Last night at Web 2.0 Expo New York we held our first ever Startup Showcase featuring 27 new up-and-comers in the Web world. After 50 minutes of demoing to a packed room of attendees, three picks went on stage with Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media) and Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) to have a conversation and get grilled.
Web 2.0 Expo’s keynotes and speaker interviews from Tuesday are now available for you to watch. We’ll update this playlist throughout the week with more videos of our sold out show. Enjoy!
Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Charlie Kim (Next Jump, Inc.)
Bret Taylor (Facebook)
Ann Miura-Ko (FLOODGATE)
Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) & Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media)
Rana Sobhany (Independent)
Thursday
Baratunde Thurston (The Onion)
Tom Conrad (Pandora Media)
Anil Dash (Expert Labs) & Ryan Sarver (Twitter) & Bret Taylor (Facebook)
Lukas Biewald (CrowdFlower) & Leila Chirayath Janah (Samasource)
Jonathan Miller (News Corporation) & Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media)
Nick Bilton (The New York Times R&D Labs)
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
CEO of Echo Kris Loux is moderating this discussion. He recently spoke with us about these issues and what he thinks the future of news and the Web will look like. Listen below for the full interview.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
How do you nudge users to take certain actions? Andy Budd, Clearleft’s user experience lead and a Web 2.0 Expo New York speaker, will cover some of the latest advances in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience as part of his session on how cognitive biases are formed – and how to use this information to build a proper “choice architecture” for your site visitors.
In his session, Persuasive Design: Encouraging Your Users To Do What You Want Them To, Andy will use examples ranging from architecture to menu design to show how such persuasive techniques can be employed on the web. By using what you learn in his session, he says, you’ll be able to create a site that looks good, is free of usability errors, and is optimized for a maximum return on investment.
We recently spoke with Andy about his upcoming session; you can listen to the full interview below.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
NYC based user experience designer Whitney Hess thinks you may have forgotten your original problem by falling in love with a bad solution. That’s why she’s speaking at Web 2.0 Expo New York this week to help you create products that people want and not just features you think are “neat.”
Her session is for those who need to give their UX an upgrade but can’t currently afford a professional designer (like Whitney). Check out her session – and our interview with her below – to learn techniques that help you find out who your users are, what they really need and how to go about giving it to them without going bankrupt or missing your release date.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
Path Interactive Director of Sales – and Web 2.0 Expo New York speaker – Ruben Quinones wants to help take your Facebook fan page from an afterthought to a thriving marketing channel. Included in his session this week, attendees will focus on
Writing good descriptions with search optimization in mind when users search for a service on Facebook.
Architecture of a fan page – well thought out tabs on the Fan page.
Custom Applications to provide a Fan page with richer content and design.
Provide examples of standard fan pages vs. well built out custom fan pages.
Strategies for launching a fan page when it is ready for the public.
Ruben recently spoke to us about his session, the interview of which you can hear below.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
As the founder and CTO of YouSendIt, a successful company with a freemium business model, Ranjith Kumaran has ample experience measuring what works and what doesn’t with such a plan. The Web 2.0 Expo New York speaker recently chatted with us about his upcoming session – A Dashboard for Freemium Providers: What to Measure—and How – and what others attempting to build up their own company using this model should focus on.
Listen to the full interview below.
Check out Ranjith’s interview from Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2010 for more information.
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Kaitlin Pike is the Community Manager of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @w2e or @kcpike.
“Once you start to think of the objective of customer service as creating happy customers who spread the word to others, you think a little differently,” says Josh Bernoff, co-author of the new book Empowered. He and co-author – and fellow Forrester Research colleague – Ted Schadler recently spoke to us about how companies can transform their current customer service practices by relying on and encouraging technologically savvy, and empowered, employees.
Through their research and observations, Josh and Ted found that several fast and technology-reliant solutions to costumer problems are readily available to employees (ex: responding to complaints on Twitter), but most organizations aren’t set up to support such activities and instead rely on old-fashioned, and less effective, means. Currently, Josh said, many companies have considerable turnover in customer service departments because these employees are viewed as interchangeable parts versus concerned team members.
