[feedback20] Last feedback entries tagged with nov 6th

"Algorithmic Business Strategies - If everything's being uploaded and shared..." by Mercedes Bunz

Mercedes Bunz — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:13:43 GMT

Google's commercial success is based on the idea of identifying a variety of factors, from text analysis to human interest, and use them as variables in a giant mathematical equation that generates billions of revenue, widely known as AdSense. But how would a traditional corporation look like when it'd work like AdSense? Will we offshore intelligence to machines? What are the opportunities and threats? What happens when the whole world, from culture to politics become financial markets driven by algorithms?

A joint state-of-the-art review of a new breed of businesses relying on mathematical models, potential scenarios how this approach will become mainstream and what this might mean to you and your business.

Speakers :
-- Dirk Baecker
-- Tom Fuerstner
-- Jean-Paul Schmetz
-- Sean Park

"Trends in E-Commerce" by Andreas Weigend

Andreas Weigend — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 19:05:29 GMT

E-commerce vendors used to try to control the customer and their shopping experience. Now, consumers are rapid acquiring new ways of searching, discovering and purchasing new items, both consciously and subconsciously. The vendor has lost control, the customer is in control, no longer the passive target, but the active discoverer of your company, and, of course, of your competitors.

While consumers used to search for products manufacturers’ sites or Amazon.com, search engines have become the starting point, exposing the user to a plethora of opinions, reviews, ads and recommendations for alternative products.

Many points along the trajectory of creating and refining product space awareness influence the eventual purchase. As increasingly more individuals express their interests on the web readily to their friends and to people with similar interests, a more serendipitous trend of discovering new items through social recommendations has emerged.

This trend can be observed in several places. In social networks such as Facebook, people see what items their friends have purchased or are interested in, and in specialized social shopping sites such as ThisNext.

The important underlying trend is that very little of the search and discovery process happens on the actual e-commerce site. It is no longer about customer acquisition and capture! Moving onto the perspective of running an e-commerce operation, many of the technologies required to power e-commerce operations (content management, payment, A/B testing, CRM, bandwidth, storage etc) are being commoditized and today readily available as services.

Companies now need to focus on their data strategy: What data should be published on the site itself to create a better user experience and enhance the success of the store? Should it be revealed that there are only two seats left on a flight at a certain price? And how can technologies such as AJAX help both the business and the shopper?

With the rapid uptake of social media, the notion of the standalone sites has been disappearing. E-commerce sites now have the potential of being represented across the web. Data strategies now include widgets to replicate the company’s presence on blogs and profiles of individuals. What APIs should companies create that encourage third party developers to create applications that will benefit both developers and customers, and thus also the company?

What does it mean for e-commerce to become “social media friendly”?

Speakers :
-- Andreas Weigend
-- Mehrdad Piroozram

"Building Web 2.0: Next-Generation Data Centers" by Artur Bergman

Artur Bergman — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:56:01 GMT

Modern web developers have a broad range of delivery platforms to choose from. Gone are the days when servers, racks, and cooling were the only option.

Today's web platforms can be completely virtualized, using third-party infrastructure and robust services; or they can run client-side in browsers with only minimal hardware at the core. And they can run in a wiring closet, or out of a drop-ship container.

This session looks at the advantages and shortcomings of web platforms, from turnkey services and virtual appliances to storage containers and old-school racks.

Speakers :
-- Werner Vogels
-- Philipp Huber
-- Mike Tobin

"Community Practices: From Forums to Social Networks" by Bjoern Negelmann

Bjoern Negelmann — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 18:47:36 GMT

The idea of building communities around products and brands is not new, but the rise of social networks and the advent of Web 2.0 have changed your customers' expectations of online communities.

At the same time, marketers have new tools for building connections not only with the brand but also among members of the community, and for fostering and engaging in the market conversation.

What are the key success factors in developing and cultivating communities? What tools are available? How can marketers understand brand management in the context of active online communities?

