Web 2.0 Expo blog

Settling Dust and Many Thanks

I manage to leave every major event technologically crippled in some way.  After Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, I lost my entire laptop; this conference, I only lost my power supply, which was easily enough replaced, and I’m now back online.  I’m convinced that losing something is my way of physically manifesting what running an event takes out of you.  It’s probably also my way of enforcing a short vacation right after each show.  Hey, it works. 

It was an amazing week, with so many highlights: Tim’s moving opener, Clay Shirky’s cutting perspective on media and participation, Dan Lyons' side-splitting romp.  It was also an amazing effort by many talented and wonderful people.  I’d like to take a moment to recognize some of them.

The O’Reilly and TechWeb event teams. We’ll start with the fact that these guys worked their butts off.  Imagine all the work that goes into registering, managing, feeding, and servicing 10,000 attendees, 200 speakers, and 150 exhibitors.  Now imagine doing it twice in two weeks.  Back when I started working on events (in the Stone Age, otherwise known as the early nineties) teams worked on a handful of events over the course of the year, and you only ever did one really big one. Not so now. The O’Reilly team had MySQL the week immediately before Web 2.0, and the TechWeb team went straight from Moscone to Las Vegas for Interop (only a couple of us, including myself, obviously, are spared that marathon.)  It’s not just an enormous amount of work, it’s an emotional investment, being available and helpful on that scale for that long.  I bow down to the pros who are able to do this.  You are gods and goddesses in my book.

The other thing to understand about these two stellar teams is that Web 2.0 Expo breaks all their normal processes.  It is perfectly fitting that a large scale Web 2.0 event would be the result of an intense collaboration, as this effort is.  But in a partnership, every plan is a negotiation between at least two different ways of doing things, with a large margin thrown in for the rapidly changing times and attendee expectations. The teams’ tolerance for reinventing the wheel, and every flavor of wheel, every step of the way, was saintly. It’s also a big part of what made the event a success.  Neither organization could have built this event to this scale alone. The strategic decision to mix up the DNAs of the two organizations in order to build something unique was a smart one, but it falls to the teams to actually go the extra mile, explain what might seem obvious, listen actively when it seems there is no time to listen, and generally make this work.   

So, to Meghan Reilly, Vee McMillen, Crystal Lucas, Patrick Dirden, Shirley Bailes, Allison Iacopini, Matthew Balthazor, Whitney Michael, Anna Ashbeck, Karie Hubbell, Mark Levitt, Natalia Wodecki, Maureen Jennings, Susan Young, Ayrien Machiren, Natalia Dugandzic, Paige Finkelman, Donna Ortiz, Elyse Gottlieb, Janetti Chon, Jason Quesada, Joylyn Tanner, Sara McGinness, Suzanne Axtell, Stacy O'Connell , Laurie Fellezs, Liliana Arancibia, Cindee Stott, Amy Jones, Marco Pardi, Carl Smith, Andrea Mauerman, Jon Osing, Vicki Sanders, and the others I have neglected to mention, thank you for a wonderful event.  And to Gina Blaber, my partner in crime and finisher of my sentences: your trust and friendship would be worth all this even if we didn't have a killer conference at the end!  It is an honor to work with you all.

More shout outs!

Blaine Cook.  If you enjoyed the South Park Crawl on Wednesday night, the person you have to thank for that (in addition to the half dozen TechWeb staff who organized it) is Blaine, who spawned the idea at an advisory board meeting we held back in October.  A vast improvement over the standard convention center party, and I heard lots of great feedback.  Further shout outs to all the sponsors: Adaptive Path (who were the first on board, thank you!), Citizen Space, Early Stage Venture Capital Association, IBM, Federated Media, Leverage Software, Rearden, Six Apart (loved the golfing!), Wired, Yahoo! Brickhouse, and Zoom Prospector. 

