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Archive for the 'Misc.' Category

Mar 1st, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

What the hey is Global Ignite Week?

Kaitlin Pike

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.)

ignite-logo

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.

Feb 25th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Social Media Webcast Slides: Yours to Keep

Kaitlin Pike

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.

Effective Social Media For Event Exhibitors
View more presentations from Web 2.0 Expo.

Thanks!

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

Feb 25th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Non-Profit Pavilion: Web 2.0 Expo’s Way of Giving Back

Kaitlin Pike

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.

Feb 24th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Another Free Book Chapter: “Effective UI”

Kaitlin Pike

As part of our efforts to get you some virtual swag before Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2010 begins, we’d like to offer another free book chapter from O’Reilly.

“Effective UI” (Download now)

Written by Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, and Robb Wilson, this book provides a complete roadmap to building groundbreaking software centered on user experience (UX) quality, how to get management support, employing product management strategies proven to deliver greater success, and how to manage the design, engineering, staffing, and business considerations that must be centered on the user’s needs and working effectively in tandem all throughout the project.

Enjoy!

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

Feb 24th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Submit Your Company for Launch Pad 2010: Deadline March 31

Kaitlin Pike

Dear New Web 2.0 Companies,

So sorry to hear you’re singing the Entrepreneur Blues. You’re cash-strapped, short on time, and getting frustrated with your co-founders (oh, trust me—they feel the same about you). You have enough problems just trying to sort out details with the overseas developer you hired, let alone trying to pitch your product to potential clients or VCs.

Want some help with your hustle? Apply for Launch Pad 2010 at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco.

We’re looking for new companies or products that are disrupting or transforming today’s Web 2.0 world. Five companies will be chosen by a panel to present on stage at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco on May 5, 2010. Each will have five minutes to present their company or product and will receive real-time feedback from a panel of industry experts and the audience.

Here are some of the rules and guidelines of Launch Pad:

  • Entrants do not need to launch their company or a major product/service to qualify.
  • All proposals will be reviewed before Web 2.0 Expo by our panel.
  • The judging panel will be comprised of industry experts who will review Launch Pad companies for their value to their market (consumer, enterprise, etc.).
  • Judges will select about five finalists, each of whom will have five minutes to pitch on stage, in front of the Web 2.0 Expo audience (the largest gathering of the innovators in the Internet industry) and the panel.
  • Each company will receive feedback on its presentation from both the panel and the audience.

Submit Your Company for Consideration—entries are due by March 31, 2010.

If you have questions, we have answers. Contact Joylyn Tanner for more information on Launch Pad at jtanner@techweb.com.

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

Feb 18th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Update: More Sessions, More Speakers

Kaitlin Pike

Looking for a reason to go to Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this year? We have 10 for you: Brand new sessions with speakers and panels galore.

Here’s the list of this week’s additions. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

  1. The Laws of User Experience
  2. Privacy and Free Speech: It’s Good for Business
  3. Building an Ad-Supported Business Around a Community
  4. Social Gold: Game Design of Farmville
  5. Being Optimally Social – How Not Talking About Your Product Can Bring Huge Rewards
  6. Web + 1 - From User Experience to Customer Experience
  7. Web Analytics – Tracking People and Not Just Numbers
  8. Money For Nothing: User-Generated Virtual Goods
  9. Picture the Impossible: How a Game Can Change Your City
  10. Culture 2.0: Using Social Media to Engage Multicultural Communities

See what the experts who lead these sessions are saying before the conference commences. Go to our Twitter list of #w2e speakers to read what’s new with these industry leaders.

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

Feb 11th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

We’re Giving it Away: Free Book Chapters from O’Reilly

Kaitlin Pike

As Francis Bacon said, scientia potentia est. And for the non-Latin speakers… most likely all of you: Knowledge is power.

Web 2.0 Expo empowers attendees through the knowledge our speakers, sessions, and Expo exhibitors bring to each show. We’d like to expand on this theme and serve up some learning pre-event (if you hadn’t heard, we have one coming up May 3-6 at San Francisco’s Moscone West). For starters, we are offering you free chapters from a few of our favorite books about the Web 2.0 world.

First off: Dan Zarella’s “The Social Media Marketing Book”. This easy-to-understand book introduces you to social networks, blogging, and several other websites, and helps you plan and execute strategies with actionable advice every step of the way.

Download it now.

You’ll periodically see announcements about new free chapters on our Twitter account and here on our blog between now and the commencement of Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco. The chapters will remain available through the conference.

In addition to the book previews, we have speaker interviews lined up to go on our blog. We may ask for your help with questions from time to time, so feel free to reach out and tell us what you want answered.

Enjoy reading!

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

Jan 28th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Registration Now Open

Kaitlin Pike

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco has opened registration, and we’re offering you, our blog readers, a 25% discount if you use discount code websf10bl25 to register. Alternatively, you can get a free Expo Hall Only pass when you use discount code websf10snex.

Speaker List

This year’s speaker list (far from complete) includes

If you want a great preview of what you might see, here’s a video of Baratunde Thurston at Web 2.0 Expo New York 2009:

Conference Tracks

The conference agenda includes four main Conference tracks:

  • Strategy & Business Models
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Design & User Experience
  • Development

Our six Focus Tracks include Mobile, Community, Real-time, Analytics, Enterprise, and Cloud Computing.

