Web 2.0 Expo CFP Extended One-Day; Now Closes 10/9

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 0

Because of the emails, IMs, and phone calls asking about late submissions to Web 2.0 Expo SF we've decided to leave the CFP open an extra day. So if you wish to speak you'll be glad to know that the CFP for Web 2.0 Expo SF will be open until October 9th.

We use this Call For Participation to find speakers for our sessions and tutorials. With the of help our committee, my co-chair Jen Pahlka and I select the content that will best service the attendees. Your submission should clearly answer the following questions: "How will this session will benefit the attendee?", "What will they learn?" and "Why are you the person to speak on it?". Including a brief outline of your talk shows us you've thought this through. These are the tracks we are trying to fill (with an abbreviated set of questions):

Main Conference Tracks (approximately 13 sessions each)

• Strategy & Business Models
  What are the critical and key strategies for building Web 2.0 businesses, platforms and business models? What should attendees be preparing for during the downturn? How can they compete in Asia and European markets?
• Marketing & Community How can a company best use its web marketing dollars? What's the best and most manageable way of using social media to interact with your customers? What's the latest magic behind SEO and SEM? How can you protect your brand online?
• Design & User Experience
  How do we bring the skills that have served us well for the past several years to mobile devices? How do the expectations of your users change when they're interacting with you on the go? How do you meet -- if not exceed them? This track looks at the technical concepts, process innovations, design patterns, and frameworks that inform today's web applications, from the perspective of user experience and interaction design.
• Fundamentals
  We'll discuss the state of the art and the relevant open questions around the building blocks of Web 2.0: user-generated content, tagging, collective intelligence, co-development with your users, licensing, policy, identity, trust, transparency and data ownership and access. This track is designed to help those newer to the Web 2.0 understand how to bring the core concepts of Web 2.0 together to deliver a great web application.
• Development
  The Web has shown us a new way of building and releasing software. Moving at lightspeed is expected. Lightweight frameworks with support for standards and interactivity are the chosen weapons of the day. This track is for experienced programmers looking to improve their understanding of the technical ecosystem --what's baked now and what's lurking below the radar.

Focus Tracks (approximately 5 sessions each))

• Web Operations
  Web Operations are critical to every organization that depends on the web for revenue. Sessions will cover infrastructure automation, scaling Rails and LAMP stacks, virtualization and cloud computing, caching, load balancing, monitoring, and more.
• Mobile
  The mobile web has been been undergoing a dramatic evolution, with the prevalence of the iPhone, Android and forthcoming Blackberry platforms. This track looks at the technical, business, design and marketing aspects of mobile web applications.
• Security
  It should be no surprise that as Web 2.0 hits the mainstream, security issues move into the spotlight. This track looks at technical, design and business aspects of security, from the assumption that true security is not a question of code alone.
• Entertainment
  Games, videos, and other digital content are finding forms of expression as media mash up, brands become content providers, and the social web looks more and more like a big game every day. With unparalleled engagement and monetization metrics, what do other Web 2.0 developers have to learn from the innovators in the online entertainment space?

Looking for other way's to participate? This year's Expo we will be reprising the Web2Open (our onsite unconference) and Launchpad (a startup judging contest). More details for each program will come later.

Web 2.0 Expo SF Launchpad: Six New Startup Stars

by Dave McClure | comments: 4

This year's Launchpad at Web 2.0 Expo SF features six new Web 2.0 startups that have captured our interest and attention:

1. Acquia
2. Triggit
3. Chirp Interactive
4. Oortle
5. JobScore
6. TradeVibes

Here's a brief description of each of these cool new companies:

Acquia is an open source software company providing products and services for the wildly popular Drupal social publishing system. At Acquia, we believe that open source development and social publishing technology have the power to connect people and unleash their collective creative potential in order to achieve great things.

Triggit makes it quick and easy for web publishers to monetize their sites with advertising. Using a cross platform web application, publishers can now drag and drop ad units directly into their pages, optimize efficacy and track the results. Triggit takes the pain out of monetization.

Chirp Interactive (www.chirp.com) creates solutions that help you discover relevant and interesting friends, content, and information that helps you stay connected with your friends and derive value from your relationships. Our first product, chirpscreen, helps you discover and share the content you care about. The items displayed can range from photos and messages from your friends, to items you may want to purchase, to public pictures on topics of interest. We source this content from sites like Facebook, Flickr, eBay and Twitter to provide you with an engaging, interactive display of content that you can easily share with friends.

Oortle enables people to share rich media with each other in real-time, using their existing social networks & connections. Oortle's "synchronous web" applications span social networks and take user engagement to the next level. Our first product Photophlow has been praised as a live version of Flickr, and has demonstrated a dramatic increase in user engagement on Flickr photos with its chat, social search and synchronized photo viewing. Today we are also demoing our second product Videophlow, an application for sharing & watching YouTube videos in real-time with your friends.

JobScore empowers employers to recruit cooperatively. Today, companies spend billions of dollars recruiting online, only to disqualify and discard virtually every resume they receive. The JobScore Network makes it easy for you to efficiently build your own candidate pipeline and zero in on qualified job applicants. Then, you can share resumes with other employers, exchanging your un-hired resumes for qualified, interested candidates. JobScore is a win-win: we privately connect your un-hired candidates with similar jobs and offer you on-demand access to the qualified people you need.

TradeVibes is the best way to discover and research hot new startups online. It's a platform for our community to share, discuss, and evaluate information about these companies. TradeVibes is also a tool for finding and sharing news and opinions about companies. By using the collective wisdom of our community, TradeVibes separates the best startups from their competitors. Here is a link to a TradeVibes product video screencast. TradeVibes was founded in 2007 by four early employees of PayPal who shared a passion for entrepreneurship and cool new startups.

The crowd will be discussing the Launchpad on Meebo starting at 1:30 PM PST.

[disclosure: dave mcclure is an advisor/investor in 2 of the startups listed above: Oortle & TradeVibes. LaunchPad startup selections were made by our VC judging panel, not by either of the conference co-chairs brady forrest or dave mcclure]