Speakers.  I gave myself a healthy reminder of the stress our speakers experience by giving a talk at Ignite last week.  That was 5 minutes; many of our speakers have 50 minute, and even three hour slots.  It’s no small task preparing to speak, especially in front of large audiences.  I think all of our speakers deserve a big hand, but I’m going to call out a few with whom I’m particularly impressed in a post later today.  In the meantime, thanks to everyone who put themselves out there last week.  Nice work.

The Advisory Board.  For reviewing proposals, suggesting speakers, getting the word out, and letting us know when we were headed in the wrong direction, thank you to all the advisory board members.

Moscone and the City of San Francisco.  When we bought our coach-class ticket on the Green train this year (hopefully upgrading to first class next year) we were delighted to find that the City of San Francisco had already been thinking about these issues when they built Moscone West.  Makes you proud. 

Sarah Milstein and Tony Stubblebine.  Sarah and Tony took the Web2Open concept and made it their own.  This year, schedules meshed between the Open and the main conference, hybrid sessions cross pollinated between the two programs, and the Open hosted its share of web celebs.  During all this, the dynamic duo was also hosting and managing CrowdVine for us.  Great job!  Thanks also to last year’s hosts for pioneering this concept: Chris Messina and Tara Hunt deserve a ton of credit for getting Web2Open off the ground.

Ted Shelton, Chris Heuer, and rest of The Conversation Group.  Blogtropol.us was a wonderful addition to the event this year, and we look forward to working with these talented, thoughtful and energetic folks again at future Web 2.0 Expos. 

Fritz Nelson and Matt Conner.  Their awesome video work brought the passion and quirks of the community to the big screen each day.  Who else would have thought to video the crazy balloon guy?  You guys are geniuses.

Janetti Chon, John Battelle and our Launch Padders.  Janetti joined the team during our time of greatest chaos, and managed in her charming, unassuming, and thoroughly organized way to herd the cats and make Launch Pad a huge success.  You’ll be hearing a lot more from Janetti in the coming months as she moves into her role as content and community manager, and I’m confident you’ll be as charmed as everyone else who’s had the pleasure of meeting her.  Thanks also to my co-chair Brady Forrest for helping in the judging process, and to John Battelle for being the consummate host once again.   Also, nice work, Zachery and the Triggit team!

ShowNets, our network vendor. Okay, so the network wasn’t perfect.  But it was up, mostly, and when there were problems, Vee and Anna on the O’Reilly team were there with the team from ShowNets working on solving them.  We’re moving toward every connection attempt being successful, and while we’re not there yet, this was a giant step forward. 

Brady and Dave.  My inspired, inspiring co-chairs.  Well, obviously, I think we did a pretty good job.  Working with you two is my great reward.

Let's do it all again in New York!

Your questions for Jonathan Schwartz answered, a little late

Tim's interview with Jonathan Schwartz was fabulous: insightful, informative, and casual. The one bummer was that Tim offered to take questions from the audience via Twitter, but failed to open a proper channel.  Happily, he's followed up with Jonathan with the questions and posted the answers here.  Thanks, Tim!

EnergyCamp Monday in Vegas

I sure wish I had the energy, so to speak, to run off to Vegas on Monday and attend EnergyCamp, a free unconference co-located with TechWeb's biggest event, Interop.  David Berlind (a fellow TechWebbie) and James Governor, who is ostensibly on our advisory board for Web 2.0 Expo Europe (we need to get him more involved!) are co-organizing it.  What is EnergyCamp?

Whether you’re an end user of technology, an IT professional, a vendor of hardware, software or infrastructure solutions, or an industry observer with an interest in technology’s energy consumption, Energy Camp is for you. Energy Camp is a collaborative forum where industry stakeholders will gather together to discuss the growing impact of today’s energy costs on IT’s bottom line, and the overarching importance of energy conservation and utilizing greener IT solutions and methods.

