I know we’re all digital people but I’ve always been a big fan of ‘black and white and read all over.’

So I’m thrilled to see the theme of Web 2 Summit included in this USA Today article:

Everything from cellphones to common digital cameras is “being turned into eyes and ears for applications,” says Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media who is credited with inventing the term Web 2.0. “Data is being collected, presented and acted upon in real time. It’s all about immediacy and instantaneous data.”

The need for speed

The need for data speed has inspired O’Reilly to come up with a new phrase, “Web squared,” to describe the evolution of the Web as we know and use it. O’Reilly and John Battelle, founder of Federated Media Publishing, coined it in a white paper preceding their Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco next month.

Web 2 Summit :: October 20-22 :: Westin, San Francisco

Program co-chair John Battelle of Web 2 Summit will be posting a series of “Ask the CEO” articles on Searchblog - to get input from this community on the burning questions you want to ask the amazing line up decision-makers and industry leaders we’re featuring in 2009’s #WebSquared conference.

So starting with Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast - what’s on your mind? Read the full article here and share your thoughts. Get your questions asked on stage!

About Brian and Comcast -

Under his leadership, Comcast has grown into a Fortune 100 company with $34.3 billion in revenues, 24.2 million customers and 100,000 employees. Comcast’s content networks and investments include E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, Golf Channel, VERSUS, G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One, and ten sports networks operated by Comcast Sports Group and Comcast Interactive Media, which develops and operates Comcast’s Internet businesses, including Comcast.net.

Recently, Web 2.0 Summit program co-chair John Battelle (with Tim O’Reilly) announced that extraordinary new speakers, sessions, and sponsors have been added to the Web 2 Summit schedule. These speakers (one of whom was recently interviewed by Jon Stewart - see clip below) will inject coverage of tech policy, the economic crisis, and education reform into this year’s conversation:

Carly Fiorina – Having taken the first formal steps toward a formal bid for U.S. Senate, Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Woman in Business will grace our stage for a conversation about politics, her potential candidacy, and how what she learned at the helm of HP might prepare her for the only place more competitive than the Valley: Washington D.C. Should she continue her candidacy, Fiorina will be running against a powerful and long-standing California incumbent — Democrat Barbara Boxer.

Aneesh Chopra – America’s first ever appointed CTO will join us this year, in conversation with Tim O’Reilly. A charismatic figure and proven leader, Chopra is charged with developing national strategies for technology investments — overseeing the U.S. Government’s $150 billion R&D budget. By promoting and implementing technological innovation, the CTO’s goal is to create jobs, reduce health care costs, and keep our nation secure.

Austan Goolsbee – Chief U.S. Economist, member of the Council of Economic Advisers, serving the executive office as staff director on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) — an outfit established within the Department of Treasury charged with analyzing and understanding the state of our financial markets, banking and commerce systems in order to inform decision making around economic policy. Between the CEA and PERAB, Austan is working to fix America’s economic standing both domestically and internationally. No small feat.

I’m excited to hear insights from Carly, Aneesh, Austan, and the slew of additional CEOs and industry leaders we’ll be hearing from this Oct 20-22. Here’s a preview of Austan’s interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show - it’s both entertaining AND informative.

–

MORE AT WEB 2 SUMMIT

Special Web Squared Installation
Presented in partnership with the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) — a San Francisco-based collective dedicated to building social consciousness through digital culture — data visualization artist Aaron Koblin will debut a 10-screen exhibit on the theme of Web Squared. Koblin is best known for his collaboration on the Radiohead album using lasers and sensors to create a 3D data-based music video.

New Program: High Order Ignite

High Order Ignite is a session of rapid-fire presentations that highlight companies and technologies that may well change the world. A mashup of O’Reilly Media’s community Ignite talks and Web 2.0’s High Order Bits, five hand-selected companies will have exactly five minutes on stage. The winner, chosen by sponsor Omidyar Network, will receive a meeting with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Take a look at the full line up and schedule of the Web 2 Summit program here. And if you’d like to join us, you can find additional details, and a ‘request for invitation‘ form on our website.

Hi Web 2.0-ers. I hope you’ve had a nice summer. Today marks the start of September, which to me signifies the start of the fall conference season, and what a season it’ll be.

The teams at O’Reilly Media and TechWeb have been diligently programming and producing these past two months – preparing for the second Web 2.0 Expo New York this November – and launching Gov 2 Summit & Showcase in a few short weeks, held in Washington D.C.

Gov 2.0 Summit: The Platform for Change. Over the past fifteen years, the rise of the World Wide Web has resulted in remarkable new possibilities and business models reshaping our culture and our economy. Now the time has come to reshape government. Gov 2 is chaired by Tim O’Reilly and Richard O’Neil (The Highlands Group), alongside an intelligent program committee – read on to see the speaker lineup or schedule.

Web 2.0 Expo New York. The Power of Less. Constraints drive creativity, whether in business models, design paradigms, or platforms. The power of the small screen, the thin client, the streamlined interface. The power of small teams, or even going solo. The paradox of power: sometimes the best way to gain power is to give it away, which is why during these challenging times, we are learning that nothing builds brands like a nurtured community. The power of data: of data-centric business models, and the power of data to inform our decisions and to focus us on what matters. The power of less is the power of creative destruction. It’s the power to change the world. See how to participate here!

And in between the two we’ll manage to host our fifth Web 2 Summit this Oct 20-22, an event I’m particularly proud to announce as this year I have the pleasure of working with program chair John Battelle to help it come to life. He just published the speaker line up and festivities. Exciting stuff!