Speakers :
-- Konstantin Sixt
-- Bjoern Negelmann
-- Christian Clawien
-- Nils Andres

"Coding on the Shoulders of Giants" by Matt Biddulph

Matt Biddulph — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:14:07 GMT

New websites don't exist in a vacuum any more. Users expect integration with the broad platform of Web 2.0.

Taking examples from the Ruby on Rails implementation of Dopplr (the social network for frequent travellers) this talk will show developers how to:
* Import social networks from popular sites like GMail, Twitter and Livejournal
* Integrate with Facebook
* Create and consume people and event data using Microformats
* Use OpenID not just for login but also to aggregate user information from OpenID providers like AIM and Livejournal
* Work with OAuth, the emerging open standard for API authentication

"Blogs, Social Networks and Podcasts: Corporate Communications 2.0" by Oliver Nitz

Oliver Nitz — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:10:41 GMT

Today's successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos - even Twitter and Jaiku - to reach customers, employees, and shareholders.

Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?

In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.

Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.

"An Overview of Badges and Widgets: The Fast Rise of Viral Web Parts" by Dion Hinchcliffe

Dion Hinchcliffe — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:07:56 GMT

Increasingly, turning the high-value content and functionality of a web site into user distributable web parts that can be hosted anywhere else on the web is becoming a key adoption strategy for Web 2.0 applications.

These informal web parts, often known as badges, widgets, and gadgets are gaining popularity as the Do-In-Yourself phenomenon grows on the Web, where everyday users can copy and paste their favorite pieces of the Web into their own blogs, "spaces," and web sites to bring together the content and functionality they care about.

When built correctly, these portable visual elements can spread virally and sites like YouTube have taken their video badge nearly to an art form when it comes to having tens of millions of users helping broaden their distribution and enable network effects.

This session explores the state-of-the-art in badges and widgets, what the industry leaders are doing, the different ways they can be built including key design characteristics for mass distribution and uptake.

Attendees should have a basic understanding web protocols and standards to get the most from this session.

"The Beauty in Standards" by Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:04:37 GMT

It's been several years since web standards were championed by designers and developers alike. But even now, the majority of web sites and web services aren't standards-compliant or fully accessible.

If you want your content or services searched and consumed by millions of web and mobile users, designing and developing with standards isn't an option - it's a necessity.

Learn how to implement standards across browsers, platforms and devices, and hear from experts on how semantics help web sites, search engines, and ultimately, people.

"Short on Cycles, Long on Storage" by Simon Wardley

Simon Wardley — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:01:46 GMT

Utility computing takes the ideas of utility energy provision and applies it to the world of IT, so that companies buy computing resources in much the same way that they buy electricity - charged according to metered usage. This market is growing, and will continue to grow in three distinct areas - SaaS, FaaS and HaaS.

It heralds in a new way of operating on the web, benefiting developers by reducing "yak shaving", business by reducing non-strategic costs and it may even benefit Ducks.

This session covers the concepts, economics, technologies, players, benefits and pitfalls as well as the future development of this field. It also explains what this might mean to those who work in IT, how the relationship between IT and Business will change, how new markets should form and why Ducks matter.

"Mining Social Data for Fun and Insight" by Toby Segaran

Toby Segaran — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:58:55 GMT

Huge sets of data are generated every day by people using online applications, whether they're blogging, shopping, or just clicking on links. Many techniques for analyzing and interpreting these datasets exist in the fields of data-mining and machine learning, making it possible to use this data to draw new conclusions and build predictive models.

This talk will use this idea to explore some analyses of how bloggers and buyers cluster together, what message boards tell us about psychographics, predictive models for hotness and home prices, and other insights that can be gleaned from publicly available data.

I'll show you the way the data was collected, an overview of how the algorithm works, and some results.

"Google API: OpenSocial" by Patrick Chanezon

Patrick Chanezon — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:21:33 GMT

On November 6th, Google launched the OpenSocial API. This API is designed to let application developers create their apps once and have it applied to all social networks.

In this session learn about the new APIs, what they provide access to (profile, storage, and activity), their GData counterparts, and what sites will be accepting them.

