Let Go! 8 Steps to Succeeding in a Post-2.0 World

Lane Becker and Thor Muller, Satisfaction (slides)
I didn’t write down the 8 specific things, perhaps they’ll show up here, but this talk wasn’t really about presenting the 8 things, it was more a conversation about their message, “Be Like the Internet.” What does this mean? It means giving up control, opening up more, looking outside for solutions, embracing chaos, being more agile. Again, look to the wiki they setup, hopefully they’ll build it out a bit.

More:
http://www.commoncraft.com/webvision-2007-review

Social Media Strategies for your Organization? Connecting the Dots

Jeremiah Owyang (presentation) (slides)
Jeremiah discussed ways to present and implement social media strategies in organizations. The slides should sum it up well or watch the presentation. I need to try some of this stuff with my company. The Air Traffic Controller idea is a good start, though hardly anything is ever said about my company in the blogosphere (perhaps that’s as good a reason to start doing this).

More:
http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/social-media-for-cos/

http://blog.vibrantjourney.com/2007/05/04/web-visions-presentation-page-hierarchy/

http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/web-application-hierarchy-after-lunch/

Lunch

Apparently neither Jacob nor Cliff have experienced a Burgerville milkshake, unbelievable. Fortunately we survived the throng of pre-teens and made it back to the conference.

Web Application Page Hierarchy

Luke Wroblewski (slides)
Luke W. is my new design hero, I just hope to never have to pronouce his last name. Not only does he work for Yahoo!, but has his own design business, writes books/articles, and is a prodigous speaker (not always covering the same topic). His slides on Best Practices for Web Form Design are the most useful, actionable advice I have ever seen in a presentation (i.e. you can put the stuff to use immediatley). I didn’t even see that presentation, just read the slides.

So, the talk was great with some sound and straightforward advice on how to focus your pages on the things that matter. Good point about the importance of a good presentation layer, it’s not just making it pretty.

More:
http://www.elainenelson.org/2007/05/04/web-application-hierarchy-after-lunch
http://blog.vibrantjourney.com/2007/05/04/web-visions-presentation-page-hierarchy

English: Web 2.0’s Universal Language

Kevin Smokler
I left the content square-table discussion for reasons similar to Adam’s and ended up in this one. It was ok. Kevin’s a smart, energetic guy, but the topic wasn’t the most exciting to me, or maybe I was just ready to go home. The discussion was on being clear in our language and making product descriptions easier to understand (passing the mother-in-law test). RSS was a common topic; it’s so great, but a lot of people still don’t really get what it is after all these years.

More:
http://www.bitclone.com/wp/105/webvisions-2007-rockstars-of-design/

I had to jet and missed the Friday keynote, sounds like it was pretty funny. Instead I spent the next two hours in the parking lot know as I-5.

Tags: webvisions, webvisions07

AJAX Inside Out (Workshop)

Jack Herringon
Slides: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.pdf
Code Samples: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.tgz

Waste of time. They should give refunds for this. Not sure if it was a horrible mis-communication between WV staff and Mr. Herrington, or between WV marketing and attendees. This was a demonstration of AJAX, that’s all.

Inventrepreneurship

Paul Ingram (slides)
Very inspiring talk on ideas; where to get them, and how to bring them to life. I’ve recently begun trying some of Paul’s ideas myself in regards “private virtual parnerships,” utilizing informal collectives of people to build projects so am glad to hear others are comfortable doing this as well (as opposed to creating formal organzations/agreements and hiring employees and contractors). I loved the Segway video (a hypothetical discussion of the importance of the Segway as if all of the initial hype came true) and will have to try to find that.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?533

Social Architecture: Modeling the Next Generation

Sean Madden (slides)
Emergence, ubiquitous computing, calm technology, genetic algrorithms. Wow, this is heady stuff, and apparently this guy grew up in Tualatin, which is a stone’s throw from where I currently live. The driving point is about making systems more flexible and easier to change/evolve from the community’s use. I encourage you read the summaries below, this was one of my favorite sessions and I need to let this sink in a bit more.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?534
http://www.jasoneiseman.com/blog/?p=168

Sensory Trasformation: How to Sip from the Information Firehose (Keynote)

David Pescovitz (BoingBoing blogger among many other pursuits)
Interesting stuff on information overload, ubiquitous computing, predicting the future. I enjoyed it. I’ll have to dump all my RSS feeds one of these days and start over, one of things David does to manage overload and find new and interesting stuff.

More:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?535
http://www.jasoneiseman.com/blog/?p=169

Tags: webvisions, webvisions07

I have a hard time buying this explanation:

Today Riya is using the organic traffic to see how changes improve monetization, repeat usage, etc. The business is in “fine-tune” mode. Every change improves the lifetime value of every user and the marginal profit contribution of every dollar to be spent on marketing. We haven’t poured gasoline in the engine to accelerate the traffic. We are tuning the user experience as measured by the economics of the business.

Did Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or any of the recent viral growth success stories have to “pour gasoline” by spending money on marketing? But, who knows, and at least I learned something useful about measuring. It’s not to say it won’t succeed, but given the money and hype put into it, it seems rather shaky.

There are also a couple of blogs now (main and news), which for me anyway, is a much easier way to get information these days.

Both new features are welcome additions to the site and turns it into a must have resource for local entrepreneurs.

We talked about APIs back at the September PDX Web Innovators meeting, and much of that was focused around building mashups off of these services. I think it will be a real bummer if this trend continues, and less mashup-friendly services are offered. I agree with Dare that a site would be stupid to restrict ways to add stuff to your site. But it also strikes me that controlling the data extraction type of API would be a first step towards limiting a site’s viral uptake (though I’m sure Google’s not too concerned with that at this point in their existence).

Personally, I really like the Yahoo set of services, that give you a choice among different output formats (XML, JSON, and PHP), thereby making it easy to use on the server and client (kind of anyway, I can test easily by typing urls in the browser, but the cross-domain AJAX issue in most cases prevents direct use on the client-side).

We’ll have to get Zack out ot the PDX Web Innovators next month.

Well what do you know, today I discovered OrganizedWisdom, which is a social network for health information (via Mashable). Time will tell I suppose, but maybe my idea wasn’t that bad after all, and what does that say about Cambrian House? Goes to show there’s probably always somebody out there thinking about the same thing. This also reminds of when Minti came out.

Aggregators
Why search so many places, when these guys bring everything to you? And by everything, I mean everything. Of course it depends on how focused your search is, but be prepared to mine though a lot of listings.

• SimplyHired
• Indeed
• Rails Related Jobs – Ruby on Rails Specific aggregrator

Social networking
What you get when you combine social networking with a job site.

• Jobster
• Whototalkto.com

Niche job boards
Sure, they all have their own audience right? Wrong. But, hey it’s easy money so who can blame them. Seriously though, if you’re looking for full-time work in a specific industry/field, these are much more focused than the big job sites.

• 37signals Job Board – design, development, business
• CrunchBoard – design, development, business
• GigaOM Jobs – design, development, business (I’m sensing a pattern here)
• paidContent.org Jobs – mostly business
• jobs.joelonsoftware.com – Software Development
• Authentic Jobs – Web Design & Development
• Think Vitamin Job Board – Web related
• Npost – tech startup related, mostly northwest
• jobs.codebetter.com – Software/Web Development
• Venture Beat Job Board – high-end management, tech, finance ($100,000+)
• TechGigger Jobs – start-up jobs
• CSS Beauty Job Board – web design/development
• Problogger Job Board – blogging jobs
• jobs.originalsignal.com – aggregates many of these sites

Gigs
You’re a contract/freelance web professional and you want to get paid for your work? Check these out. You think TechCrunch is going to add a gig board now?

• Authentic Jobs
• 37signals
• oDesk – want to work remotely, but have big brother watch your every move? Yikes.

Matchmaking
These don’t necessarily pay, but if you’re looking for help on that hot startup idea or looking for the next Sergey & Larry to hook up with, they’re worth checking out.

• Programmer Meet Designer
• Buildv1
• Go Big Network
• OregonStartups.com – (Portland/Oregon specific)

Crowd sourcing
Have some time and want to tackle some tasks that may earn you some cash? Then crowdsourcing may be for you.

• CambrianHouse

Green Jobs
This category isn’t really tech/web2.0 specific, but if you’re as concerned about the environment as Al Gore is, then this could be your ticket to doing something about it.

• Green Dream Jobs
• TreeHugger Jobs

Managing your search
We wouldn’t be truly Web 2.0 without something to manage all of this, what with the todo managers, time trackers, etc. growing like weeds.

