My tweet on the keynote screen at Web 2.0 Expo

Today, I attended the final day of Web 2.0 Expo.See day 1 and 2 comments. Many of the presentation files are available.

General comments:

• I grabbed a picture of one of my tweets on the live tweet stream ( third tweet down on the graphic)
• Heather Gold referenced the live tweet stream a couple times and even mentioned one real time.
• The conference had a community manager responding problems. I think this was nice at an event about communities

Day 3 Keynotes

As always, the keynotes were fantastic. They were:

1. Heather Gold on conversational mechanics and the Yiddish word tummel – It means noisemaker or conversation starter. That’s the person who makes sure everyone is involved and has a good time at the party. As does Twitter, a tummeler helps you cross between worlds – who’s here; who’s not; how do I keep them energized?  You say what you think to start a conversation and get people to react to you.  For more see Heather’s site on “unpresenting.”
2. O’Reilly style interview with Beth Noveck – Hosted today by Tim O’Reilly. Beth is the Deputy (second in command) CTO for the federal government. On the first day of Obama’s administration he signed an executive order for the nation’s first CTO and CIO. He also launched a program for open government. The vision is more transparency. In practice this is more difficult.  We are not just talking blogs and wikis; we are making a shift. Open government gathers public feedback as they go: not at the end when finished and done. The first government meeting was promoted by word of mouth and 30 agencies showed up. Some answers to questions submitted in advance via twitter:
   • lobbyists should not be writing policy or be on Federal Advisor Committee
   • Web 2.0 style feedback will supplement the 2-3 year research paper
   • in Boston someone created an app in one hour for when the next T (train) is scheduled. New York tried to shut down a similar iPhone app before relenting. This culture needs to change to have truely open government
   • each agency needs an open government plan prioritizing releasing data with citizen engagement
   • experimentation should come first then push towards a standard best way
   • the government can create a data platform “innovation gallery” and share apps across states
   • a little town is running feedback in Web 2.0 way. If suggestion gets accepted, get points. Can redeem points for things like “mayor for a day” or “ride with police chief”

   More URLs for open government:

   • Apps.gov catalog of applications both publicly and privately developed
   • Public.resource.gov – “Liberate the data”
   • Data.gov not much data yet nut a starting point
3. Dennis Crowley introduced foursquare.  This six person startup created a mobile application that is a mix of a friend finder, city guide and game. As you go places, you “check in”.   The game gives you points, badges and you unlock things to try new things, meet new people and explore your city. It’s only available in a few cities but it’s a cute idea.   People get competitive and try to be “mayor” of their local coffeeshop by frequenting the most often. They should do an amazing race style thing in your city through this
4. Kevin Marks covered buzzwords to show how words crystallize an idea. Examples include:
   • flow – everything is connected to everything else
   • faces – powerful way to contextualize
   • phatic – grooming – may care what you had for breakfast if very close to you Really?  I’m not sure I need to know that.
   • following – both agree to be friends (facebook model) vs just following parasocially (twitter model)
   • small world networks – not random or grid; best when grid like with a few distant connections so info moves quickly
5. IBM discussed what a friend is worth – The idea is to unlock your network to find the right person to answer a question.  IBM says the value of an e-mail contact is $948.  Beware of statistics.  This doesn’t scale.  It also represents the cost of not having that communication channel.  They were scientific with a cited standard deviation of $26.  You have the most success when friends of friends are not in your network.
6. Microsoft marketed Azure – Azure is their cloud computing platform.  They do support a SDK for Java and Eclipse extensions recognizing the non-Microsoft world exists.
7. Gentry Underwood spoke about “Designing Web 2.0 – Here come the Antropologists” – Facebook is almost up to 400 million users – half of all active internet users yet is the equivalent of Windows 3.1 in interation design.   He showed the hillarious FaceBook in Reality video. Design ranges from low level (buttons) to the higher level sociology and anthropology (how people and cultures interact on the internet.)  As social technology grows, interactions change.  For example, flashmobs on twitter.  Gentry ended with explaining more interaction design is needed for multi-touch displays; in particular large ones.

Web 2.0 Open
I went to more sessions of Web 2.0 Open since I enjoyed them so much yesterday.  Interesting points and URLs from Web 2.0 Open:

Building your tribe

• Revolutionary ideas come from trying risky new ideas.  As adults we are afraid to try things because we have gotten burned.  For example, we no longer put our hand on things that might hurt us.
• Your twitter account is a channel of information.  We aren’t limited to the major TV channels anymore.
• In person social networks tend to decrease over time as people move, etc.  Work to keep them active.
• Facilitate the exchange of social capital – don’t be the guy who sits there without saying anything.
• The ghosts in pac man each have a specific strategy.  There is a spot on the map where the ghosts can’t find you because it is outside their strategies. Not relevant, but interesting.

