As the San Francisco edition of Web 2.0 Expo winds down (what a whirlwind four days it’s been!) the Call for Participation for the second edition of Web 2.0 Expo New York has opened. Please consider submitting a proposal to speak! This is another great opportunity to put your ideas and projects in front of a very savvy and connected audience, and we hope to see you there.

Like the SF show, we’ll continue to explore the theme of “The Power of Less”–how to best use the tools and principles of Web 2.0 technologies to innovate and stay competitive in a challenging (to say the least) economy. 

Topics include: 

- Landscape & Strategy 

- Marketing & Community 

- Design & User Experience 

- Development 

- Web 2.0 at Work 

- Government 2.0 

- Mobile

- Social Media 

Deadline for proposals is May 26. Visit the Web 2.0 Expo NY proposals page for more details and a link to the submission form. 

Note that the committee received over 1,000 proposals for Web 2.0 Expo SF, and we’re expecting a similar pool for NY. 

Program co-chair Jen Pahlka wrote up some great tips for successfully submitting a proposal specifically for Web 2.0 Expo.

In addition, below is advice that we often give to prospective speakers:

- Be authentic! Your peers need real-world scenarios they can use. Please submit original presentation ideas that focus on knowledge transfer, and engaging and relevant examples.

- Include as much detail about the planned presentation as possible. The more we know about what you plan to present and why it matters, the better.

- Be thorough! If you are proposing a panel tell us who else would be on it. If you are going to have a release let us know. If you feel this is something that hasn’t been covered before let us know.

- Keep it free of marketing.

- Keep the audience in mind: they’re technical, professional, and already pretty smart.

- Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? What knowledge should people have when they come to the presentation?

- Give it a simple and straightforward title or name: Fancy and clever titles or descriptions make it harder for people (committee and attendees) to figure out what you’re really talking about

- Context is important. If your presentation is about something truly ground-breaking, earth-shattering, and new, it will be helpful to the reviewers if you describe it in terms of things that attendees might already know of.

- Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won’t be able to cover Everything about Widget Framework X. Instead, pick a useful aspect, or a particular technique, or walk through a simple program.

- Explain why people will want to attend: is the framework gaining traction? Is the app critical to modern systems? Will they learn how to deploy it, program it, or just what it is?

- Warmed-over talks from some conference circuit are less likely to be appealing. The conference has a limited number of slots, and if attendees can see the same talk somewhere else, why should they come see you at this one? If you speak at a lot of events, be sure to note why this presentation is different.

- Don’t assume that your company’s name buys you cred. If you’re talking about something important that you have specific knowledge of because of what your company does, spell that out in the description.

- Present something relevant. If you’re presenting a new way to do something that others have been doing for a decade or more, you need an angle on it that’s fresh or an explanation for why it’s important now. The hot things are hot, the cold things are cold, but there are interesting problems in almost everything. One of your challenges as a proposer is to demonstrate that you understand that attendees might need an extra reason to pay attention to something that they might otherwise think of as “settled.”

- Avoid taking a scatter-shot approach to proposals if you submit more than one or two. Be focused, have something important to say on a worthwhile topic, and sell the topic (not just yourself).

Good luck, and we hope to see you there!

Over on the O’Reilly Radar, Kurt Cagle has published an interview with Will Wright,of Spore and Sim City fame, who will be giving a keynote presentation at Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday, April 2 at 10:00 a.m. 

In the interview, Will looks back at how his fascination with models and robots started him on the gaming path and forward to Sims 3 which is scheduled for release in June. Of his development process, Will notes: 

…we’re basically exploring an emergent system. And because it’s emergent, by its very nature, you can’t sit there and engineer it top-down. What we have to do is we have to sit there and kind of play with a wide variety of algorithms and structures. Turn them on. Observe the behavior. Then when it doesn’t quite do what we want, we go back to the drawing board. We refine it a little bit more. But it feels much more like the process of exploration that is in engineering.

