Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco speaker Neil Patel wants you to know how to track the people who visit your website so you can get a better understanding of their motives and behaviors. And he’ll teach you this important business skill next week at his session Web Analytics – Tracking People and Not Just Numbers.

Neil, the co-founder of 2 Internet companies (Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics), sat down with Web 2.0 Expo media partner Adam Stacoviak recently to preview his session and to talk shop. Listen in to learn!

~~

Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.

Adam Stacoviak is the producer and host of the Web 2.0 Show. He can be reached @web2oshow.

Are you shy? Worried about your networking skills? Well you’re in luck because we’ve created the perfect excuse for you to meet-and-greet your fellow Web 2.0 Expo attendees!

Alternatively… Are you a connector who loves any reason to talk to others? Well you’re in luck because we’ve created yet another reason for you to walk up to complete strangers and ask them a favor!

Beginning Tuesday, May 4th through Thursday, May 6th the Web 2.0 Expo Team will tweet FIVE (5) photo-related tasks from @w2e each day. The tasks involve you taking pictures with other attendees in particular situations. You MUST be in each photo.

How to Play

• You must have a camera/phone camera, and the ability to upload photos to your Twitter account
• Follow @w2e and look for our five (5) tweets per day (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) listing tasks you need to complete (schedule below). Note: You MUST BE in all photos.
• Upload the 5 photos (or however many you can complete) to your Twitter account and post with the search term #w2e-photohunt
• The person who completes the most tasks first wins a $50 cash card. Second place gets a $25 cash card. Prizes are awarded each day, which means you have three changes to win a cash card.

Schedule of Tweets

TUESDAY, MAY 4TH – Times for mystery photo tasks will be:
*All times are in local time
9:30am  |  10:30am |  11:30am |  2:30pm  |  4:30pm

WEDNESDAY, MAY 5TH – Times for mystery photo tasks will be:
*All times are in local time
9:30am  |  10:30am |  11:30am |  1:30pm  |  4:30pm

THURSDAY, MAY 6TH – Times for mystery photo tasks will be:
*All times are in local time
9:30am  |  10:30am |  11:30am |  12:30pm  |  1:30pm
Official Search Term: #w2e-photohunt

When you post the photos to Twitter, you must tag them with #w2e-photohunt. Otherwise we will not be able to track them.

Collecting Your Prize

We will announce winners the following day. If you’re able to pick up the cash card we’ll give it to you then. Otherwise we will mail it out later.

Good luck everyone! We look forward to seeing your pics!

~~

Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.

Photo Credit: Thanks to #w2e sponsor iStockphoto!

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Join us for another Ignite San Francisco, the official kick-off event for Web 2.0 Expo.

The following Bay Area and international presenters will entertain locals and Web 2.0 Expo conference attendees next Monday with a series of 5-minute speed presentations, covering everything from social network sabotage and democratizing planetariums to stuffed giraffes and hungry, hungry hippos:

Derek Dukes
Chris Hutchins
Ole Helland
Jesper Andersen
Tony Deifell
Tobias Peggs
Andrew Hyde
Kim Lembo
Cara Jones
Chuck Kindred
Jen Bekman

This Ignite event is free, though Web 2.0 Expo conference attendees will be given preferred admittance, and seating will be first come, first serve.

Event Details:

Monday, May 3 at Mezzanine (444 Jessie Street, SF)

View Larger Map

7:30 PM: Doors open for Web 2.0 Expo Conference Pass & Expo Plus Pass holders
7:45 PM: Doors open for the general community
8:15 PM: Talks and networking begin

See you soon!

~~

Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.

Carmel Hagen and Emily Goligoski are the San Francisco-based hosts of Ignite Bay Area, now in its third iteration.

Make sure you block off your evenings and other free time during Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco to mingle with thousands of other attendees at our networking events. Most events are free (some community partner events may charge a nominal cover) to all those with passes. See the full list on our website, or scroll through the list below:

Ignite Web 2.0 Expo SF (Sponsored by .CO)
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? See what happens at our official kick-off event.
7:30 p.m., Monday, May 3 @ 444 Jessie Street

Birds of a Feather Sessions (BoFs)
Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions provide face to face exposure to those interested in the same projects and concepts. BoFs can be organized for individual projects or broader topics, but they are entirely up to you. We post your topic online and onsite and provide the space and time. You provide the engaging topic. These happen throughout the week – see the BoF page to learn more.