Increasing your web presence for free or cheap

• Presence is interacting with people, reflects you as a company
• In 1997, FastCompany wrote “A Brand Called You.”  Turns out they were right.
• Have a permanent URL (best if not on wordpress/typepad domains so you control links forever)
• Check search status on Google, Yahoo and Bing – come preloaded as default with different operating systems and software
• Make it easy for people to verify who you are – cross link your twitter, blog, etc.
• Use pictures – people trust pictures.
• The sites to use are often country/region specific (Facebook in US, Orkut in Brazil, etc)
• Nobody has a good cross-twitter/FaceBook/Linked In/etc dashboard.  The closest just covers FaceBook and Linked In.
• Track your comments/mentions on blogs
• Set up Google news alert on your company name
• Set up RSS feed on twitter mentions of your company name
• Set up cotweet for group tweeting
• Look at gist for updates on specific business contents.
• See speaker/moderator’s blog for more.
• If you need to delete a site from Google’s index, see webmaster tools

The FTC’s new disclosure rules

• Go into effect: December 1st, 2009
• Summary as it affects me: Reveal if you got something or have a relationship with the review/endorsement.
• Other implications: Testimonials and endorsements must be representative of the average rather than the long tail, two standard deviations away case.  This affects the “results not typical” ads.
• No backward compliancy is needed because blog posts are dated.
• The FTC usually gives warning via a “cease and desist” letter.  If you aren’t following the new law properly or interpret it wrong by accident, you’ll likely get a chance to fix it.
• Thinks will see more characters/animals endorsing products so don’t have to give disclaimer that the actor hasn’t tried it.
• A good example of a book review disclaimer.
• disclosurepolicy.org – If you need a free generated disclosure policy for your blog
• cmp.ly – If you need a short disclosure for twitter.
• The speaker/moderator has an excellent blog post on the topic.  She also showed a nice graphic showing when the new rules apply to you.  If I can find it, I’ll add it as a comment.

And finally, Microsoft on HTML 5 support in IE 8 (and related comments)

• Microsoft claims it was a “myth-busting” talk and started out explaining how they shouldn’t be held accountable for IE 6 anymore.  It was a cute analogy – browsers are like milk – they should expire and go well with cookies.  They also pointed out IE 6 came out in 2001 before Firefox was born.
• IE 8 has both an IE 7 and IE 8 rendering engine.  They recommend testing with IE 6 through 8.
• For legacy sites, they recommend putting IE 7 emulation in the source.  For new sites, they recommending putting IE 8 emulation.  That way when IE 9 comes out, you don’t have to worry about backward compatibility.
• They didn’t say geolocation made it in.  Does that mean it isn’t there?
• They said everything covered today is in Firefox and Safari too.  Didn’t verify, but I assume it is true.
• They did say there are a lot of details to figure out on how it works.  aka future bugs
• DOM store – Store data in local store (across browser restart) or session store.  Up to 10 MB per site and 100 MB total.  Like local caching without cookies.
• Mutable DOM prototypes – See the link.  Microsoft explains it better than me.  They showed an example of adding a validInput property to all form fields.
• getElementsByClassName was not implemented in IE 8, but is coming – it is in HTML 5.  It’s also in jQuery of course so I wasn’t holding my breath.
• Data URL – Can inline images or binary data.  This looks useful as you can dynamically generate an image without having to store it in a file.
• AJAX Navigation – What gmail has been doing for years – hitting the back button works, but now built into onHashChange().
• XDM (Cross Domain Messaging) and XDR (Cross Domain Request) – Windows, frames and iframes can pass information even if from different sites.  Mentioned a security issue in Firefox and Safari – check before use. Seems useful for portlets so don’t have to go to server for every little thing.
• IE 8 Developer Tools – IE now has developer tools similar to Firefox/Firebug.  Old news to Firefox users.
• CSS 3 vertical text is implemented
• Microsoft Expression compares two browsers side by side and can overlay pixels to see where differs.  It is not a browser; it is a web design tool.  Free for comparing two versions of IE.  Paid version to include Firefox.  Requires Silverlight
• They didn’t mention ARIA support, but it’s my favorite feature in IE 8.

Note: I have not tried any of the URLs referenced in this post.  I am just blogging that I heard them mentioned at the conference and intend to try some.

IBM gave out candy if you tweeted (or didn't) #sweettweet. My tweet on top middle.

Today, I attended day two of Web 2.0 Expo. See day. While I didn’t attend the main conference on day 1, there are a couple comments in here about it.  Many of the presentation files are available.

Day 2 Keynotes

They had a live tweet stream of all items tagged #w2e.  Apparently on Tuesday people posted some less than appropriate things.  Edited to add link. Today the tweet stream was curated (are we in a museum?) and only appropriate ones showed on screen.  Or as the speakers said, the stream was censored.