I’m looking forward to hearing more of Will’s thoughts about the relationship between game development, city planning, and behavior at the show next week. And now off to the full list of sessions for the show to see what else I’m going to add to my personal schedule!

Joshua-Michele Ross, one of my colleagues here at O’Reilly, published an article in Forbes last week with that eye-catching title. The subtitle is “How to rethink work in the 21st century,” which fits nicely with the new mini-track Jen wrote about recently, Web 2.0 at Work.

Josh’s article also expands on the informal theme of Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco we’ve adopted for 2009: Work on Stuff that Matters:

A few weeks into 2009, the message has become simple: We cannot continue “business as usual” in the face of dwindling oil supplies, environmental degradation, climate change and a worldwide economic meltdown.

Working on stuff that matters is a personal choice–not a project checklist.

I’ll spoil the ending for you and post here Josh’s wrap up:

Underlying the power of Web 2.0 is the idea that every contribution made on the Internet–from an action to a link to a blog or any other commentary–adds value and significance to the network.

Every choice and action counts. This dynamic is true, too, in the “real world.” Where we spend our money, our labor and our attention define the world we live in. It is the aggregate of our choices that brought us to this place. It is only through individual choice that we will emerge on the other side.

The current recession obliges us to rethink business practices. As Stanford University economist Paul Romer has said: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

When things are tough, it’s hard to picture a crisis as something of value, but history has shown that to often be the case. Innovation and clarity of purpose are necessities now, not nice-to-haves. The idea of Web 2.0 gained traction in a similar climate, so I’m looking forward to the next wave of web growth that we’ll see exemplified onstage at Web 2.0 Expo, both this spring and later this year in New York, as the “stuff that matters” principles take hold.

Christine Herron is a principal with First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture capital firm focusing on innovative technology companies. Prior to joining First Round, Christine was a director at Omidyar Network, VP for Mission Research, and the founder and CEO of Mercury2. Christine holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA in English from Columbia University. She was ranked one of the Top 20 Women in Technology in 2000 by AltaVista.

We’re very glad to have Christine leading a workshop, VCTips: An Inside Look at Growth and Fundraising Strategy, at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon, March 31.

What would you like attendees get out of your Web 2.0 Expo presentation?
I’d like the attendees at our VCTips workshop to walk away with not only some practical tools for managing the fundraising process, but also with a good understanding of venture capital and the motivations that are driving the conversation from the VC’s side of the table.

The economy is still in a slump. Are you seeing any Web 2.0 or other tech trends bubbling up, particularly in response to where we are in the financial cycle?
We’re seeing that many more companies incorporate business model development into their startup plans from Day One. Even if the business model isn’t fully baked, the entrepreneurs have developed a compelling story of how they’ll test and refine their options in order to get the model nailed down and proven before it’s time to raise Series A funding. This is a significant change resulting from the economy’s impact on the funding community.

As far as specific Web 2.0 trends, folks are adopting their consumer behaviors to their work. I’m seeing large numbers of startups with services for independent contractors and small business, and the services that touch the enterprise have started introducing subscription-based sales models. There is also a fascinating wave of innovation happening around the cloud computing ecosystem.

Do you have any advice for companies looking to gain an edge, or just stay afloat, in the downturn?
Don’t take too long to make decisions. Be fully aware of how many days of cash runway you have in the bank. Put a countdown timer on the wall and race against it to prove your business hypothesis. If what you’re doing isn’t going to help prove out the hypothesis, then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it.

Any predictions about how the economy will (or won’t) shake out in the coming year?
If I knew, I wouldn’t tell anyone.

How do you think the new political administration will affect the tech industry?
The new political administration is actually *aware* of the tech industry. I believe this will have primarily positive effects as doors become opened, but we should also be aware of the potential downside as previously-ignored issues such as privacy or data ownership to become subject to regulation. Increased government awareness of an industry can easily morph into increased oversight.

What new technologies interest you these days?
Cloud computing, virtualization technologies, and new data architectures are all compelling shiny objects.

