Speaking as a certified member of the “Joe” population, I have to admit I’ve been basking in all the attention Joes have been getting lately.

This past US presidential election season, of course, we had “Joe the Plumber” as John McCain’s poster boy for overtaxation. (Even though it turned out Joe was only his middle name, but close enough…) And we had Sarah Palin, who kept insisting she was the candidate of “Joe Sixpack.” Of course, we also had a Joe on the winning ticket with Barack Obama, so we’ll soon have a Joe in Washington helping to look out for our interests.

That’s why I got a chuckle out of a mailer I just got for the upcoming User-Generated Content Conference (UGCX), sponsored by MediaBistro and scheduled for San Jose in February.

The promotional write-up states that “user-generated content is a rapidly developing revolution in the media. ‘Average Joe” users now wield power over online content, and businesses need to adapt to respond to this trend.”

Speaking for all the Joes in the world, it feels good to have power for a change. But we promise we won’t let it go to our heads.

UGCX is targeting the social media space, but there are plenty of implications for enterprises as well as they seek ways to better leverage all the data, knowledge, and resources within their domains. There’s no question that user-generated content is becoming a huge force on the business scene. David Weinberger actually gave a great talk on this very topic at the 2008 FastForward conference in Orlando. Not only is content being generated by users, but it is also being organized by users through mechanisms such as tagging.