Web 2.0 Expo 2007

The day started early at 8:30am with the Keynote. Jeff Weiner from Yahoo was first up with John Battelle to talk about the future direction of Yahoo. Not much there we don’t already know, except that Yahoo’s 1Q profit was not as spectacular as the Wall St guys would hope. Weiner justified it by saying that better quarters are yet to come. Maybe it was too early for John, or maybe he partied late last night, his performance yesterday with Eric was better.

The other parts of the keynote was so-so. I think there wasn’t really much to the discussion on Web 2.0 for the Enterprise, at least nothing new there for me. The panelists exhorted the fact the Web 2.0 apps do not need to be installed when new versions come out. To corporations, this is really not the big issue. More critical are really cost, features, support and security. If the Web Apps are backed by the industry gorillas like IBM or Microsoft, perhaps corporations will bite.

The ignite speakers were alright – I particularly like the last one, I think the company’s name is Potenta, which invented a human-powered device for third-world countries. Happiness talk’s point was moot, and Open Source Hardware was too kiddish, plus it’s subject matter on weapons was off in view of VTech incident on Monday, but the presenter did a good job clarifying before she started. Oh yes, the forgettable talk on 4-day-work-week didn’t do much for me – sounded like some kind of self-help inspiration guru half-baked.

Of all, Joost P2P TV demo was pretty cool – I think it could be a hit when it is launched.

I choose the following sessions today:

• From Desktop to Device: Designing the Ubiquitous Mobile Experience. Sling Media did a demo (nothing new) showing streaming video on Palm, rerouted from the home STB. Zenzui showed of their cross-arrow slick sliding interface for the mobile phone – it’s cool in the beginning, but — Does it work on all devices? Is it a one-trick pony?
• Web 2.0++: Why We Got Here and What’s Next. Rolf Skyberg from eBay presented in Black and White Lawrence Lessig-style in 495 slides! His key point was that Web 2.0 has now become an ‘approachable investment’ – cheap enough for anyone to put up information and make it a rich information resource for all. I guess the question that begs is whether such approachable investment would have returns or not? I suppose small risk, small reward? I look forward to download his slides when it is ready.
• Immersive Experience Lessons from Game Designers. Raph Koster had some wild ideas — and I like them. One point he had — “Older men act like women” — I laughed. I suppose that’s true when it comes to gaming, in real life too? Maybe some men. Koster gave about 35 disconnected tips from game designers that ‘may or may not’ apply to interactive interfaces – he dished out the ‘law of 150′ and other goodies, said that we should consider human behavior / sociology when designing interactive content, and declared that avatars are really masks / alternate personality of the gamer, etc. Good stuff.
• Reality Bites: The Future of Gaming + Virtual Worlds 2.0. This was a panel session, which also included Koster. I thought Koster trying to make his point to the host about the fact that everything, gaming or not, could be addictive, was funny. Poor host, I could almost see her tearing. Come now, Koster, it’s not really serious was it? It was a good session with the panelists showing WOW, Club Penguin and Gaia Online, and predicting the rise of virtual gaming. There will be a lot of VC buzz in this one I bet. Lot of people went up to chat with them after the session ended.
• Embracing the Swirl: eCommerce in the 2.0 Era. Kip Voytek from R/GA spoke at length about how the traditional marketing mantra of AIDA (Aware, Inform/Influence, Decide/Desire, Action) flow of selling may need some ‘hacking’ when Web 2.0 is concerned. The Is and Ds are now much larger in scope, and are fragmented into a swirling pattern as buyers goes offline and online, swinging between the I and the D in unpredictable ways. Cool thoughts.

This ends the write-up to Web 2.0 Expo 2007. I haven’t got the chance to talk about the Exhibits, but the show floor was always busy, buzzing with activity.

Thanks to the organizers, all in all, a very rewarding time and a great expo. I learned a lot – there is a lot more to Web 2.0 as it evolves. I really hope to come again next year – I think the platform will be a lot more mature as time rolls on.

I have had a very full day. My backpack is full too, stuffed with free XL oversized t-shirts. (How come all the booths run out of L size so quickly?)

Internet connection throughout the day was not good. It was spotty at best. I got booted out from Wifi a few times -and had to close my laptop in frustration – forcing me back to the session at hand. No prize for guess if the talk was boring when I was doing this.

Nevertheless, there were a few gems I managed to catch.

First up during the Keynote was Swivel – the startup that is trying to visualize unprocessed data in a more meaningful way. He took boring UN published data in book form and grabbed other numbers from alternate sources to generate interesting and comparative graphs. As a result, he could relate, say, bankruptcy rate in the US with the decreasing savings of households. I think this will be interesting to businesses, governments and organisations that need data mining. It is really a very interesting industry.

Talking about data, Hitwise’s GM Bill Tancer gave a fascinating talk, showing some of the deep data that he harvested from his company’s service. Yelp seems to be up and coming, in terms of popularity. The blogging trends presented by David Sifry, CEO of Technorati, are also very interesting. He says a lot of people are blogging during work hours, and the Japanese are the most avid bloggers in the world. Disclaimer: the former doesn’t necessarily relate to the latter. I took shots of all the slides to take home for further analysis.

