Take a look at our freshly published schedule grid to map out what sessions and keynotes you want to hit up at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this spring.

We’ve divided the grid by day as well as by session track or type:

• Design & User Experience
• Development
• Focus on Analytics
• Focus on Cloud Computing
• Focus on Mobile
• Keynote
• Intensive
• Social Media Marketing
• Special Programs & Events
• Sponsored
• Strategy & Business Models

We’ll continue to have more updates as the days pass. Feel free to message us if you have any questions!

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

Our media partner Adam Stacoviak of the Web 2.0 Show brings us a podcast interview today with Web 2.0 Expo speaker and Lean Startup Intensive leader Eric Ries. Many of you already know Eric from his popular blog Startup Lessons Learned and as the creator of the “Lean Startup” methodology and “The New Entrepreneurship.”

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

We also invite you to look through the slides we put together.

If you have any questions for either Sarah or me, drop us a line @SarahM, @w2e, or @kcpike.

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

Attention Web 2.0 Expo and Web 2.0 Summit veterans: We’re adding some benefits this year, just for you, including an alum-only lounge with power outlets and a special lunch with Tim O’Reilly and other Web 2.0 VIPs.

We’ve been around for four years now and know that we wouldn’t have made it without you supporting us.

So if you’re a paid conference attendee in 2010, and you’ve been an attendee at any previous Web 2.0 Expo or Web 2.0 Summit event, you’ll automatically receive the following benefits:

• Invitation to a special lunch on Thursday, May 6 with Tim O’Reilly and other key Web 2.0 figures
• Access to our Alumni Lounge, featuring power, Internet, all-day coffee, and light am/pm snacks. The Alumni Lounge will be open Tuesday - Thursday.
• Free O’Reilly book (you will be able to choose one of the following titles: The Social Media Marketing Book, The New Community Rules or Facebook: The Missing Manual, 2E)
• 40% off on all O’Reilly print and ebooks on oreilly.com (offer valid 4/26/10 - 5/14/10)
• Special designation on your conference badge

There is no need to formally sign up for the Alumni program; we’ll automatically flag you in our system and send you more details about how to take advantage of these benefits as the event gets closer. This is just our way of saying thanks for your continued support of Web 2.0 Expo and the Web 2.0 community.

See you in May!

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

As a marketer, how do you walk the politically correct tightrope? Are you genuine in your efforts to increase diversity in your marketing campaigns, or are you fumbling along with whatever mishmash of stereotypes—and the occasional picture of “multicultural people”—you threw together?

If you’re the latter, it’s likely not intentional; the basics of effective marketing to multicultural communities, especially through social media, aren’t taught in most seminars or even deeply considered by most professionals. Effectively engaging groups outside your own cultural background can be impossible if you don’t know where to begin.

Luckily, Jessica Faye Carter of Nette Media has tackled this issue and offers some answers. Her session at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this May, “Lessons from the Marketing Campaign Trail: Using Social Media to Engage Multicultural Communities,” will help you build effective multicultural social media campaigns. She agreed to an interview with us, which you’ll find below.

As Jessica notes in her session description, multicultural communities now account for more than 30% of the U.S. population with spending power of approximately $2 trillion. If your company wants to reach these audiences, you can start learning how to by reading on:

Kaitlin: How do marketers find people online based on cultural identity? Doesn’t the anonymity of the web make that difficult?

Jessica: One of the easiest ways for marketers to find users from various cultures is through blogs and social networks geared toward ethnic communities. Sites like MiGente (Hispanic & Latino cultures), Soompi (Korean and Asian cultures), and BlackPlanet (Black cultures) have sizeable audiences that would appeal to advertisers. Microsites within larger, more popular sites like Facebook or Linkedin are another option, along with websites of culturally-focused organizations. Continue Reading »

Hundreds of people, 60+ cities, 6 continents, and several dozen 5-minute rants. No, it’s not one of those annoying word problems from algebra. It’s the first ever Global Ignite Week, this March 1-5, 2010.

What is Ignite? Carmel Hagen and Emily Goligoski, the founders of Ignite Bay Area, would like to lay it down for you.

Watch their presentation by clicking on the Ignite logo below. (Although the page will ask you for name & email, registration is NOT required - just hit “Submit” to watch.)

Sponsored in part by Web 2.0 Expo, Ignite Bay Area’s Global Ignite Week event is tomorrow night - March 2 - from 7 to 10 p.m. Tickets are sold out but you can Livestream it here. You can also watch recordings of Ignite talks here. And here’s the list of Ignite Bay Area speakers for tomorrow.

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

For those who attended, we hope you enjoyed our “Effective Social Media for Event Exhibitors” webcast. As requested, we’re posting the slides we used here. We’ll soon have the full webcast - audio and slides - up for you to watch. If you didn’t get a chance to watch our webcast live, we invite you to check it out and send us any questions you may have.

Thanks!

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

Update 3/19: Our application period is now closed. Thank you for your interest! We will get back to you with an answer next week.

Collaboration is the heart of Web 2.0. But we at Web 2.0 Expo know that effective cooperation involves more than good technology; we also recognize the very human drive behind it. And we can think of no better example of the human need to collaborate — and the creative ways it can be done — than can be found in the countless non-profits that work to better our community and world by using the web as an organizing tool.

We are once again hosting a Non-Profit Pavilion at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco. This Web 2.0 Expo tradition has hosted such organizations as ChangingthePresent, Amoration, Creative Commons, Donorschoose, Knowmore, Social Actions, USIBA and the University of Denver CIS Program. You can also see this past fall’s Web 2.0 Expo New York Non-Profit Pavilion list.

If you’re a non-profit organization that is using Web 2.0 technologies to support your cause, mission, or community goals, we invite you to apply for a spot in our Pavilion.

We will choose 10 non-profits to participate in the Pavilion (located on the Expo floor). Each organization will be supplied with a booth space, on-site branding, an Internet connection, and inclusion in the events guide, completely free of charge.

To apply, fill out the form below. The deadline to apply is March 18.

Organizations must be a registered 501c3 to participate. Space is limited to 10 non-profits. An internal Web 2.0 Expo committee will select the booth recipients and announcements will be made the week of March 22.

Thank you.

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