"Metaverse Marketing: Games and Virtual Worlds in Product Promotion" by Sebastian Kuepers

Sebastian Kuepers — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:15:45 GMT

Analysts tell us that the market for in-game and virtual world advertising is expected to grow by a factor of ten in the next five years. But this is still a new frontier and marketers are confused about what's required to reach audiences in these worlds and what they can expect from investing in this area.

We'll look at the most common and the most creative approaches to reaching these cyber-citizens, highlight common pitfalls, and discuss how to measure the effectiveness of these programs.

"Designing for a Web of Data" by Tom Coates

Tom Coates — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:13:41 GMT

Design patterns for brochureware and editorial sites are well-established. In fact, they’re so simple and formulaic that even waterfall development processes can churn them out.

A producer has an idea, a designer mocks it up in Photoshop and then client-side types and engineers go all agile on its ass. But what happens when you’re pushing into web apps or social media? What happens when an absence of hierarchy makes left-hand navigation redundant? What do you do when design practice blurs into URLs and data structures, and where your service breaks the frame of the browser and start appearing in hardware, in desktop applications or on other people’s sites?

In this session, Tom will talk about new literacies that designers need to build things that are native to a web of data, the blurring and interplay between designers and developers and what it means to rapidly iterate in small multi-disciplinary teams to find the heart and soul of a new concept.

"Ajax Security" by Joe Walker

Joe Walker — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:11:08 GMT

The security landscape has changed dramatically in the past 12 months.

Unless you are aware of Intranet Hacking, CSRF, Javascript Highjacking, and the many ways to fool an XSS filter, it's likely that your web application will not be secure.

Attackers used to concentrate on ActiveX, but now Javascript, CSS and even simple HTML elements have are used against websites.

This session will outline the challenges facing the inhabitants of this strange world called 'Web 2.0' and the options for protection, both from the point of view of site owners, and web users.

"Web 2.0 Performance and Reliability: How to Run Large Web Apps" by Artur Bergman

Artur Bergman — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:08:14 GMT

You build your application, hopeful to gain a large audience. You follow other peoples advice on how to make it run fast, but do you know how to keep it running fast; or keep it running at all.

Covering monitoring, performance analysis, EC2 & S3 and disaster recover it tries to show you how to lay the proper foundation, while still being small and nimble, so that when you grow large you can continue to run.

"Twice the Speed and Half the Cost: Interaction Design for Fast-paced Startups" by Gregor Hochmuth

Gregor Hochmuth — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:55:06 GMT

Good design is much more than good looks: it translates what your users really need into the product they’ll want to use and love. For many startups however, “design" remains a mystery and an expensive art: they often think that they don’t have the time, money or expertise while they underestimate the impact that good design would have on their product. But going through the process doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated - and good design always starts simple.

This session will cover the essentials of interaction design methods and specific adaptations that have proven successful at several tight-ship startups: how to go from research through defining your users and iterative validation, all the way to launch and continuous improvement - while always keeping it simple, quick and cheap. Your users will love it and your release schedule, too.

"Opening the Social Graph" by David Recordon

David Recordon — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:52:09 GMT

As you move from one social network to another, you're forced to re-declare not just your profile, but to find all of your friends all over again. Freely giving away the username and password to your online email address book has become a modus operandi when joining any new online service.

Fortunately open standards and technologies can help to solve this problem. OpenID is already taking root and helping to put control of your identity online back into your hands,

Microformats make it easy to exchange profile information in a standard fashion, and new technologies like OAuth allow for richer integration between services in a more secure and user mediated fashion. Each social network consists of people and relationships, making up a small part of the entire social graph spanning the 6.6B people in the World.

Shouldn't technology help you move your relationships between services as well? With a bit of glue between these standards, this is becoming increasingly possible with many companies and services working to make it a reality.

"Business Models for Web 2.0 Companies" by Christian Leybold

Christian Leybold — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:46:37 GMT

Make traffic, not money - that seems to be the mantra of many Web 2.0 sites. Yet, as many VC-backed companies start to explore exit opportunities, successful execution of the business model is key.