The climax of the Keynote today belonged to the interview with Eric Schmidt. I have got to take my hats off to John Battelle. He asked some killer questions. Battelle really dug in as Schmidt was probed if Google Apps is in direct competition with MS Office, and why would Google buy up a company that chase after ads that ask users to ‘hit the monkey’? (For those who doesn’t know, Google bought over DoubleClick just last week.) My overall take from Schmidt is that Google is pursuing markets on three areas: collaboration, local ads and mobile. Schmidt seems to be a very nice, mild mannered guy — and Battelle is probably the most qualified interviewer for Google. He is now my favourite talk-show host, if he does ever make it to TV land. I really enjoyed the chat.

The sessions I attended ranged from average to very good. I chose the following:

• Case Study: Digging into the Technology Behind the Development of Digg. Tim Byrne, one of the senior engineers, shed light on how Digg began its humble beginnings with just $2K, and through the power of the word-of-mouth and a no me-too mentality, rose from a hosted service company to one that now powers 100+ LAMP servers. Digg looked at market examples like Slashdot, and saw the potential in under-represented news. As a result, they decided to ‘fill the injustice’, so to speak. It was a really inspiring story.
• Moving from 1.0 to 2.0 Philosophies and Structures for Change. The room was overflowing for this panel talk. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who wants to understand what really is the mindset change behind web 2.0. I think what’s more important is to know how to influence the people I work with or work for the philosophies behind web 2.0, for it is really a paradigm shift from web 1.0 mindset.
• Rich with Reach. I wanted to learn more about Adobe Apollo, but was a little disappointed that there was not much in this session that I already not know. I got some useful sites that I will monitor for great upcoming Apollo apps, like RocketSlides and Buzzword.
• Mission Possible: A Web 2.0 company with a Revenue Model. John Witchell, CTO of Prosper, could be a stand-up comedian in his own right. He dished out funny anecdotes but at the same time made his point clearly. He admitted that he was doing quite a bit of ’sermonizing’, but I thought he justified it by making some really good and poignant points. Web 2.0 is really not about the technology, Witchell stressed, it’s about the people. And to make his point, he showed slides of empty YouTube and Yelp sites. Thanks John, my eyes were opened. I think I understand what Web 2.0 really is all about now.

This morning’s Wifi connection at the Expo is much better. Connection was a lot easier. Hopefully this will be so for the rest of the day.

The sessions started earlier this morning at 8:30am. I attended the first talk of the day by eBay’s Billingsley on The Future of eCommerce. The Internet penetration for GDP of different regions of the world was enlightening. North America, Europe and Oceania are still the places in the world that will have most Internet money for the next five years, Billingsley thinks. Asia, even with the population strength of China, has a long way to go – primarily cultural issues – payment over the net is still considered ‘untrustworthy’. Trust is the key issue. As for the business model, opening the core services of eBay as APIs for developers to extend the site is the way forward.

Keynote part 2 is about to start.

Seems like our giant in Redmond is throwing down the gauntlet to compete with Adobe’s Apollo. Really, Adobe is already in this space for 15 years. Besides, designers hate Windows and Silverlight apps will only work on Windows. Is it not hard to see who will win?

Apollo is still buggy though. Installed the Alpha on my laptop. It didn’t crash, but apps aren’t working 100%. We’ll see.

OK, today is the official Day 1 of the Expo. Wifi has been hard to connect. When I looked around there was a least 30 people staring at their screens. I think they were doing the same thing – trying to connect to the net.

There were 3 sessions slots before the keynote in the morning. I chose the following:

• Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Transforming Traditional Media – a panel discussion by 3 panelists from Technorati, VFlyer and TechMeme. The sound wasn’t so good, so most of the conversation was lost behind the mike. But the gist was that Old Media is going to die and Community-generated media 2.0 is going to take over. I really couldn’t see the logic. Quality journalism and information still has value, and people are willing to pay for it.
• Profit from the Long Tail by Tapping the Invisible Crowd – Jack Jia from Baynote.com spoke, and I thought is the best among the three. At least he dished out interesting information about capturing the long tail and the wisdom of the crowd. I think I’ll try to read his book recommendations.
• Going Beyond Mobile Web Browsing with Web Run-Time – Nokia presented this one – basically aiming its S60 operating system’s new feature of mobile widgets at the developers. Quite interesting, but platform is limited. Not many mobile phones will support this. The problem with mobile industry is that everyone wants to be a Microsoft, at the end, none is.

I was a little disappointed at the Keynote. Jeff Bezos was basically pitching Amazon’s Web Services. I thought he would come in and saying something visionary about the future of the Web. I suppose money is still everything in the Internet world.

The panel discussion on Built to Last or Built to Sell: Is There A Difference? was quite good. John Battelle the host did a good job by asking some ‘tough’ questions. I like Joe Krauss’s answers. At least I think he was honest, but I’m sure he’s rich by now after JotSpot.com was acquired by Google.

Adobe Apollo. Whizbang! Wow, I was blown away. The demo was really impressive. I think most of the audience, at least those who have not seen it, must have their jaw dangling. I must download the alpha and try it. It’s bring web technology and development to the desktop. I am impressed.

LaunchPad was boring, except for Spock, which is a people search engine.  The demo was cool.

The expo floor opened at 4:30pm.  There was a rush of people for t-shirts and goodies.  Lots of buzz.  Very happening.

I will report more on the booths tomorrow when I get a better look at them.  So far, I have already got a couple companies I think I would want to contact after the show…