Web Things Considered

This last Thursday and Friday was the annual WebVisions conference here in Portland. 2008 marks my 4th year in attendance, and I definitely look foward to it every year. You can’t beat the price, it’s one of the cheapest conferences around and with it being local, there’s really not much excuse not to come and check out at least a few sessions and a keynote. Plus it’s a great chance to catch-up with my local developer and entrepreneur friends and meet some new ones.

My main point of feedback for the organizers if they read this. PLEASE PUT KEYNOTES IN THE MORNING!

All in all, WV was pretty good, though it didn’t feel as inspiring as the last couple of years. After last year, I made sure to avoid the workshops. As far as the sessions go, I was entertained and picked up some great info and good tips to follow-up on, but nothing that made me want to carve out a day or so to really think through. I can’t quite figure out why exactly, but one thing that I noticed that I didn’t read a single live-blog or blog post during the conference, it never even occurred to me. That’s a major shift from years past. Why didn’t it occur to me? Make a guess, Twitter. In years past, reading about the conference, during the conference has always kept that mind-buzz going.

Twitter is now the primary forum for conference back channel and instant recaps. Only problem was, Twitter was down for a good portion of the conference, so there was little in terms of immediate response loop. The conversation has migrated from the blogosphere to Twitter, but when Twitter is down, the conversation dies.

Here’s a quick round-up of the sessions I attended. Slide decks for at least some of these available on SlideShare. Other roundups can be found on the Silicon Florist.

RSS: Bleeding Edge Tips and Tricks
I only caught the last half, and I’ve seen Marshall talk about RSS before, but even then I still managed to pick up some new ideas, a testament to Marshall’s ability to keep finding new ways to digest more information, faster.

Drupal: This Aint Your Father’s CMS
I’ve just picked up Drupal in the last couple months for a project at Strands and this was my first opportunity to hear about it and ask questions after having actually spend considerable time working on it. I missed most of the actual presentation, but there was lots of time for q & a which was well worth it. Plus, we got to learn a little bit about OpenSourcery, which was new to me.

Going Fast on the Slow Mobile Web
Great update to Jason’s talk in February at PDX Web Innovators. Cloud Four has been doing a lot of research on the performance capabilities of mobile phones, and a lot of that fresh new data was included here.

So You Want to Run a Startup
The startup story of SlideShare. This is my first time seeing Rashmi speak and I think it was a good session. Focus on metrics to measure success, understanding the size of your market, pros/cons of different business models, adapting plans to how the business/site/community take-off, and developing key advisors/investors. SlideShare is the poster child of web 2.0 in that it is a pure ad-based business model and its marketing strategy was to get on TechCrunch. They may just have been one of the few to succeed at that, as it they seem to growing nicely.

Star Wars Kid Is Your New Bicycle: The Changing Lives of Memes
Andy Baio’s talk attempting to identify how memes spread. This was definitely the most entertaining session, and I have to admit I hadn’t heard of a couple of the ones mentioned. But, I certainly remember Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa. Bottom line, I don’t think we can ever predict what’s going to truly go viral.

WebVisionary awards
I was excited to finally make it to an after party for WebVisions for the first time. This was a fun event and I managed to meet several tweeps for the first time. But, something that I’ve gotten used to with WebVisions, the online component of these awards is lacking (no nominees or winners listed as of now, but the lack of online presence is something that WV overall has struggled with to the point of giving up this year IMO, and this is a web conference). There was no transparency on nominees and with a couple multiple-award winners (Substance and Colour Lovers) I have to question the value of these awards. Not to take away from the winners, but with that, the apparent lack of nominees and the entry fee the awards just seemed kind of cheap. I suppose that’s why they rushed through them so fast. The ceremony itself was well done though.

The next couple weeks are going to be busy around these parts and just wanted to share some of the events I’m planning on attending.

WebVisions
Always one of my favorites and it’s cheap! Starts tomorrow.

Strands Portland Meet-up
Think Strands is all about Music and now Money? Think again. This meet-up will be a chance to preview the all new strands.com and meet more of the Strands team.

Portland Lunch 2.0 @ Vidoop
The Lunch 2.0 series continues at newly re-located to PDX Vidoop

Andy Baio talks side projects and acquisition at Portland Web Innovators
We’re thrilled to have Andy Baio, founder of Upcoming.org leading the discussion. Should be awesome!

Hard to believe it’s been 6 months since my last post, but what can I say, I’ve been busy! Not only have I been silent on this here blog, but for those that I have talked with over the last few months can attest, I haven’t talked a whole lot about what I’m working on. Today is the day I get to tell my story. NetworthIQ has been acquired by Strands and I have joined the Strands team to work on moneyStrands, the upcoming personal finance solution. For info on how this news is going to impact NetworthIQ, be sure to read the post over there. This post contributes my personal perspective. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about it.

It was just over 3 years ago that we started working on NetworthIQ. It was a bit of a bumpy ride. In the first couple months, I wasn’t sure if it was going to make it, but with a couple of high-profile press mentions we were off and running. The idea for NetworthIQ was pretty basic, apply the popular Web 2.0 principles of the time (social networking, public sharing, collective intelligence) and apply it to personal finance, something that hadn’t been done before. There was the occasional “this is the dumbest site ever” comment, but for the most part we always got great response and feedback from those that signed up, which was what kept me going.

Hard to believe that with the web being as global as is now, that the company that came calling was practically in your back yard. I spent two terms at OSU, and went through the disappointment of seeing my baseball career die, but now I’m back in Corvallis living out the dream. Pretty ironic. Not only that, as an active follower of the Silicon Florist and Silicon Forest, I already knew who Strands was and was following what they were doing.

So, how and why did NetworthIQ and Strands come together? Up until a few weeks ago, the face of Strands on the web was MyStrands, the social music site. It may seem odd for a personal finance site to come under that umbrella. But, now that moneyStrands has been announced, I think it starts to make a lot more sense right? Strands is starting to take the personalization and recommendation technology that they’ve built in new directions and personal finance was one of those directions. My primary job now is to channel my knowledge of the personal finance market gleaned from building NetworthIQ into the moneyStrands roadmap and keep NetworthIQ humming along.

Though it was a few months ago, it was sad to say good-bye to TransCore, I had many great opportunities to transition into software development (I started as a financial analyst) and got to work on some fun projects with great people there. But, when an opportunity to work on something that you are personally passionate about full-time and still allows you to support your family, it’s something worth making the jump for.

As for Corvallis, yes, I commute. Quite a bit different from my old commute (though I’m now even more disappointed in Oregon drivers). But, it’s only two days a week normally and the rest of time I’m up north here at home, or enjoying the quiet confines of the Sherwood public library (gotta love a city that provides free wi-fi. Even if its only downtown), or I’ve even been known to drop in on fellow web innovators and do a little co-working. I’ve also been able to make it to more events around PDX like PDX Web Innovators, Lunch 2.0, InnoTech, and BarCamp since it’s good to get out of the house a bit when working at home. However, after commuting 3 hours one day, I’m not exactly eager to make the drive into pdx proper that often, but it’s fun when I do.

Just wanted to add a personal thanks here to Todd, Jeff, and Aaron, my partners in crime at Fourio. Though we certainly had our struggles, the fact that we saw our first released product (a side-project no less) through to an exit is something to be proud of. I don’t want to make this into an academy speech, but I haven’t shared in a while, I should mention that my wife has been great through all of this, supporting my crazy/obsessive side-project turned startup dreams and for that I am extremely grateful. See honey, it wasn’t a waste of time :-).