In his keynote conversation with Tim O'Reilly that just wrapped, Jonathan Schwartz said that he asked a group of CIOs who among them is responsible for their own power bill, and very few raised their hands. Accountability is headed our way, whether its paying our own power bills or paying the piper as our planet warms, we'd better start figuring out how to stem our energy addictions.

Meet the Speakers Part 8: Jonathan Schwartz

Just short of Jonathan Schwartz's keynote conversation this morning, here's a preview for those of you who can't be here.  The CEO of Sun will be speaking with our very own Tim O'Reilly.

What is your talk about? Why should attendees come to it?

It's about everything - from how cool it is to have coined the phrase "the network is the computer" just in time for cloud computing to emerge (again), to the future of free software and the intentionality of my social graph. 

What's the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that's recently arrived or on the horizon?

Nintendo DS - because it's stolen both of my children, and is an incredibly cool two screen wifi product. And my Garmin Nuvi nav device, which was sadly stolen by someone who just busted the window on my car.

Rumor has it I set them up to steal it so I could upgrade to Garmin's new phone. 

Aside from your own talk, what's the most interesting / entertaining speaker, talk or panel happening at Web 2.0 Expo?

"What MySpace Knows" has gotta be fascinating, because they haven't even identified a speaker yet - that plus the title make me think they're going to tell us something really creepy about Tim O'Reilly.

Launch Padders are on the stage!

John Battelle and Brady Forrest have just taken the stage to host the Launch Pad program at the show today.  The 6 companies who were chosen to present are Acquia, Triggit, Chirp Interactive, Oortle, Job Score, and TradeVibes.  Here's a little about each company:

Acquia is an open source software company providing products and services for the wildly popular Drupal social publishing system. At Acquia, we believe that open source development and social publishing technology have the power to connect people and unleash their collective creative potential in order to achieve great things.

Triggit makes it quick and easy for web publishers to monetize their sites with advertising. Using a cross platform web application, publishers can now drag and drop ad units directly into their pages, optimize efficacy and track the results. Triggit takes the pain out of monetization.

Chirp Interactive (www.chirp.com) creates solutions that help you discover relevant and interesting friends, content, and information that helps you stay connected with your friends and derive value from your relationships. Our first product, chirpscreen, helps you discover and share the content you care about. The items displayed can range from photos and messages from your friends, to items you may want to purchase, to public pictures on topics of interest. We source this content from sites like Facebook, Flickr, eBay and Twitter to provide you with an engaging, interactive display of content that you can easily share with friends.

Oortle enables people to share rich media with each other in real-time, using their existing social networks & connections. Oortle's "synchronous web" applications span social networks and take user engagement to the next level. Our first product Photophlow has been praised as a live version of Flickr, and has demonstrated a dramatic increase in user engagement on Flickr photos with its chat, social search and synchronized photo viewing. Today we are also demoing our second product Videophlow, an application for sharing & watching YouTube videos in real-time with your friends.

JobScore empowers employers to recruit cooperatively. Today, companies spend billions of dollars recruiting online, only to disqualify and discard virtually every resume they receive. The JobScore Network makes it easy for you to efficiently build your own candidate pipeline and zero in on qualified job applicants. Then, you can share resumes with other employers, exchanging your un-hired resumes for qualified, interested candidates. JobScore is a win-win: we privately connect your un-hired candidates with similar jobs and offer you on-demand access to the qualified people you need.

TradeVibes is the best way to discover and research hot new startups online. It's a platform for our community to share, discuss, and evaluate information about these companies. TradeVibes is also a tool for finding and sharing news and opinions about companies. By using the collective wisdom of our community, TradeVibes separates the best startups from their competitors. Here is a link to a TradeVibes product video screencast. TradeVibes was founded in 2007 by four early employees of PayPal who shared a passion for entrepreneurship and cool new startups.

The crowd will be discussing the Launchpad on Meebo starting at 1:30 PM PST.

Hello World 2.0, Let the Games Begin!

Today Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco kicks off its conference as thousands of participants flock to Moscone West and other venues in downtown for the workshops, sessions, keynotes, Expo floor, Web2Open unconference, and the multitude of social and networking events.

