This year, to help make Expo more accessible to early-stage entrepreneurs (for-profit and non-profit), we’re offering 10 full scholarships. The show is May 3 – 6 at Moscone West in SF, and if you receive a scholarship, you can attend any or all days (including the workshops and full-day Intensives on May 3). Of the applications we receive, we’ll award scholarships to those that seem most likely to get a lot out of the event and participate as strong community members.
The application form will remain open until April 15 or until we receive 100 submissions–whichever comes first. We’ll let you know by April 20 whether you’ve been accepted.
Apply today! If you have questions, please leave ‘em in the comments below.
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Sarah Milstein is the co-chair of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @SarahM.
Check out our list of keynote speakers for our show this May! We worked hard to put together this slate containing some of the best and brightest in Web 2.0. The list of speakers is still growing, and we look forward to surprising you with who else shows up.
Be sure to drop us a line here to give us your thoughts on this year’s selection.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
[Note: This has been cross-posted with minor edits from O'Reilly Radar]
Startups! The Web 2.0 Expo is coming up fast. We want to highlight your work. Each year we put five of you onstage in a Launch Pad session. The deadline for submitting your company is 3/31. The criteria is below.
Entrants do not need to launch their company or a major product/service to qualify.
All proposals will be reviewed before Web 2.0 Expo by our panel.
The judging panel will be comprised of industry experts who will review Launch Pad companies for their value to their market (consumer, enterprise, etc.).
Judges will select about five finalists, each of whom will have five minutes to pitch on stage, in front of the Web 2.0 Expo audience (the largest gathering of the innovators in the Internet industry) and the panel.
Each company will receive feedback on its presentation from both the panel and the audience.
Five companies will be chosen by a panel to present on stage at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco on May 5, 2010. Each will have five minutes to present their company or product and will receive real-time feedback from a panel of industry experts and the audience. Submit Your Company For Consideration—entries are due by March 31, 2010.
A big thanks to Elance for sponsoring and helping to make Launch Pad happen this year!
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Brady Forrest is the co-chair of Web 2.0 Expo. He can be reached @brady.
Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
…But make it quick. Want to be onstage in front of a large crowd talking about whatever it is you’re really passionate about? We’ll give you 5 minutes and 20 slides rotated every 15 seconds to make your point, inspire us, or just make us laugh. (Learn more about Ignite.)
To join us onstage, write to ignitesf@gmail.com with “submission idea” included in your subject line. Send a paragraph pitch by midnight on April 11 for consideration. Speakers will be notified the week of April 19.
To join us in the audience (and watch those brave souls who get picked), head to Mezzanine (444 Jessie Street – see the map below) on Monday night, May 3. Web 2.0 Expo conference pass holders and Expo Hall pass holders get priority access at 7:30 pm. For everyone else, check out the event page for details.
We’re looking for proposals for sessions and workshops with an interesting angle that falls under a broad Web 2.0 theme. A few possibilities for this year, in no particular order, include:
Compelling new business models
Social media marketing
Design for satisfying user experiences
Cutting-edge development
The mobile tsunami
Performance challenges
Practical analytics
Real-time opportunities
Security everywhere
Cloud computing
Startup strategies
Small business successes
Enterprise issues
The firm deadline for proposals is April 12 at 11:59 p.m. PST. We do not have the luxury of extending our deadline this year. Please plan accordingly.
NEW REQUIREMENT: To be considered by our selection team, you must submit a short video of the speaker(s). Clips can be short (2-3 minutes), low-quality footage of the speaker proposing their session, or it can be footage from a previous talk. Either way, it’s mandatory. Leave yourself time to create and upload the video.
HOW TO SUBMIT A WINNING PROPOSAL: We get more than 10 proposals per available slot. To help yours rise above the rest, attend our short webcast on Thursday, March 25 at 1 p.m. PST: “Insider Tips for Submitting a Winning Proposal to Web2Expo.” Bring your questions.
Need more advice on how to write a successful speaking proposal? Check out our blog post detailing the “Dos and Don’ts” of winning submissions.
See you in New York!
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
Eric was the co-founder and served as the CTO of IMVU, his third startup. He has authored several books and received numerous awards. But he has no desire to rest on his laurels.