1. There’s a #hashtag for that. – I had seen the swine flu part of The Onion speaker’s talk at a previous Ignite event.  It was still funny.  He gave many more examples.  Since this is a twitter topic, I’ll let you check out the speaker’s twitter page for more details.
2. How we get past “free” and learn to exchange value again – Douglas Rushkoff talked about how money was created as a scarce and controllable resource in the Middle Ages.  It continued through the Industrial Age so the rich could stay rich without “doing anything.”  Corporations support this currency system by extracting value.  He also talked about how if something is free, you must leverage what isn’t.  (Write for free; get paid to talk.)  Looking to the future, Douglas speculated about power being won by companies that index content or control the index and that the next big thing is a non-cash electronic payment system.
3. Making sense of Google Wave – After plugging her free preview PDF book The Complete Guide To Google Wave, Gina Trapani introduced Wave.  With that: she said, Wave:
   • is a protocol
   • is e-mail if e-mail were invented today (e-mail is a messaging paradigm based on postal mail)
   • does not strive to replace e-mail
   • is a collaboration tool
   • is meant for use in small groups of people you work with (public waves are overwhelming)
   • can have multiple clients like Twitter if someone writes them
   • does not support Internet Explorer – Google calls this “forward thinking” what’s forward about not supporting the most widely used browser?
   • targets power users, not “applications for dummies”
   • takes time to learn – like Photoshop
   • is too unstable to use for writing the PDF book not exactly a ringing endorsement
   • is good for threaded conversations
   • can show realtime movements on a map to others in your Wave
   • can easily start a group conference call when you need to go verbal
   • is currently in the invite only Beta.  Web 2.0 Expo attendees get an invite which comes with 10 invites. First 10 people to ask me for one get them.  I know I look forward to playing with it.
     
4. Beyond Facebook and Twitter – Anil Dash described a few lessons learned of Web 2.0 that governments are applying: wisdom of crowds, cloudes, every problem is a scaling problem and there are more experts outside than inside.”
5. Interview with John Barthwick from Betaworks – The classic O’Reilly style sit on the chairs interview.
6. Confessions of a public speaker -Scott Berken author of a book by the same name said public speaking is the original social medium.  He pointed to three timeless technologies (at least in techie circles) – talking, writing and beer – all of which provided areas for communication.  Before ending by suggesting an exercise (he suggesting asking “what’s the best story about your product” rather than listening to a marketing pitch”, he made three interesting comments:
   • You can tell a good or bad story with any technology.
   • Failures to communicate cannot be resolved by technology.
   • Technology can only get you so far.  “The world is pretending the breakthrough is in technology; the bottleneck is really in art.” – Penn Jillette

Birds of a Feather

I liked the Wednesday Birds of a Feather much more than the Tuesday ones.  I attended two sessions on both days.  Each day, one had a decent number of people and the other was almost empty.  However, the Wednesday ones had more of what I call “prepared discussion” while the Tuesday ones were more presentation driven.  Since the spirit of Birds of a Feather is supposed to be about discussion, I was surprised by the amount of presentation involved.

Web 2.0 Open

Like Birds of a Feather, Web 2.0 Open also focuses on participation over presentation.  I only attended one of their sessions today, but they did a great job.  There were a lot of people in the room, they were engaged and there were references to discussions earlier in the day.

Other things I learned at assorted talks or things I think were especially clever

• Open source is people getting together and doing something.  Crowdsourcing is a company trying to get people to do something for it.
• We all write for a living – e-mails, tweets, etc
• “Sending cat pictures to friends” is becoming a cliche.  I’ve been hearing about it for over a year now.  In case you haven’t heard about it – I can has cheezburger
• UX stands for user experience
• Sony Ericson has a phone/camera with facial recognition.
• “Social Mining” and “Sentiment Monitoring” are terms.  They are what they sound like.
• People may say bad things about your product whether you are on social networking sites or not.  The difference is you can respond/react properly
• Social media isn’t free.  It still takes time to market.
• Page views are an early matrix.  Financial metrics should be used for ROI which come after that.
• Facebook is starting to become profitable from ads.  Twitter is still leaking money.
• IBM talked about the “virtuous cycle or reuse” (aka positive feedback loop) – each mashup you create makes creating the next one faster due to more widgets in your catalog.  This seems like it applies to any type of common component.
• IBM shows how they use social networking on their own internet with live examples.
• Wolfram Alpha showed many interesting examples using their knowledge engine.
• If everyone gets a phone, do you wait for someone to mail you a letter?
• You can waste time with any technology – such as Minesweeper when PCs first had it.
• On Twitter, your popularity increases your credibility which increases your status.
• Four online behaviors are lurking (private), staying in touch (people you know), connecting (people you want to know) and brand building (very public)

Check back tomorrow for comments on the final day of Web 2.0 Expo.