This is my first Web 2.0 Expo show as Community and Content Manager and I’m as eager, excited and ready as you are to join the party.

Two and half months ago the TechWeb (Formerly CMP) and O’Reilly teams welcomed me on board to help curate show content, seek insights from communities and evangelize a maturing Web 2.0 Expo brand.

What I bring to this community of Web 2.0-enthusiasts is a history of experience that includes time on Wall Street (JPMorgan Chase), a Masters in Strategic Communications (USC Annenberg), and a few years as a marketing/pr/advertising consultant (SS+K), with affiliations to one of the old souls of Hollywood (CAA).

I also bring a passion for learning, an insatiable curiosity and a desire to be constantly inspired.

These last few months on the job have fulfilled all of the above, and I know it’s only just the beginning of the journey. I’m awed by the passion this community has for the technology and creation that are not only changing the next generation of the Web but, in effect, human sociology.

This week will be a dynamic and ir-replicable gathering of amazing people from across the globe to share intelligence, collaborate on ideas and connect on like-minded thinking. To help with that effort, we at Web 2.0 Expo have put in place a number of networking tools to make your experience this week as rewarding as it can be. Jen Pahlka wrote about CrowdVine, Fireball, Roamabout and others in her Conference 2.0 post – and I encourage you to explore and participate in them all.

And if you see me roaming the halls this week, please take a moment to say hello, share a thought or introduce me to your startup. And for those of you who took the time to read this post – here’s a Janetti Fun Fact as another conversation starter… Cities I’ve called home: New York, Los Angeles, Osaka, Hong Kong, London and San Francisco.

Welcome to Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco! Let the games begin!

~ Janetti

Conference 2.0

The much-publicized revolt at the Sarah Lacey/Mark Zuckerberg interview at SXSW last month has thrust audience expectations for interaction into the spotlight recently, but it’s a topic we’ve been thinking about a lot prior to that incident.  That interview represents such a specific situation that we’re not solely focused on solving for those problems, and of course it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster.  In addition to the publicity it generated, it also showed that the audience of that event was very engaged.

The Web 2.0 Expo audience is also very eager to engage.  We take it for granted that we participate actively in any media we consume, and we expect conferences to be no different.  Last year was our first year, however, and going from zero to 8500 people in one year meant that this audience was still finding their legs, and perhaps with such a diverse group, we were looking for direction on how to engage.  This year, we’ve spent as much time thinking about backchannels, formats, connections, and extra-curricular events as we have about the content, and I want to share some of these features with you.

Before I get into the specifics, I want to acknowledge a group of people who have informed our thinking on this topic recently.  Our Expo co-chair Dave McClure convened a meeting several weeks ago on the topic of “Conference 2.0,” focused not on the tools we use but on the principles that should guide interactions between speakers and attendees at conferences, taking into account the role of the conference organizer in setting the stage and the tone.  Dave articulated the Customer-Company Pact begun by Get Satisfaction as a starting point, or at least a point of inspiration.  Some great thoughts came out of that meeting, and we’ve done a better job this year of setting expectations with speakers than in the past, though there’s certainly still a long way to go.

Backchannel: RoamAbout
The Conference 2.0 concept probably speaks most directly to our efforts to establish an official backchannel for Expo this year.  We wanted to not only allow discussion among attendees in the rooms, but also have a direct channel for speaker questions before, during and after the session.  Our solution this year, still something of an experiment, is a browser extension called RoamAbout developed by Vysr , a company launching today.  After a quick install, a button with the word DISCUSS will float in the bottom right of your browser screen (if it’s not there, click on the W that should show up below that in your status bar).  A click on this button prompts you to log in with either your CrowdVine or Facebook identity, and then pops up a window where you can navigate to the session you’re in (or any other session) and join in the various conversations.