“They’re not in a position to innovate,” Josh said.
As one example among many they’ve found, Ted and Josh cited the failure of Whirlpool to address popular blogger Dooce’s complaint about a Maytag machine as a reason for why top down management of customer issues isn’t fast enough for today’s technology. Customers expect an almost instant and helpful response.
“It’s amazing how many companies don’t actually listen to their customers,” Josh said.
Miss your chance to attend Web 2.0 Expo New York because we sold out? Couldn’t make it out to the East Coast this year? We’ve got you covered: Sign up for our live broadcast of keynotes, and stay tuned for more videos of this year’s exciting Web 2.0 Expo New York.
What will be streamed live?
All keynotes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be streamed live, unless the speaker has requested not to be and barring any technical difficulties. You must register to view the keynotes live.
Recordings will start to go up within 24 hours, barring any technical glitches. Footage will also loop on the live streaming player after that first streamed block ends on Tuesday. All footage should be up within a week unless the speaker has requested that it not be posted publicly.
Video can also be downloaded from Blip.tv:
Go to the individual video page
Scroll down to “Files and Links” in the right column and open
Choose the format, right click per instructions, and voila!
Check out two of our Web 2.0 Expo New York recorded keynotes from years past to see what you can expect:
Solvate’s co-founder and COO Julie Ruvolo will be onstage at Web 2.0 Expo New York next week to give solid advice on how to improve your hiring process of independent professionals. If you’ve ever been burned, this may be the session for you.
Julie recently answered some questions about her session and what you can expect to learn next week.
Justin: For those that are unfamiliar, can you give a quick intro to Solvate?
Julie: Solvate is a startup based in downtown New York City that is building the country’s premier on-demand workforce. We think businesses big and small, startup or not, should have access to the best talent possible, on terms that make sense for them, not just for businesses with a big hiring budget. So only the best independent consultants and freelancers are invited into our network, and we make their time available on a purely on-demand, no strings, no minimums hourly basis.
Justin: You founded Solvate alongside your business partners Michael Paolucci and Rick Lamb, who gets credit for the idea? What was the inspiration?
Julie: Credit for the idea goes to Mike! Let’s call him Client #1. He was operating another business out of the woods in Connecticut – as in no cell phone service – at the time that we met at a dinner hosted by DFJ Gotham. He was working at that time with a completely remote (and international) staff and thought there was room to explore offering remote administrative support to the growing segment of businesses that are taking advantage of cloud technology and working out of the traditional office confines, and he was working on the idea with Rick, his long-time business associate.
Mike, Rick and I got started on Solvate, DFJ Gotham provided the financing, and we very quickly realized that the caliber of professionals ready to work on demand expanded beyond administrative assistants to tons of industries and skill sets. You would be surprised at the breadth of professionals who are joining the Gig Economy and working independently. Market researchers, Salesforce-Certified Developers, Emmy award winners.
Sep 30th, 2010 |
CEO of Echo
In his session, 
Her session is for those who need to give their UX an upgrade but can’t currently afford a professional designer (like Whitney). Check out her session – and our interview with her below – to learn techniques that help you find out who your users are, what they really need and how to go about giving it to them without going bankrupt or missing your release date.
Ruben recently spoke to us about his session, the interview of which you can hear below.
Along with publishing a book on the matter, the two authors will discuss the findings of their research – including over 25 case studies – at their Web 2.0 Expo New York session next week: 
Julie: Credit for the idea goes to Mike! Let’s call him Client #1. He was operating another business out of the woods in Connecticut – as in no cell phone service – at the time that we met at a dinner hosted by DFJ Gotham. He was working at that time with a completely remote (and international) staff and thought there was room to explore offering remote administrative support to the growing segment of businesses that are taking advantage of cloud technology and working out of the traditional office confines, and he was working on the idea with Rick, his long-time business associate.