This Year’s Theme: The Power of Platforms

Ten years ago, companies like AOL, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Earthlink, and eBay battled to define the ways we would use the Web. The winners drew millions of customers, but more importantly, they spawned ecosystems that created huge opportunities for partners, vendors and competitors. Today, new wars with new players like Facebook, Twitter, and Bing are emerging on the Web—wars that create hard questions for businesses that must decide their own roles in our increasingly mobile, social, and real-time world. Web 2.0 Expo highlights the important debates, handicaps the key players, and helps you pick the winning platforms for growth in a web-fueled world.

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If you have any questions about this year’s content, be sure to leave them in the comments!

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

Jan 26th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Topix CEO Chris Tolles Talks about Local Online Communities and Newspapers

Kaitlin Pike

Are hyper-local online communities the wave of the future? Many location-based apps (think Foursquare or Gowalla or Yelp) have caught on quickly, and Facebook and Twitter will likely add the option to make updates location-aware.  In response, some in the Web 2.0 world are shifting away from making products that create national or international communities. Instead, they’re looking at the local level and hope to conquer the world city by city, even neighborhood by neighborhood.

These relative newcomers were likely inspired by pioneering, local online community makers such as Topix. Founded in 2002, Topix is – as their About Us page says – “the leading news community on the Web, connecting people to the information and discussions that matter to them in every U.S. town and city.” It aggregates news from thousands of sources across the web and delivers content based on your chosen zip code (there’s an international audience as well of course).

chris-tollesBut beyond posting news stories, Topix encourages its users to comment and report on stories going on in their own neighborhood. Due to this focus on community, Topix receives over 30,000 comments a day, most of which are focused on the local level.

Topix CEO Chris Tolles was gracious enough to answer a few of our questions about local online communities, user generated content, and the future of the newspaper industry (including what he thinks of Rupert Murdoch’s threat to pull News Corp. content off of Google News). Chris will also be speaking at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco this May, so be sure to register later this week!

Without further ado, another Web 2.0 Expo Speaker Interview:

Kaitlin: In a recent Topix blog post, you noted that “Topix has gone from being merely an aggregator of local news, to becoming the home of local voice on the web”. You base this on the fact that 60% of articles on Topix are original, user generated news stories, and 75% of pageviews on Topix are on the commentary.

First of all, how did you get there? What specifically makes Topix different from any other site that can throw up a comment board and host “a community”?

Chris: It’s that we have created this commentary around locality. We have 30,000 forums around specific US cities and towns. Also, we have reached critical mass with over 90,000,000 comments across millions of different threads. We created this initially as an adjunct to the news we aggregated. Now, it has really turned into the main focus of the site, especially in areas with poor news coverage.

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Jan 20th, 2010 | Kaitlin Pike

Effective Social Media for Event Exhibitors Webcast: Register Now!

Kaitlin Pike

EDIT: We have now closed registration for our webcast. Thank you for your interest!

“My nightmare is someone would ask me a question, and I wouldn’t see it.”

Jenny Cisney spends hours searching online for what people are saying about Kodak – “looking for trouble” as she calls it. As their Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager, she’s a first responder to questions or comments on Twitter about Kodak, and she blogs about such things as Kodak giveaways, Kodak Picture of the Day winners, and as was the case for the recent 2010 International CES, Kodak booth news and updates during conferences and events.

“I would tweet something like ‘first person to take a photo of yourself in the booth and send it to me on Twitter wins a digital camera,’” Cisney said about one of her many giveaway promotions at CES that generated significant buzz—and booth traffic—for Kodak.

Jenny CisneyCisney is one of the growing number of social media managers companies hire to proactively engage customers online and to help drive interest at shows and conferences. Although social media marketing is growing, most event exhibitors have yet to fully explore tools like Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages, or blogs.

To help bridge the gap, we at Web 2.0 Expo are hosting a free webcast, “Effective Social Media for Event Exhibitors,” on Tuesday, February 23 at 10 a.m. PST. Led by Web 2.0 Expo Co-Chair and “The Twitter Book” co-author Sarah Milstein and myself (Kaitlin Pike), the one-hour session will feature real-life success stories and practical tips for using services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and your own company blog for efficient marketing before, during, and after a show. We’ll follow the presentation with a meaty Q&A, so bring your questions.

Register for this webcast below by filling out the Google form we’ve created. We’ll email you the necessary information to sign in and join us. Space is limited, so please sign up now if you are interested.

During the webcast, we’ll discuss how Cisney and other exhibitors use social media to drive booth traffic and generate leads during events.  Specific topics we’ll cover include

  • Tools and websites to use
  • Measuring success with social media
  • Pre- and post-show strategy
  • Demographics of different social networks
  • Tested and proven giveaway contests
  • Organizing Booth Tweet Ups
  • Upcoming trends

One strategy in particular we’ll discuss is how to start talking about your booth activities well in advance of the show. Even if you’re planning to do a lot of blogging or tweeting from the show, you’ll get better booth traffic if attendees learn ahead of time about interesting things you’re doing and can plan to visit you. “Not everyone is walking around the show checking Twitter,” Cisney notes.

If you have any questions about the webcast, please leave them in the comments or talk to us @w2e.

We look forward to talking with you in February!

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

Sarah Milstein is the Co-Chair of Web 2.0 Expo. She can be reached @SarahM.

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