Interviewed by John Battelle, Founder and Chairman of Federated Media.

Firstly – we’d like to say SORRY to those inconvenienced yesterday by Jared Spool’s absence for his scheduled session. There was some confusion, something came up and we didn’t have any warning so we missed providing an announcement.

But since Jared is probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject of user interface design, we’ve rescheduled him to present this afternoon. If you’re interested and available please join his session at 3:50pm today in Room 2010: What makes a design seem intuitive? 

If you’re looking for speaker presentations – you can find the most recent ones on our homepage or cruise through all the ones we’ve received here. 

If you don’t find what you’re looking for, it’s likely because the speaker hasn’t posted them. But you can check Slideshare yourself in case we missed it.

But if you find it, let us know (via Twitter, a comment, Facebook) so we can add it for everyone’s viewing pleasure (crowdsourced content, rock!)

As for videos, we film only the keynotes and they can be found off our homepage or our web2expo.blip.tv channel (actually, ALL our keynotes from years past can be found on that channel too).

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy our conference content.

Thanks everyone for attending Ignite last night. It was a packed house and all was great – the talks, the space, the conversations. Thank you all for being here today, yesterday, tomorrow. We have been having a great time, and hope you are too. 

The Twitter stream is blowing up and the feedback has been great so far. The team here at Web 2.0 Expo is listening and we want you to get the most of your experience as possible. Be sure to keep @-ing (did I just coin something new??) or DM-ing us and we’ll get back to you. (patience is appreciated)

We know the multi-tracks and overlapping programs is much to handle, so a word of advice… just pick something and commit. Be present. Take in where you are for what it’s worth. Because by the time you look for something else and jump, you’ve missed it.

Take a seat (while powering up your laptop) and review the day’s activities… and then go with the flow of the random connections that comes along with this conference. 

Stop for a conversation, introduction and don’t worry that you’ve lost 10 minutes of that really awesome session – bc you’ve likely just gained 10 minutes of really great networking.

Ok, gotta go as keynotes just wrapped but more to come.

If you hadn’t noticed by the recent launch of our Government 2.0 Summit, our recently added track: Government 2.0, and the partnership with the Sunlight Foundation for our ‘build transparency in government’ hackathon – the O’Reilly and TechWeb teams are heavily interested in the intersection of government and Web 2.0.

So we’re happy to support to the organizers of FedWeb2.0ers at Web 2.0. It’s a meetup of federal employees trying to move in to the future (sometimes dragging the federal government kicking and screaming behind us) at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco – though we also welcome folk (contractors, developers, whoever) that might have ideas how to help us. 

What are some of the challenges you as a government employee, or contributor face in this shift to the new Web? 

What are some suggestions or recommendations that will help adoption of new media and the social web within our government today, tomorrow and the future unknown?

How can all this be done?  Who should, could, needs to be involved?

Though this change may be slow, it’s an evolution in the right direction. And this week, during Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, is the right time to have this conversation. 

Join FedWeb2.0ers on Thursday from 3-4 in the Community Room, Level 2, Room 2020.

Thanks to Shannon Clark, Web 2.0 Expo’s wonderful blog partner for writing up this post. Folks, you’re getting tips from a true SF connoisseur of great food so if I were you, I’d eat up this post (and yes, bad pun intended). Click here for full article. 

Reposted from O’Reilly Radar, author Sarah Milstein.

As I’ve written here recently, we’ve got some amazing sessions scheduled for Web2Open–the free unconference hosted by Web 2.0 Expo in SF this week. One that I’m particularly excited about is a new experiment, “Practice Your Customer Pitch.”

We’re bringing in five startups who will get two minutes each to give their customer pitch (not their VC pitch), as if meeting a potential customer at a cocktail party (i.e., no slides but OK to drink if you want). To give them feedback, we’ve assembled a top-notch panel of serial entrepreneurs and marketing experts. It’s not a competition, so there’s no judging or ranking—just discussion among the entrepreneurs, panelists and other session attendees.

We’re trying this idea for the first time, so who knows how it will go? But in the entrepreneurial spirit, we’ve mitigated our risks: even if the format doesn’t sing, the session can only be a hit given the participants. (Thanks to Sean O’Malley for helping us connect with a lot of these folks.)

The rather impressive panel:
*Rashmi Sinha, moderator. SlideShare CEO
*Robert Acker, panelist. LiveSpot CEO
*Michael Cerda, panelist. cc:Betty CEO
*Nilofer Merchant, panelist. Rubicon Consulting CEO

The smart startups:
*CrowdVine, social networks for conferences
*dbTwang, Dogster for guitars
*Doodle, online scheduling magic
*Maestro Market, a Web 2.0 speakers’ bureau
*Magoosh, customized test-prep

The session is on Weds, April 1 from 10:50 – 11:40a. If you still need a free pass for Web2Open, you can register using the code websf09opn. There’s more general event info on the Open website.

Reposted from O’Reilly Radar. Author: Brady Forrest

Ignite is coming back to San Francisco. On April First, the second night of the Web 2.0 Expo, conference co-chair Brady Forrest will be hosting an Ignite at the Mezzanine (just four short blocks away from Moscone). As with all Ignites each speaker will only get 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five minutes. Folks with a Web 2.0 Expo Badge will get priority entrance, but we’ll open the doors to everyone before the talks start. Ignite is free.

The schedule for the evening will be:

7:30 – Doors Open; Entry is for anyone with Conference or Expo Plus Pass holders
8:15 – Entry for Anyone
8:30 – First Set of Speakers

• Danny O’Brien (EFF) Don’t Push Me Cos I’m Close To The Edge
• Raven Hanna (MadeWithMolecules)- Science of Love
• Thor Muller (GetSatisfaction) – We’re all Collapsitarians Now!
• Veronica Belmont (Tekzilla) – Make Your Business a Meme
• Michael Galpert (Aviary) – Images on the internets may appear realer than they are
• Aaron Rowe (Wired Science) – SARS, Drugs, and Biosensors
• Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation) – Mr Hacker Goes to Washington

9:15 – Break

9:45 – Second Set of Speakers

• Jeff Veen (Small Batch Inc.) – “Great Designers Steal”
• Violet blue (Tiny Nibbles) – Open Source Everything
• Brian Malow (Science Comedian) – Hydrogen and Helium
• Heather Gold (the Heather Gold Show)- How to Get a Lesbian Pregnant
• Lisa Katyama (Tokyo Mango) -Japanese Tech Culture: Demystifying “Weird” Japanese Toys and Tools
• Romi Mahajan (Ascentium) – The Consumer Experience is DEAD
• Jer Faludi (Faludi Design) – Priorities for a greener world: If you could design anything, what should you do?
• Jen Bekman (20×200) – Overcrowded- How Crowd-sourcing is ruining everything.
• Mat Honan (Barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com) – Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle

I hope to see you there. You can RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.

If you can’t make it to this Ignite perhaps one of these other ones will fit your schedule:

• Ignite Salt Lake City #2 – Thursday, March 26th (more info)
• Ignite Web in Sydney Australia – Tuesday, April 1st (more info)
• Ignite Cardiff #2 – Wednesday, April 8th (more info)
• Ignite Bloomington – Thursday, April 16th (more info)
• Ignite Santa Fe – Wednesday, April 29th (more info)
• Ignite Seattle #6 (tentative) – Wednesday, April 29th (more info will be forthcoming after we inspect the venue)
• Ignite Baltimore #3 – June 25th (more info)

If you don’t live in a place with an Ignite start your own! Check out our community site for more information.

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!