• Isabont

What did I miss? Add other job sites/board that you like?

Digg this
Bookmark in del.icio.us

Tags: jobs jobboard web2.0

Update
Looks like it was just an eBay technicality that forced them to re-list, here’s the current auction.

Tags: web2.0 kiko

Also interesting to note that the UserPlane (company acquired by AOL last week) fouders are from Oregon. Glad to see the local connection.

Tags: startup entrepreneur

Tags: cambrianhouse crowdsourcing

I’m intrigued because I’ve got a few ideas kicking around and figure it’s worth a shot to see if they can be developed through Cambrian House where otherwise they would languish in my project queue probably never to see the light of day. I submitted one idea and it’s currently pending, so I’ll update its progress here as the experiment progresses.

For freelancers (designers and developers), I also see this as a cool way to perhaps pick up some work. But, I believe it’s way too early to tell how lucrative this all will be.

Tags: cambrianhouse crowdsourcing

With all of these Web 2.0 sites coming out, it’s easy for them to fade away and get lost in the noise. When the founders realize that they’re spending all their time on something that isn’t meeting their goals and expectations (whether monetary or something else), they’ll try to sell it and find something better to spend their time on. Why do I think this? Because I’ve had these thoughts about NetworthIQ, and I’m sure there are hundreds of others who have considered it as well. It’s business. Fortunately, I’m not competing against Google and I still have a lot to do before I reach that point.

But, before we get all sensationalistic and start saying this is the start of Crash 2.0, let’s take a step back. The high number of new startups/sites shouldn’t be considered a bad thing that we become too cynical about. If these entrepreneurs succeed, awesome. If not, think of all that’s being learned. Whether it’s gaining skills and experience in software development, or business, these experiences can only make us stronger (as a friend told me, it’s “skill-building”). Nobody is getting hurt, and the good ones will rise above the noise. The Web is not going away. Just be careful, as Rick Segal mentions, not to forget about your day job too soon.

I say ignore all this “bubble 2.0″ talk. Investors should be smart enough to identify good risks (note the word “risk”), it’s their job, and there will not be a dot.com public market crash this time because the overwhelming majority of these companies will not go public.

(more on the Kiko blog and of course TechCrunch also weighs in)

Mike has some interesting comments about walled gardens. In general, I don’t tend to buy his argument about aggregating content from blogs and not forcing people to enter content on the site. I think it’s a nice addition to be able to do so, but it’s not essential at this point (early in a product’s lifespan, the internet as a whole doesn’t really get it). It does get me thinking about NetworthIQ and our other projects and how we should reach out beyond our walls.

Mike, just so you know, NetworthIQ has all kinds of RSS feeds. We’re not perfect yet as far as getting data in and out, but I do agree that RSS is a good first step.

Well, a few ideas were:

• Social Parenting: Minti was launched this week, pretty darn close to what I had in mind, but there’s some other aspects that it still doesn’t quite hit (my vague way of saying, there’s still some opportunity here, but probably will just mean sending some ideas to Clay and team).
• CRM in the spirit of 37signals apps: I guess the guys at 37signals thought the same thing, and being that they are 37signals, I think they’ve got the “in the spirt of” part down.
• Blog Network: Ok, this was probably obvious to everybody because there are a lot of them now. But, I think there’s still some opportunity for location centric blog networks, a real citizen journalism alternative to the local newspaper with subjects including local news, sports, business, gossip, etc. Put all this easily accessible in one place.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I wouldn’t want to give everything away, but it’s interesting to see others come up with similar ideas.

One of the companies that had escaped my radar was Platial, a company right here in Portland doing some exciting things with maps. Platial is billed as a collaborative atlas. You can create maps of places meaningful to you, share them, tag them, and connect with other users. I really dig the combination of a map visual with a storytelling aspect that goes along with it. It’s understanable that they’re flying under most radars, the site is in its very early beta stages (launched in December, just hit 1000 users yesterday). I imagine the buzz level will be escalating before long.