Any people you know of who are working on interesting but under-the-radar projects?
Definitely, but I can’t speak about them since those folks are trying to *stay* under the radar. The best way to assure that you hear about interesting projects is to be good at maintaining confidences.

Where and how do you get your news and other information?
Surprisingly, my leading source of news has become Twitter. I follow some incredibly smart and diligent people, and I take full advantage of their tweeting and retweeting news and links in real time. If Twitter is down, I check news feeds such as AP and Reuters through My Yahoo!. I check out the blogosphere separately, using NetVibes.

Do you have favorite communication tools? What makes them work for you?
Email and Twitter on my MacBook Pro. Given the need to weave constant communications and other multitasking through my daily work, I need to take advantage of a full keyboard. Not to mention that asynchronous mechanisms work best on days riddled with meetings.

What was your early career goal? When you were in college, did you think you’d end up doing what you’re doing now?
When I was in college, I thought I’d be a reconstructive surgeon. Somehow this has evolved into becoming a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and sporadic creative. I’ve always been driven by curiosity and a need to Make.

Who are the people who have influenced you and why?
The first few influencers that come to mind are my mother Josie Herron, my dance teacher and choreographer Carol Abizaid, and my first manager, investor Steve Clearman. Mom was fierce and tireless when she became a single mom – she never gave up or put herself in a position where she couldn’t take care of herself and us. You make your own luck. Carol Abizaid was able to teach me and extend my talent in ways that I didn’t think were possible. There’s a key to turn every lock, and you just have to work to find the right one for each person, for each problem. And Steve Clearman? He cuts to the chase in every situation, without editing for political correctness, and I always had the benefit of his blunt feedback. You can be direct without being judgmental. The lessons from these people are with me every day.

You’re involved with a number of non-profits. How did those relationships come about and what do they mean to you?
After I had to wind down my startup in 2001, I spent some time getting to know the emerging arts community in the Bay Area. This included bartering business services (identity development, marketing, business strategy, web site design) on Craigslist in exchange for art. If you’ve never traded services before, it’s an eye-opening exercise in how to assess the value you can bring to someone else. Though I no longer have the time for a barter practice, I’m still very engaged with the local arts community and the people that support it. It keeps me grounded in the wide world that spins outside of our tech community blinders.

We’re very glad to have Tenni Theurer, Senior Product Manager in Yahoo!’s Search Distribution group, presenting Coding for Greener Applications: Style Makes a Difference at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco. Tenni also participates in the company’s Green Coding Initiative.

Her presentation will happen on Friday, April 3 at 11:00 a.m., and it straddles both the Development and Fundamentals tracks.

Tenni was kind enough to take some time from her busy schedule to answer a few of my questions:

Your Web 2.0 Expo presentation is “Coding for Greener Applications.” What motivated you to speak about this particular topic? What would you like attendees to take away from it?
Everyone is doing green these days as people are becoming more aware about the impact of their carbon footprints. I joined Yahoo!’s Green Coding Initiative early last year because I wanted to make an effort towards a greener planet and help fight global warming. The Green Coding Initiative aims to define the meaning of coding efficiently, determine the metrics to measure efficient code, develop the tools that enable developers to code greener, and share our learnings with the world. This was also a natural extension from my previous role as an evangelist for exceptional performance.

The key takeaways from this session are to measure the impact of your applications, to invest in making your code more efficient, and to inspire others to do the same. The technologies to produce clean renewable energy exist, but they are expensive and hard to find. Thus we need to optimize our backend data centers and our applications. In order to do that, we have to measure and measure effectively. Unfortunately, there aren’t industry standards or many tools to gather these important measurements. It’s going to take a lot of smart and creative minds working together to establish these standards, develop the technologies, and design our applications to be more efficient.

Are you seeing any particular Web 2.0 or other tech trends emerging, particularly in response to the slowing economy?
Current technology trends have been around software and social networks. We are just now starting to see more gadgets and every day appliances tied to the web. Microsoft unveiled an internet-enabled coffee maker at CES this year, which allows consumers to enjoy a cup of coffee while getting the weather report, stock ticker and local traffic alerts. I recently received a scale that connects to the Internet. Every time I step on this scale, it measures my weight and uploads the information to an online application where I can set my goals, receive alerts, and view the data in various chart formats. Making data objects accessible from traditional offline devices opens the door for a whole new trend of web-enabled devices.