Headliners I’m particularly interested in hearing is U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra - the man in charge of our $150 billion R&D budget; Steve Schneider - Program Director at WestEd who is establishing the first-ever standard for technology literacy across the U.S. (by 2012); Cynthia Warner – president of a biofuel company that just might have the answer to… well, energy – and Austan Goolsbee - Chief Economist for President Obama. He bantered well with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, keen to see hear his opinions live on stage in front of a roomful of peers. Oh, and last but not least, eager to feed the little hungry geek that lives inside me with the info from Brady Forrest’s ‘Human Sensors Discussion’ – oh, that’ll be good.

In general, there are lots of things that impress me about a conference –

• its intelligence
• its ability to connect peoples, ideas, communities
• its momentary existence (because no two conferences are ever alike)
• its seamless execution (at least when event director Meghan Reilly is at the helm)
• its energy

And I’m really looking forward to experiencing all of that at Summit this fall. Earlier in the year Tim [O’Reilly] and John established the theme #WebSquared – an extension of 2008’s Web Meets World philosophy – and the schedule we’ll be announcing this week is comprehensive and relevant to the issues we are facing as a society today.

From Tim & John -

In our first program, we asked why some companies survived the dotcom bust, while others had failed so miserably. We also studied a burgeoning group of startups and asked why they were growing so quickly. The answers helped us understand the rules of business on this new platform.

Chief among our insights was that “the network as platform” means far more than just offering old applications via the network (”software as a service”); it means building applications that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions.

Today, we realize that these insights were not only directionally right, but are being applied in areas we only imagined in 2004. The smartphone revolution has moved the Web from our desks to our pockets. Collective intelligence applications are no longer being driven solely by humans typing on keyboards but, increasingly, by sensors. Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications; motion and location sensors tell where we are, what we’re looking at, and how fast we’re moving. Data is being collected, presented, and acted upon in real time. The scale of participation has increased by orders of magnitude.

Today, the exponential growth of Web has made its technologies service as the backbone of our everyday lives. If you want to discover more on the topic – download the whitepaper, and share your opinion on the Web Squared.

So there you go. That’s the reason we’ve all been so quiet here… there is a lot going on and we want you to explore and enjoy these live events. But if you can’t be with us in person, as always, you can catch the keynotes and recorded content on the various Blip.tv channels. There is currently only archived content, 2009 videos will get posted to these channels within a week of the event.

• Gov 2 Events
• Web 2 Summit
• Web 2 Expo

Stay tuned for more conference information and community announcements. Once again, let the games begin!

~ ~ ~

Note: Janetti Chon is now Web 2 Summit’s Producer at Battellemedia, a partner of O’Reilly Media & TechWeb.

I attended an event at the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto and it reminded me of a Rocketboom episode they filmed when the hostess (Ellie) of Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme show was in town earlier this summer.

And that reminded me that I’ve had this post drafted and stuck here - and it’s too good not to share.

I think the show is hilarious and informative - here’s a collection of some of my favorite -

Peanut Butter Jelly Time (PBJT) is a flash animation consisting of an animated ‘Dancing Banana’ emoticon and the song ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time’ by The Buckwheat Boyz. Known for being both annoying and funny, video of the dancing banana became a viral hit leading to PBJT merchandise, and many subsequent versions.

Single-Serving Sites

Xzibit Yo Dawg - OMG this one cracks me up!

Know Your Meme is the intellectual bi-product of The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies

* Editor and Producer Kenyatta Cheese is a member of the Web 2.0 Expo New York advisory board.

Gray Area Foundation for the the Arts

GAFFTA founder and executive director Josette Melchor shares stories -

Since 2005, she has been working towards opening three art spaces in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. She speaks about the importance of arts education, choosing a location, and what her organization teaches artists about digital marketing.

Community Partner Women 2.0:

An organization committed to increasing the number of women entrepreneurs starting high growth ventures by providing the resources, network, and knowledge for the launch and growth of their company. Join our mailing list at http://www.women2.org/

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 NYC IV, hosted by Web 2.0 Expo conference co-chair, Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar.

For speaker details and updates join Ignite on Facebook or see the O’Reilly Ignite community site. This event is free; cash bar. RSVP here.

Evening Schedule: Doors open at 6:45pm for cocktail hour. 8pm Film Contest. 8:30pm Ignite presentations, ending with bar service.

Update: Deadline extended to midnight PST on Friday, 5/29

Happy Friday! Happy long weekend! HappyMemorial Day!

A quick reminder that if you’re interested in speaking at Web 2.0 Expo New York, which takes place November 16 - 19th at the Javits Center, our call for papers closes on Tuesday, May 26th!

If you’re passionate about the power of the web, share your knowledge and insights with your peers at Web 2.0 Expo New York. What kind of submissions are we looking for, you ask? Visit the Web 2.0 Expo New York proposals page for more details and a link to the submission form. Need a little guidance on creating an eye-catching proposal? Check out the great tips from Program Co-Chair Jennifer Pahlka on how to submit a successful proposal.

We had a fantastic inaugural event last year in New York and if you want to be involved for 2009, here’s your chance.

Our advisory board is already reading through submissions so yes, go enjoy some sun and time off but don’t miss your chance to submit.

Cheers,

~ Janetti

Advice from Veronica Belmont: Got to know what you are talking about!!

Join us in this interview with Veronica where she shares her journey from CNET to Tekzilla along with her secret to a great personal brand.

And there’s more. Watch Veronica’s keynote video from Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, where Tekzilla filmed LIVE on our main stage with special guest Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter.

Veronica Belmont is the co-host of Revision3’s tech-centric show, Tekzilla, and Qore on the PlayStation Network. Previous to that, she hosted several other online video shows and podcasts, including Mahalo Daily, Buzz Out Loud, MP3 Insider, and Crave. She also created tech video content for CNET TV, including the popular series Prizefight.