertising can play in creating the Digital Britain envisioned by the eponymous Government policy report.
Hosted by online video advertising network , the event was moderated by Mark Read, chief executive of WPP Digital, which owns a small stake in VideoEgg. Participants included Marc Giusti, group chief digital officer at Leo Burnett and Meera Chandra, managing director of Syzygy.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Guardian News & Media's technology director Mike Bracken struck a chord with other participants in describing his company's world as "becoming infinitely messier" as a result of changes wrought by the internet.
The thought was echoed by BBC Online social media editor Nick Reynolds, who described the internet as having a tendency "to shake businesses really hard, until bits fall off".
Noting the growing interest in platforms such as the iPhone and Amazon's Kindle, Bracken said he expected publishers to discover a pitfall in the recurring cost of getting access to and commissioning applications for those platforms.
He said Guardian News & Media is taking a different approach by willingly offering its content to third-party developers to build into their own applications, with revenues and risk being shared.
Bracken argued that the Government could contribute to the development of Britain's digital economy by opening up its own data, such as the postcode system, in a similar way to intermediaries.
Britain's inferior record to the US in developing homegrown digital businesses was touched on by a number of participants. Read, who said that when WPP looks for businesses in which to invest venture capital it finds most good businesses are on the west coast of the US, suggested Britain could do more in gaming.
For Charlie McGee, managing director of Carat Digital, mobile is an opportunity due to advertisers getting more excited about its potential, but he pointed out that it is "tough to find the right partner, who is focused on the advertiser and not their own thing".
The Government could expand the digital economy by using the Olympics in 2012 as a focal point for encouraging Britain to get online, suggested Iris Digital chief executive John Baker.
"I think the government has a huge opportunity with the Olympics. It can be the first social media Olympics," he said.
With Reynolds saying that the BBC is keen to make its Olympic coverage available across the board, as well as encourage more people to get online, the think tank may conclude that the public broadcaster will play a greater role than the digital advertising-supported sector in expanding Britain's online population.