Mobility…of a different kind
A discussion forum like this has the potential to promote behavior that some would consider…well, rude.   If you’re in a session and it doesn’t meet your needs, you can always check out the backchannel in the next room over, and if the attendees there seem to be more excited, then you can get up and physically move.  This can be disruptive to speakers, and if you bail before the speaker gets to the good stuff, you might not be doing yourself any favors.   However, “voting with your feet” has become more socially acceptable, and as conference producers, it’s hard to discourage a practice that helps attendees get more out of their conference experience.  If you do “session shop,” please be as discreet as possible when you move on.  Where we were able to (unfortunately not in all rooms), we added extra aisles so that you’ll have to crawl over fewer fellow attendees on your way out.

Make new friends
People come to conferences to network, and an event of this size represents a whole special set of challenges in terms of getting attendees to meet each other, and find the new contacts who will benefit them the most.  The thing I like most about Web 2.0 Expo is the diversity – geographic, gender, industry, job role, start up to corporate….on every axis, this event spans a huge spectrum.  There are a dozens of smaller events in the web space where you can meet folks much like yourself.  At Expo, you can do that too, but you can also meet people with very different perspectives and hopefully open up your own thinking. 
If you’re going to meet people with either similar interest or diverse perspectives, you’d better have a reason to talk to them.  Here are some of the many tools we’re providing to help start a conversation:

CrowdVine:  The conference social network already has hundreds of users and we haven’t even started yet.  I blogged about CrowdVine yesterday, check it out here.

Tag your badge:  Tell others what you’re interested and give them a reason to strike up a conversation.  Use the tags we’ve put on stickers (you’ll get a page of them when you pick up your badge) or write one of your own.  It’s like a big cheesy cocktail party…Indulge in some gratuitous friending!

BoFs at lunch and after hours:  BoF stands for Birds of a Feather.  Start or join a discussion!  Accessibility, online activism, Midwesterners, community management…if there’s a topic you want to discuss, it’s likely someone else is interested as well.  We help you find each other at lunch by letting attendees designate discussion topics for certain tables.  After hours, the fun continues. 

Fireball:  This one is really about finding the people you already know.  Fireball mashes up Fire Eagle and Twitter to let your network know where you are.  In addition to being handy, this is pretty darn cool.  Get it here.

Parties:  Getting to know each other is generally a little easier over a cocktail or hors d’oeuvres.  The South Park Crawl (for conference attendees) on Wednesday and the Booth Crawl (for everyone) on Thursday should both be great.  Be there.

I count almost a dozen other parties and evening networking events, and new ones added all the time.

Conference 2.0 is may be an idea of the moment, but connecting with others, and parties especially, don't need a version number.

Meet the Speakers Part 7: Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is so Web 2.0, he's giving TWO talks next week!  Scott's a best-selling author, a consultant, and a former project manager at Microsoft.  Look for him on Tuesday when he'll do a 3 hour workshop on Innovating on Time, and on Wednesday during the keynotes.

What is your talk about? Why should attendees come to it?

My talk is about how to instantly make billions of dollars while losing weight and saving the environment for FREE.  Nah, on second thought I'll just talk about how history gives us a pattern language of innovation much more useful, sexy and fun, than the shallow, trashy hype we're so prone to believing. .

What's the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that's recently arrived or on the horizon?

The scariest product by far is the i-phone, as now those crazy idiots who send text messages while driving can browse the web too.

Aside from your own talk, what's the most interesting / entertaining speaker, talk or panel happening at Web 2.0 Expo?

There are other talks? Just kidding. Zittrain's "the future of the internet and how to stop it" wins for best title. Clay Shirky wins for person speaking at web 2.0 expo that I'm happiest to see publish a book. And the talk I most want to see is Failure happens, by Jesse Robbins and Artur Bergman.

Meet the Speakers Part 6: Niall Kennedy

Are you interested in getting an in-depth look at emerging technologies and the fundamentals that make the Web tick? On  Tuesday,  Niall Kennedy of Hat Trick Media takes a dive deep into the building blocks of Web 2.0 and more during his 3-hour workshop: Web 2.0 Best Practices

Thoughts by Niall Kennedy...