Listen to the podcast to find out what Eric’s been up to, what advice he has for entrepreneurs, and what he’s trying to do with current U.S. immigration laws.
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Adam Stacoviak is the host of the Web 2.0 Show, an audio-based podcast that profiles the Entrepreneurs, Businesses and Technologies of Web 2.0. If you have a Web 2.0 business to promote, he wants to hear about it on his new segment, Pitch the Show.
Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
After a wildly successful first season, everyone’s favorite Twitter game is back in action. It’s time to “Tweet This” to earn a full conference pass to Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco!
Here’s the Deal
“Use discount code [FAKE] for 25% off a Web 2.0 Expo SF conference pass—discount ends April 25! #w2e”
Tweet this sentence to enough of your friends, and you could earn a deeply discounted or free full-price Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco conference pass. Every time someone buys a conference pass using your personalized discount code (which we will send you—read on), you get an additional 10% off the cost of a full-price pass. That’s on top of the 25% discount we will give you for participating.
(Note: The discount code above—[FAKE]—does not work. It’s just an example.)
Here’s how to play:
Sign up for the contest at the bottom of this post (scroll down, please!). All we need is your name and an email address to send you a personalized code. Space fills up fast and is limited to the first 100 people who apply.
Tweet the discount code we give you to your followers so they can sign up using it.
Kick back and let us do the rest of the work. We’ll contact you the week of April 26th to tell you how many people signed up using your code… and also to tell you how much money will be shaved off your conference pass.
If you already have a conference pass, you’re still more than welcome to participate. Although the credits you accrue will not work toward the pass you already purchased (retroactively that is), you will be able to earn another deeply discounted or fully paid-for pass for a friend or colleague. You can also use your credits toward Web 2.0 Expo New York 2010. One last thing—although we think Twitter is the easiest way for you to spread this deal, there is no restriction as to where you can post your code! Feel free to email your friends or post it on your Facebook account.
We are limiting this contest to the first 100 people who apply – so hurry! The discount code you are given will only work through April 25, so the sooner you start spreading the word the better.
Post any questions in the blog comments section or message us @w2e on Twitter.
Good luck!
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
“Awesome. We have 716 visits this month, and 4 people just retweeted us.”
“How much more revenue are we going to see from this as a result?”
“I have no idea. But someone liked our Facebook status.”
If this snippet of conversation hit a little too close to home, this is the blog post for you:
Diving into social media is a great idea if you know how to swim around. But what’s the point of blogging and tweeting and updating statuses and adding connections if you can’t measure the ROI?
Sean Power and Alistair Croll of Watching Websites are here to help analyze your social media strategy with their Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Intensive, “Applied Communilytics.” Sean recently spoke to us about communilytics (a mashup of “community” and “analytics”) to preview the content you’ll find in his Intensive.
(You can also check out his post-Web 2.0 Expo New York 2009 interview with an attendee.)
Kaitlin: Successful businesses base most important decisions on cold hard numbers. But when it comes to social media, many companies haven’t yet applied this wisdom to their efforts. Instead they casually throw up a Facebook Fan Page or tweet about a product. If you were given the chance to scare someone straight and preach why analytics is important (how convenient – you have that chance right now), what case study would you cite to show what horrors can happen when you don’t pay attention to Communilytics?
Sean: I’m not sure I’d like to explicitly call out a company that failed to mitigate an issue in its social media efforts (like the Motrin Mom fiasco, for example), but rather concentrate on all the good that can happen when you actually do listen and react. Late last month, the gay clothing and lifestyle company Fabulis had their Citibank accounts frozen because someone at Citi had reviewed the Fabulis blog and erroneously marked it as porn. Though this could’ve resulted in a massive PR nightmare for Citi, the company was quick to respond to the incident, revise their policies and issue a letter of apology to Fabulis – doing so transparently and openly. The first step to communilytics is listening, and Citi’s listening efforts allowed them to mitigate a potential brand disaster.
Back in late February Web 2.0 Expo Co-Chair Sarah Milstein and I held a virtual training session on how event exhibitors could increase lead generation at events by using social media.
We had a great time putting this on, and would like to share the video of the webcast with you. Check it out now.
Mar 26th, 2010 |