The Web with a View Tweet Up (hosted by Opera)
If building the Web of tomorrow is your passion, this tweet-up is for you. Opera Software warmly welcomes you 39 stories above the streets of San Francisco to talk all things Web.
5:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 4 @ Marriott Marquis View Lounge (55 Fourth Street)

Launch Pad (sponsored by Elance and Zoosk)
American Idol but for startups? Yes, that’s right. With a panel of industry experts providing real-time feedback and a People’s Choice Winner, you can’t miss Launch Pad, Web 2.0 Expo’s live demo program.
1:15 p.m., Wednesday, May 5 @ Keynote Room – 3rd Level

Booth Crawl
Quench your thirst and satisfy your hunger with libations and snacks provided by participating Expo Hall exhibitors as you roam from booth to booth. This event is open to all attendees.
4:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 5 @ Expo Floor

Tweet Up (hosted by Enterprise Ireland)
Join Enterprise Ireland in the View Lounge on the 39th floor of the Marriott Marquis for a Tweet Up.
6:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 5 @ Marriott Marquis View Lounge (55 Fourth Street)

Tweet Up (hosted by Cisco)
Hey, looking for something to do mid-Web 2.0 Expo? Come Tweet up with Cisco! Grab a beer and some good food and hang out with your friends. We’ll be showing some of our new application and Flip video demos. See you there!
9:00 p.m., Wednesday, May 5 @ Marriott Marquis View Lounge (55 Fourth Street)

Community Events
These events are hosted by our various community and media partners:

• Startup Weekend Bay Area: Friday-Sunday, April 30-May 2
• Networking Event: Germany – Driving the Digital Future: Tuesday, May 4
• SFentrepreneur Event: Tuesday, May 4
• be Berlin Night: Wednesday, May 5
• Zoosk Makin’ Waves Party: Wednesday, May 5
• Fusicology Cinco de Mayo Happy Hour: Wednesday, May 5
• PrivacyCamp SF: Friday, May 7
• ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit: Friday, May 7

Got questions about these events? We got answers. Just ping us @w2e.

~~

Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.

Photo Credit: Thanks to #w2e sponsor iStockphoto!

During Aliza Sherman’s Web 2.0 Expo session – Create a Successful Social Media Plan: The Seven-Step Program – she’ll cover high level strategy and then dive into the nuts and bolts of an integrated social media marketing plan for a variety of organizations.

And then, if you shout a song request, she might sing on stage.

Photo by Maya Bisineer

Self-described as a “Web 1.0 person who graduated to Web 2.0,” Aliza first logged on in the late 80s. In the 90s she founded the first full-service Internet company owned by a woman (Cybergrrl), and the first global women’s new media networking organization (Webgrrls International). She’s also known for sometimes showing up to her conference sessions and lectures wearing a tiara and feather boa. And to end her session (or at least the conference parties), she sometimes sings karaoke.

But make no mistake about this pink-haired (well, actually they’re just streaks of pink) speaker’s peppy personality. Aliza’s unique insight into social media marketing has made her one of the most influential women in technology.

Been There, Done That

Aliza said she’s observed many companies today making the same online marketing errors that occurred in the late 90s before the dot-com bubble burst, and she has developed her session in part based on these observations.

“Really large companies spend a whole lot of money with agencies who just hung up a social media sign [on their door]… They overcharge for terrible advice and then the rest of us [social media marketers] get blamed. They make social media look bad and ineffective. That’s exactly what happened with the web in 1995 to 1997. Companies spent a lot of money and failed before they knew what they were doing. They hired big agencies who didn’t know what they were doing, and failed,” she said.

“This is a case of ‘been there, done that’ and no one seems to remember,” she said referring to many company’s reactionary stance when it comes to Web marketing. She cited the growth of Twitter and other social media accounts set up by companies who don’t know how to run them well – they believe having the presence is enough.

“I think what happens is where there is a lack of knowledge, where there’s a lack of understanding, there is stupid advice,” she said.

Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Tamara Adlin, who along with Vanessa Fox is hosting a workshop for Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco titled “Getting Them There and Keeping Them There: Using Business-driven Personas to Create Holistic Search and Experience Strategies.”

Process Pantylines: Why SEO and UX should share a cubicle.

Those who know me know that I go on and on about Corporate Underpants. That’s when your org structure shows on your website. My old tried and true example? Remember when Expedia first came out? We knew we wanted to go on a ‘trip’ or ‘travel somewhere’ (great Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, opportunities, if SEO had existed back then) but, when we arrived on the site, we just accepted that “flights” and “hotels” and “cars” should be thought of, and booked, separately. Was there a good UX-based reason behind that?  I bet a zillion dollars there wasn’t. Instead, it’s far more likely that there were separate destinations for each set of activities because there were separate departments handling each one. Classic Corporate Underpants (or, put another way, “PNL = URL.”)

Well, we’ve got new Corporate Underpants now. Perhaps we should call them Process Pantylines. These are experience weirdnesses that arise because the people working on a site’s “UX” are not the same people working on the “SEO”. SEO folks work their brains to the bone figuring out how to get the right eyeballs to show up at the site’s front door—or side door, or kitchen door, or in the middle of the stairway. Then a whole different team takes over, trying to move the eyeballs around and do things, like hang new wallpaper or buy a Pekinese puppy.

Each team is ‘user focused,’ but, because so many companies are confused about who their users actually are and how those people think, the two teams are highly unlikely to have the same assumptions about the users. And even if they do, they are working to solve what are currently defined as two different sets of problems. For SEO, the problem to solve is ‘conversion’ from search to arrival at the site. For UX, the problem to solve is ‘conversion’ related to a call to action.

If you get people to come to the party, that’s great. But if they show up because they were promised a trunk show of ‘the latest accessories’, and end up being presented with last year’s Tupperware collection, they’re going to be disappointed. And probably bail.

When you think about it for even two seconds, it’s crystal clear that SEO and UX belong in the same room. But where’s SEO? In marketing. And UX? Over there trying to squirrel their way into the engineering group.  What if SEO and UX work together?  Maybe, just maybe, you end up matching your promise with your experience. In other words, you end up with a full house of people happily spending money.

By the way, even though I believe we should combine SEO and UX, I vote we don’t name it ‘SUX.’

Want more? Come join me and Vanessa Fox, SEO Goddess, for our workshop at the Web 2.0 Expo, at 9am Monday, May 3. 

Register now!

~~

Tamara Adlin is the president of adlin, inc., a user experience strategy company in Seattle.

Vanessa Fox is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search.

This is a verbatim re-post, with permission, from Eric Ries’s blog, Startup Lessons Learned. Eric is leading the Lean Startup Intensive at Expo, and we’re excited to have him on board.

Eric sez:

I’m discovering the truth of the old saying, “when it rains, it pours.” I keep waiting for the tide of interesting people, opportunities, and ideas to ebb – but so far it has done nothing but accelerate. Thank you all so much. Just one year ago, I gave my first big conference talk at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I had no idea what to expect, and the response was truly humbling. So I am particularly excited that the Lean Startup is a big part of this year’s Web 2.0 Expo. Steve Blank and I are both giving keynotes in the main conference track. And for those who want more than just the overview, we’re offering the Lean Startup Intensive on the first day of the conference: May 3, 2010.

We’ve built the Intensive into an all-star program designed to give a comprehensive overview of the methodology, taught by its leading practitioners. Unlike the conference on April 23, the Intensive does not assume any prior knowledge of lean startups, and is designed for a wide audience. Anyone who’s thinking of attending the Expo will get something out of it. I believe it will be the first time each of the following speakers will be presenting a full session back-to-back: Steve Blank, Dave McClure, Sean Ellis, Hiten Shah, Dan Martell, as well as an investing panel which we’ll announce soon. Here’s an excerpt from the official program:

“A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.”

All entrepreneurs face the same fundamental challenges:

• How do we know if we’re making progress?
• How do we know if customers will want the product we’re building?
• And, if they do, how do we know what kind of value we can create with it?