So how do you translate consumer adoption into hard dollars? Network effects are probably the single most important driver for the remarkable success of Web 2.0 properties...can these be used to fuel the revenue generation engine, and how?

Are the low CPM troubles of social networks a sign that advertising is not the solution? And what kind of content do consumers actually pay for? Where are the trade-offs between the different models?

These and other questions will be answered, along with a look at the current market situation and the future of monetization on the web.

"We Build Our Tools And They Shape Us: How Lifestreaming Is Shaping Web Culture" by Stowe Boyd

Stowe Boyd — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:43:15 GMT

New applications like Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, and Pownce have rapidly emerged as the leaders in the exploding lifestreaming niche.

This networked form of communication has been compared to talking on a partyline, and the flow of updates, insights, and recommendations is having a big impact on how people perceive web sociality.

What are the long-term impacts of this new medium on media, business, and society?

"Moving from 1.0 to 2.0: Philosophies and Structures for Change" by Fred Oliveira

Fred Oliveira — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:31:59 GMT

The 2.0 web world is more than just embedded technology - it is a philosophy.

Companies who embrace this thinking are more flexible, agile, and innovative in their strategy and approach, but moving in this direction means rethinking structure, management style, workflow, and culture.

How teams are structured, educated, and implemented in your organization is key. Are you a design firm, individual freelancer, or corporation trying to migrate past 'old-school' thinking and move yourself, management, or team into a more progressive era?

Come hear how others have made innovation a priority - through carefully guided leadership and an environment that fosters creative thinking and collaboration.

Speakers :
-- Leisa Reichelt
-- Fred Oliveira
-- Matt Patterson

"Microformats a Web of Data" by Brian Suda

Brian Suda — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:20:56 GMT

Microformats allow you to extend the limited semantics of HTML, thus allowing for a richer web of data. By embedding microformats into HTML it is possible to use the semantic meaning to extract unambiguous data from the web that can then be used in other applications.

Microformats focus on how people are already publishing their data online. This session focuses on the more technical aspects of microformats, how they interact with other Semantic Web technologies such as GRDDL and SPARQL, along with a look at browser plugins to detect microformats and browser integration.

"Marketing 2.0: Get Conversational!" by Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:17:40 GMT

There may be dozens of tools and technologies associated with Web 2.0 marketing, but underpinning all of them is a shift in philosophy, and one that requires a rethinking of many of the cornerstones of traditional marketing. Up for discussion are such basic principles as message control, data collection, and customer segmentation.

How do we benefit when we start to think of markets as conversations and reconsider transparency, customer loyalty, and access? How do we integrate conversational marketing with existing marketing programs and infrastructure? What does this mean in practice to Get Conversational?

Speakers :
-- Kathy Sierra
-- Ayelet Noff
-- Wolfgang Luenenbuerger
-- Darryl Feldman

"Killing the Org Chart: Organizational, Cultural and Leadership Models" by Soren Stamer

Soren Stamer — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 13:13:09 GMT

Self-organizing teams, transparency, and leaderless organizations have captured the imagination of the business community, but the paradigm of traditional hierarchy still dominates. What seems to hold us back are the huge unknowns of change: what happens when you restructure around these new principles?

This session describes CoreMedia's adventures in tossing out their organizational chart, redefining roles and teams, and decentralizing decision-making. They have defined personnel and technical management as discrete areas, and all staff members are assigned to one of the three Competence Centers. The directors of these centers give staff regular feedback, foster personal development, manage the career models and also oversee the assignment of staff to projects based on their specialist skills. Projects themselves are offered as "invitations to tender" and in regular "Waterhole meetings" any member of the staff can present an idea to work on. These are just a few examples of the structures of this self-organized company. They've made some bold moves and have real-world results to share with you. But one result upfront - creativity has boosted throughout the company.

The second part of the session is an open discussion with attendees about what has worked in other organizations and the challenges and benefits of evolving and/or revolutionizing your organization. Attendees will receive the results of research on Enterprise 2.0 acceptance, challenges and tools in German companies.

Additional Speaker : Nicole Dufft