In response to the slowing economy, companies will also look for more ways to reduce their operating costs. One area they will find the savings is within their data centers’ energy usage and server capacity. Innovations in the past have focused around the processor, but new improvements are moving towards power supply efficiency, memory consumption, virtualization, and data storage.

Does the conference theme, “The Power of Less,” resonate with you in any way?
“The Power of Less” certainly resonates with me. In the case of energy-efficient code, it means using fewer cycles for the same result and reducing carbon emissions at the same time. Determine the parts of an application that is required and eliminate unnecessary code. Not only can this create a “greener application,” it can also significantly improve performance for your users.

How do you think the new political administration will affect the tech industry?
I think the new administration will have a positive impact on the tech industry. It’s great to see the government taking advantage of technology, especially during this past election year. All the major candidates used social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to reach out to voters and inform supporters about events, activities, and issues. It also gives our elected officials a chance to communicate and have a dialogue with the people they represent. We watched with a sense of amazement when change.gov redirected to whitehouse.gov, a site fully equipped with a blog, search capabilities, and even an RSS feed! The tech savvy Obama administration certainly increases awareness of the technology sector and the important role that it plays.

Any emerging technologies out there piquing your interest?
Cloud computing offers some really interesting ideas and opportunities. As cloud computing matures, companies no longer have to buy the hardware and space to store their data. It’s infinitely scaleable and paying for usage offers the flexibility to meet changing demands and conditions, especially through factors such as seasonality ties and corporate downsizings.  

Where do you get your news and other information?
I get almost all my news and information from online resources. Among the tech sites are Techmeme, Techcrunch, O’Reilly Radar, Slashdot, and Ajaxian. I keep up with the daily news by reading the Wall Street Journal, CNN, BBC, and receiving aggregated headlines from Google News. I occasionally browse the San Jose Mercury for local news and follow a number of blogs from industry experts as well as current and former colleagues. Finally, I’m a huge fan of Wikipedia.

What are you favorite communication tools?
I bought the first generation iPhone the day it came out to analyze its performance characteristics and write a blog about our findings. It soon became one of my favorite gadgets, especially for communication and staying connected. I was never a big fan of SMS with any of my previous phones. It took too long to type and the auto-text often left me sending messages with “of” instead of “me” or “find” instead of “fine.” I also didn’t have a data package with earlier phones so I couldn’t check email or browse the web. With the iPhone, I found that I was sending more short messages and checking email almost religiously. I’m also a big fan of Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course the good old-fashioned telephone.

How did you get where you are today?
I grew up within the close proximity of Silicon Valley during the high tech boom. My father was the owner of a small business, and I watched my father adjust his business to reflect the ever changing tides of technology fads and needs. I remember making frequent visits to Fry’s Electronics in its early days when it was just one small warehouse in Sunnyvale, CA. I learned early on that business models have to constantly evolve and adapt in order to survive the competitive landscape.

Growing up with an early exposure to business and technology significantly increased my interest in both of these areas. I obtained a Bachelor’s in Computer Science at UC San Diego to understand the fundamentals and theory of computation in computer systems and subsequently took positions in engineering divisions within the technology industry. In an industry that changes at lightning speed, I find it extremely important to keep up with current trends, new technologies, and emerging business markets.

Whitney recently posted her list of Top Five Things she was most looking forward to at the 2009 edition of Web 2.0 Expo SF, and that got me thinking about what I want to get out of the conference. (Her post also made me very envious of all you iPhone owners, but that’s another matter.)