But because every startup also strives to become an institution, answering these questions requires more than just disciplined thinking at the whiteboard. It requires the coordination of many different people, working in concert to answer them. In other words, it requires management.

[...]

This event brings together the leading thinkers and practitioners of the Lean Startup movement. The goal is to provide a complete introduction to the theory as well as a grounding in advanced techniques that you can put to immediate use.

This program is designed for people who have a stake in creating great products: engineers, designers, product managers, marketers and businesspeople—from companies of any size. And, of course, for present or future entrepreneurs who are hoping to do more than punch a lottery ticket.

Read the rest here…

I’m incredibly excited about the lineup, and think it’ll provide the world’s first comprehensive introduction to these ideas. If you’re thinking of attending the Web 2.0 Expo, I hope you’ll consider spending your first day with us.

To sweeten the deal, we also have a special 25% discount code which you can use for either the Intensive itself or for a whole Expo pass. The code is websf10ls25 and can be redeemed here. And there are still a (very) few application spots open for a complete conference pass scholarship; details are available here.

So yes, there are two major lean startup events coming up in San Francisco in the next month. Both are going to be amazing, so take your pick. And, as always, if you do decide to stop by, please say hello and let me know you’re a reader. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

“Some of the questions we keep getting are what the conversion rate should be,” Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt’s founder and CTO, said of puzzled startup founders trying to find their footing with freemium models. These newcomers hope Ranjith can give them a magical number to aim for such as 5% or 10%. Ranjith, however, feels this approach is misguided. “There is no secret sauce.”

The freemium business model – where basic services are offered for free and advanced features come at a price – has exploded in popularity in recent times. But much mystery shrouds how to successfully manage this relatively new plan. For his session at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, Ranjith hopes to unveil a few of the blind spots startup company founders suffer from when employing the freemium model, and will also delve deeper into how and what to measure using YouSendIt’s dashboard as an example of critical metrics.

Ranjith recently spoke with us to preview a few of these topics, starting with the misconception surrounding what the most important metric is.

Vanity Metrics

“I use vanity metrics all the time,” Ranjith said, referring to such statistics as open rates, number of users, or clickthroughs. He said these numbers make a company sound impressive to the casual observer (“12 million registered users!”), but they don’t help owners of freemium model businesses understand how they can better run their company.

Continue Reading »

This year’s Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Launch Pad is full of Web 2.0 world newcomers ready to blast off:

• AskYourTargetMarket.com is a self-service target market research platform that includes a built-in consumer panel to answer surveys on demand
• Pearltrees is a social curation tool that gives users a social way to organize, discover and share stuff they like on the Web
• Rhomobile provides mobility solutions for the enterprise and creates cross-platform native applications for all major smartphones
• Strings a social tracking and filtering platform to enable consumers to share and discover experiences that are meaningful and relevant to them
• Stupeflix the Stupeflix Play platform transforms pages static content into engaging videos, on-the-fly

Additionally, these finalists will be joined by the winner of Startup Weekend, (an event happening the weekend before Web 2.0 Expo SF) where individuals come together to build a product and sometimes a company in two short days.

The five finalists were selected from over 80 submissions based on their innovation and value to market.  Each finalist will present for five minutes in front of Web 2.0 Expo’s audience and judging panel of industry experts who will provide real-time feedback on whether they have the Right Stuff. Web 2.0 Expo’s panel of judges includes: Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, Dave McClure of 500 Hats and Ellen Pack of Elance. Brady Forrest, Web 2.0 Expo Co-Chair, will emcee the program.

And if you want to voice your opinion, you can vote for your favorite startup to win the People’s Choice Award. The winner of this will be announced on-site at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco.  Audience members will be asked to vote for their top choice based on the demos. Votes will be tabulated in real-time and projected live on screen.

Much thanks to Launch Pad sponsor Elance and supporting sponsor Zoosk!

~~

Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.

Web 2.0 Expo’s yearly on-site unconference is FREE to support extended members of the Web 2.0 community. We do our best to uphold the ethos of an unconference with an open on-site grid for session sign ups, but through the years we started to pre-program a handful of sessions to get the conversation off the ground immediately around topics we think will be useful and relevant to Web2Open participants.

