Web 2.0 Expo Wrap-up

Below are a few highlights of the Web2.0 Conference in San Francisco April 15-18.

Web 2.0 is all about people, social networking, sharing, open standards, swift & agile development and community interaction. One presenter summarized it this way:
Web 1.0 - behemoth, over-engineered, proprietary, brochure-ware sites, resource guzzling. Think Hummer.
Web 2.0 - hybrid of efficient design with agile development, open technology, brainy, accessible, responsible. Think Toyota Prius.
There was a great deal of cool tools, widgets, mashups, platforms and technologies I learned about.

Keynote highlights:
Amazon.com: Jeff Bezos – Pitched Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) scalability model by showing his pet project, blueorigin.com.
Google: Eric Schmidt, UC Berkeley and I-House alum, did a Q&A style keynote with John Battelle. Announced Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Discussed DoubleClick purchase. Says biggest areas of growth are going to be in the mobile space. More detail.

“The people formerly known as the audience” and other themes
The major theme of web2.0 is people. Social Networking is obviously huge these days with the public and mainstream media referring to sites such as MySpace & FaceBook.
Placelessness - Mashups are sites or applications that combine content from more than one source - Plazes data, flikr slideshows, YouTube videos, etc.
Disruptive technology - innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market. Examples: TIVO gave us control over TV schedules; iPod gave us control over annoying radio station call letters & commercials; Wii gave us control over video games; Web2.0 gives us choices and control of our online experience.

Session Notes:
Community Evangelism: Tools & Techniques - Anil Dash, Deborah Schultz
Goal- to maintain a relationship on the web. Datestamps, permalinks and author's names on blogs are like social contracts. They provide accountability, a promise of "I will stay in touch." Fulfilling that promise is key.
A Community Evangelist is a customer advocate, educator, human face of the company, a connecter & curator of content, cross-functional - not just a marketer.
In this environment, its no longer 'buyer beware', but instead 'seller beware'. Wikipedia entries of companies list controversies - there was no place for this before. Be where your audience is, offer something of value, use what you've got.
The Tools: Blogs, wikis, chats, groups & forums, RSS, video, podcasts, social networking, email lists
Wikis - hosted: SocialText, Jotspot, PBwiki. Server based: Mediawiki, Instiki
Video - metacafe, google video, blip.tv, revver, photo bucket, YouTube
Feed Readers - hosted: Google reader, bloglines, My Yahoo, Rojo. Subscribe to (client based): Feed Demon, NewsGator
Make your content easy to find by using tags, social bookmarks, consistent vocabulary. Use same screen name across entire ecosystem.

The New Hybrid Designer - Kelly Goto, Chris Messina, Richard McManus
The web 2.0 developer is fluent in pulling all these open APIs together. A merge of designer and developer with a foot in both camps. You must accept that you dont know how output will look on the variety of mashups, platforms, readers etc. The benefit is extend your brand beyond your own block. New toolsets like Ruby on Rails, Drupal, Mozilla add-ons provide new ways to create and problem solve. There's a lower the barrier to entry so its a great time to be a developer. The "closed web" approach isn't good. Adobe Apollo and MS Silverlight promote proprietary environments. There is no way to view source.

Embracing the Chaos- Designing For and With Community – Mike Beltzner, Phenomenologist and User Experience Lead, Mozilla
1) Listen to the community – separate signal from noise
2) Lead your community
3) Let your community play and experiment
Educate – create small teams w/specific areas of focus.
37 % of code contributed to Firefox since 11/06 has come from the community.
Elevate discussions w/data whenever possible.
Treat disagreements as negotiations BATNA - Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.

Intro to Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing - Todd Friessen, Greg Boser
Tips:

• Do competitive research
• Good title tags, category info, meta desc has to be compelling
• Consistent info in page, H1 & alt tags
• Use keyword research tools to help define what you do. Google Base is free (for now)
• Full Bobby accessibility compliance will get you 80% SEO ready. Search bots need a good user experience too!
• Map URLs only to / not to the full ....jsp or .asp

Desiging for Web 2.0 - Luke Wroblewski
Great discussion & preso with eye-tracking demonstration, examples and tips from usability guru, Steve Krug. Details and other people's session notes here:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?520