The finishing touches are still being applied to the Web 2.0 Expo schedule, but so far my five picks are (the personal schedule builder is a very handy tool for this):

1. Accessibility in a Web 2.0 World with Robin Christopherson (AbilityNet)
   While I’m theoretically down with the idea of accessibility, since I don’t encounter disability situations that often, I’m not always sure what that means in practical terms. Robin intends to outline the numerous spin-off benefits for usability, platform compliance, and revenue that accessibility delivers, so I’m anticipating that this will give me a foundation for incorporating universal best practices into my marketing work, and advocating for them in general.
2. TV & Radio with an API: Stories from Current and NPR with Robin Sloan (Current) and Zach Brand (NPR, Digital media)
   I confess I’m a just a goo-goo eyed (eared?) fan of NPR–I’m a member of both KQED and KRCB–so part of my desire to see this is just to be in the same room with someone from the NPR team. Their stories around the business case for “brand and release” sounds particularly useful for me.
3. Setting Content Free at Ford Motor Company with Maggie Fox (Social Media Group) and Scott Monty (Ford Motor Company)
   Here’s an enormous, so-last-millennium company making a big ol’ Web 2.0 leap–a case study on so many levels. I’m hoping Maggie and Scott will be very frank about the resistance hurdles they must have had to overcome as well as the tools they’re actually using to implement their content opening strategy.
4. Why Local is the New Global with Siva Kumar (TheFind, Inc.), Scott Dunlap (NearbyNow, Inc.), Joel Toledano (Krillion, Inc.), Ethan Stock (Zvents), and Greg Sterling (Sterling Market Intelligence)
   Buying local is really important to me, but there’s no way I want the online shopping experience to disappear either. Similarly, as an event planner, finding a way to balance the face to face vs. the online experience is critical to my work. I’ll be particularly interested to hear the panelists’ examples and data on changes in customer purchasing behavior.
5. The “hallway track”
   I classify myself as a high functioning introvert, so for me, hanging out in the conference lounge areas and at the O’Reilly booth in the Expo Hall is more productive than trying to circulate with a drink in my hand at the evening events. Those eddies of humanity outside session rooms and around booths are just as casual as the evening events, and–extra bonus–I’m not operating on brain overload from a full day of sessions or bobbling hors d’oeuvres. Those times are easier for me to say hi to people who are alone, and, where there are tables, sometimes a pleasant group camaraderie crops up. We all get each other talking.

What I’m particularly appreciating is that once again there are so many session choices that I’m able to balance building on what I already know with learning about totally new topics. As the agenda continues to fill in, the choices will definitely be harder! And I couldn’t even settle on the Tuesday workshops…

The blogosphere continues to buzz about Gary Vaynerchuk’s presentation at Web 2.0 Expo New York back in September. “Gary is an outstanding speaker and a definite motivator,” wrote Ryan Leary just this week in his introduction to Gary’s presentation that he embedded on his blog.

This surprised me a little–I mean, Web 2.0 Expo New York wrapped a few months ago. Surely we’ve moved on to newer Web 2.0 topics by now? But the common thread in the references I’ve seen explains it, I think: Gary is very persuasively expressing his passion for what he does. His passion is inspiring and can be applied to just about any endeavor. (I should’ve watched the video frequently last month while I was doing NaNoWriMo, I might’ve put more words to paper…) He also uses his enthusiasm to prod us as well as encourage us–an engaging combination.

If you haven’t already, watch Gary’s presentation for yourself (heads-up: Gary uses adult language in his presentation).

Clay Shirky’s talk from Web 2.0 Expo SF back in April still rocks our video charts, too. And while Clay’s style is a bit more measured than Gary’s, the issues he raises around productivity and attention are equally compelling and vital.

A reminder that all of the Web 2.0 Expo keynote presentations from San Francisco, New York, and Europe are posted on blip.tv.

And if you still haven’t gotten enough Web 2.0 footage, all of the presentations from last month’s Web 2.0 Summit (yes, including Al Gore) plus selections from the 2007 edition.

Web 2.0 Expo co-chairs Jen Pahlka of Techweb and Brady Forrest of O’Reilly are busy putting together the program for the San Francisco edition of Web 2.0 Expo in April. Wonder who will be most-viewed this time next year…