This year the focus at Web2Open will be on practical discussions and insightful tutorials, so that when you walk away from the session, you’ll have tips, tools, and tactics that you can apply immediately to your business or project.

And this year, we’ve got some fine ladies taking the spotlight!

How Retailers Establish Metrics & ROI For Digital Marketing Campaigns

Lifestyle marketing consultant, Macala Wright Lee is the founder and CEO of FashionablyMarketing.Me, the fashion industry’s leading digital marketing magazine and writes for popular tech blog Mashable. She has been featured in Women’s Wear Daily, the San Francisco Chronicle and Sportswear International. Join Macala to discuss how retailers are developing online-to-offline conversion metrics to establish value for digital strategies, Tuesday, May 4 @ 1:30pm.

API Panel Discussion:  Riding the Rollercoaster of Developer Ecosystem

Delyn Simons, Director of Developer Relations at Mashery, has worked with independent API developers since 2004. These days she tracks the movements of developers in their natural habitat from Mashery, the API platform service provider for Netflix, Best Buy, The New York Times, CNET, Etsy, and many others. Previously, Delyn worked at eBay as the head of developer community and API platform marketing. She can be found on twitter@delynator and at her blog. When she’s not listening or learning something new in the world of open platform, you can usually find her spending time with her husband and two kids in San Francisco.

Join Delyn as she hosts a panel discussion of API experts representing popular developer platforms (Netflix, LinkedIn, Intuit) along with a mobile application developer to represent the voice of API consumers who have definite opinions on what works and what doesn’t. Her session will take place on Wednesday, May 5 @ 11:10am.

Speaker Vanessa Camones has been working in high tech public relations and strategic communications for over 14 years. In January of 2008, she founded theMix agency, a firm that specializes in communications, social web strategy, and developer relations. She also spearheaded the first-ever social gaming conference, Interplay, and sits on the advisory board of a number of burgeoning startups. Vanessa’s corporate experience include roles at Cisco Systems and Atomz (purchase by WebSideStory), and her expertise spans digital content, security, wireless, gaming, entertainment, and consumer internet. She has worked with top-tier brands Pixar Animation Studios, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Creative Labs, SGN, and RockYou, among many others. At theMIX agency she leads all client communications strategy and product marketing counsel and loves every minute of it! Vanessa resides in San Francisco, CA, and was born and raised in Lima, Peru.

Attend Vanessa’s session to get insights on multi-platform (multi-channel) and developer marketing… and hear lessons learned from an experienced and seasoned professional, Wednesday, May 5 @ 12:40pm.

A View from Silicon Valley: Innovation Trends

By day speaker Shaherose Charania is Managing Director at Opinno, a global network of incubator spaces, entrepreneurs, and investors. By night she’s the founder and CEO of Women2.org with a mission to increase the number of female founders of technology startups. At heart she is a mobile and telephony junkie who’s led new consumer products at Ribbit (BT). She’s also been the Director of Product Management at JAJAH (sold to Telefonica/O2), and at TiE oversaw governance and operations of 40+ entrepreneurship centers. She aspires to pour her entrepreneurial spirit into launching mobile solutions for emerging economies. Shaherose holds a B.A. in Business Admin from The University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business.

Whether you’re local, international, or somewhere in between, come hang with Shaherose as she walks you through the top trends in Silicon Valley – and collectively figure out why they matter to you, Wednesday, May 5 @ 1:30pm.

Social Media Monitoring and Measurement That Works

If you’re a social media marketing professional working for organizations or consulting independently and want to learn how to set goals, how to select social media monitoring solutions, what to listen for, best practices for engagement, how to defend from competitors, and how to structure unstructured data into insights that can help drive product development, pricing, and messaging decisions – this session is for you! Maria Ogneva combines her love for data and the social web as the Director of Social Media forBiz360, a social media listening, measurement, and engagement platform. Find her blogging online or in person on Wednesday, May 5 at 2:35pm.

See a full schedule overview here and get more details on Web2Open on the wiki. All participants must have a badge to attend. Register for a FREE Expo pass with the code websf10opn.

Janetti aka @janerri is the producer for Web2Open.