So, anyway, after hearing from one of their developers, I put them on the map and got a note from one of the founders, Di-Ann Eisnor. Being the budding entrepreneur, I took the opportunity to do a little networking and so yesterday I went to visit Di-
Ann and the rest of the Platial team. They really have some extremely bright people, which when it comes down to it, usually determines the success of a company. I had a great time learning about what they’re doing and sharing a bit about what we’re doing. It’s fun finding people that are passionate about the same things you are (and hold that thought for a later post, Adam DuVander and I are thinking of something for Portland to make this a more common occurence). I anticipate big things from Platial and am looking forward to seeing what’s coming. Thanks for letting me stop by.

The irony though is that they had actually started a Web 2.0 map (seen here) about the same time I started mine. If their map had taken off before I finished mine, I never would have had this opportunity. Goes to show, the release early motto can pay dividends. I’m also now intrigued about integrating my map more with Platial.

Tags: platial geo maps

1) The domain name is terrible (as mentioned previously).

2) The masked URLs are lame. Use some unobtrusive javascript or something to track clicks if you must. But, I’d really like to see the real link in the anchor tag, so I can easily right click and copy the url (should I want to). This is too obtrusive.

3) Build a firefox extension. Bookmarklets are ok, but an extension with quick access to adding, viewing, viewing popular, viewing tags, etc. makes it much easier to use a social bookmarking site.

So, it’s back to delicious for now, but if they keep at it, I’ll try it again later on.

Update
I emailed them this same feedback and I got a response back from Todd Sieling, the product manager. Sounds like the domain name is here to stay. But, they may be open to changing the re-direct urls into something a little less obtrusive. Todd also reports that an API is on the way which may spur more tools/extensions.

Thought #1
Dang, Zillow.com (previously discussed here) sure shot to the top. Have you seen their numbers? I’m impressed. Looks like they came through that inital rough patch with barely a scratch. I hear about them everywhere it seems. Newspaper, local news, co-workers, in-laws. I’ll have more to say about the response to Zillow.com in the real estate community in a future post.

Thought #2
Ma.gnolia.com came out of beta the other day. Another social bookmarking tool with a funny domain name. C’mon people, if you want to break out of the techie/early adopter crowd, stop with these funky punctuated domain names. I’m always surprised how programmed most people are to type “www.whatever.com” (they always seem to start with the www, even if you don’t say it) and it is hard to get them out of this groove. So, make it easy on them. How difficult is it going to be for me to tell somebody, “check out magnolia,” and they go to magnolia.com, which is apparently part of Exxon/Mobil. Must be an another oil conspiracy. At least del.icio.us bought the real thing. (somebody else discussed this recently, but I can’t remember who/where)

The reviews are mixed, though I am seeing enough positive response to give it a shot myself. Zeldman’s team did the design, so it’ll be worth it just to check out their work. But, can you believe it took six people to do the UI? Crazy. I thought that was a joke the first time I read it. I’m all for great design, usability and clean markup, but that seems like a bit much. I hope Gnolia got a good deal.

“He says he will develop a Web-based product that will allow business people to handle their computer needs, boosting productivity through collaboration. Information will be accessible via anything from a personal computer to a cell phone to a television.”

Hmmm, can’t get much vague than that. But, based on his track record with Cybozu and its groupware, it will be interesting to see what the result is. It’s Good to see some things happening in Portland. As you can see from the Innovation Map, we’ve got a lot of room for growth.

Tags: Lunarr Portland groupware

Zillow promises to be able value your home for you, which is an interesting idea. I’m in the middle of buying and selling a house so I was really excited to try it out. I managed to get in to value my house and Zillow valued it about 10% under what we just sold it for. But, considering the market these days, I don’t think that’s too terrible. With the lack of comps for our neighborhood, I doubt an agent would have done much better (we sold by owner). I didn’t get a chance to value the house I’m buying, but hopefully will soon, if they can come back online.

I will definitely keep an eye on it, though, because this would be a great tool for NetworthIQ users to be able to value their real estate. I wonder if Zillow will have an API at some point we could tie into?

Update
It’s back up now. The house we’re buying comes up less than 1% under what we paid. Not bad. According to Zillow we’re selling for 10% more than our house is worth and buying for 1% more than the house is worth. Aren’t we the dealmakers (of course it never feels like it when you’re paying as much as houses cost these days)

Tags: zillow

(via Startup Fever, another new to me resource)

Subscribed to both.

I just hope Yahoo doesn’t screw up any account mergers with del.icio.us like they did with Flickr. I still can’t get the my old Flickr account back (and the images in it) months after they forced the accounts to move over.