Q: What is your talk about? Why should attendees come to it?

I will kick off the Web 2.0 Expo program with a three-hour intensive on Web 2.0 Best Practices. As one of the program committee members of Web 2.0 Expo I want to provide a solid introduction to some of the basic building blocks of a Web 2.0 experience.

Attendees will learn how to create expressive HTML content for humans and search engines including emerging areas such as page sculpting and microformats. HTML is an essential building block of our web experience yet few content publishers really understand how to best express their content using the full vocabulary of this language.

In the second hour I will teach attendees how to package their content for redistribution through syndicated feed formats. Feeds are popular ways anyone can stay up-to-date with the changing nature of the web, including this blog!

Finally we'll dive deep into one of the newest forms of publishing and syndication: widgets. Content has escaped the silo models of the old web and extended its reach into desktop software, social networks, and business dashboards. Smart HTML, syndication, and widgets will help businesses reach new audiences through the Web's strongest distribution points.

My Web 2.0 Best Practices workshop combines a foundation of Web essentials spanning almost two decades with the changing environment of our modern usage. Web 2.0 Best Practices is the first step towards understanding Web 2.0 Fundamentals and other featured tracks.

Q: What's the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that's recently arrived or on the horizon?

The iPhone has changed how the world views mobile content experiences. Smartphones have suddenly become a consumer device with rich browser interactions powered by cellular data connections. Devices like the iPhone may finally introduce millions of people to full content experiences available anywhere at any time.

Q: Aside from your own talk, what's the most interesting / entertaining speaker, talk or panel happening at Web 2.0 Expo?

Outside of my own workshop and track I'm really looking forward to the Future of Databases session on Thursday. MySQL is currently rewriting their core database engines (Maria, Falcon) for more modern use cases such as multi-processor, 64-bit, Unicode computing. Microsoft recently released a new version of SQL Server, including a hosted version translating data storage into a set of streaming API calls. Amazon Web Services' SimpleDB is a completely new data store for web applications. I expect the Future of Databases talk will cover topics new to many attendees yet essential to the functionality of tomorrow'sWeb.

-Niall Kennedy

Niall’s workshop Web 2.0 Best Practices will be held on Tuesday, April 21^st @ 9 am.

Meet the Speaker Part 5: Matt Cutts

Google’s Matt Cutts shares his thoughts about Web 2.0 Expo keynotes. Read on, enjoy.

1) What is your talk about? Why should attendees come to it?

My talk is "What Google Knows About Spam."

Google sees more spam than most companies ever will. My hope is that you'll learn a few new things about spam, including some takeaways that you can apply when you return home. 

2) What's the most important, cool, scary, or useful product or technology (not made by your company) that's recently arrived or on the horizon?

I like Splashtop, which uses a tiny version of Linux that can be built into motherboards. The result is an instant-boot operating system that comes for free when you buy (say) an ASUS motherboard. Lots of people know about virtualization and lightweight computers such as OLPC and the Asus EEE machine, but Splashtop strikes me as something different. Someone has to do the initial work to modify Linux to work as a built-in motherboard. But after that initial engineering effort, you get a product where paying for an operating system (OS) is entirely optional. A perfectly fine OS is built right into your motherboard when you buy it. 

3) Aside from your own talk, what's the most interesting / entertaining speaker, talk or panel happening at Web 2.0 Expo?

I think Dan Lyons (The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs) will be a hoot. I watched his guest talk at Google and he's hilarious. Unfortunately his talk finishes just five minutes before I speak, so it will be a stretch if I want to be as entertaining. My goal is to be at least 400 milli-Lyons as interesting as his talk. 

Dan Lyons is a senior editor at Forbes and the author of the Options: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

Hear Dan and Matt keynote back to back next Friday April 25^th 9:35am.