I took the opportunity to blog directly from both (un-)/conferences, see e.g.:
Killing the Org Chart and Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check
Dion Hinchcliffe on Rewriting the rules of the web
Be like the Internet
Barcamp Berlin Tag 1 … Yahoo! Pipes session

Now, I didn’t manage to put down that many posts from the Web 2.0 Expo, as some of the sessions turned out to be something else than advertised, and I swiftly dropped out. And while discussions were more interesting at the BarCamp (and less formalized as well), I really enjoyed the discussions after the Expo sessions and keynotes, mostly because afterwards I’ve met and talked with so many interesting people from all of Europe and the U.S. (like at the parties at the Oberholz and the 40seconds, enjoyed that).

Unluckily Crowdvine, the social networking platform O’Reilly and CMP organized for Web 2.0 Expo arrived a little late. I would have loved such a social network three or four weeks in advance, to connect with other attendees, to organize the day and the meetings, and to explore the social network. Still, it was a good idea and still helps to facilitate the communication even after the conference has ended. Yes, that’s the gist of it all: what really counts are people, and the connections between them.

Now on the weekend I will try to explore some writeups, and I will try to get back to some of the people I’ve met …

So Berlin didn’t “suck” for me, even when I will keep this in mind for the next time. After all, nothing’s perfect the first time, like here – yes, Tim O’Reilly got asked for his ticket to the 40seconds-party. LOL!

Monday morning I will start off attending Stowes workshop on Building Social Applications

Despite the widespread adoption of social applications (social networking, file sharing, instant messaging, and blogs, to name only the most well-known) creating applications that foster social interaction is hard. It is altogether too easy to approach application development from an information management mindset and miss the greater social context: people interacting to accomplish personal aims, exploring their identity through social groups, and working in online marketplaces. It is these three contexts – personal, group, and market – that form three complementary and distinct tiers of social applications. Users may opt to use an application for very personal reasons – signing up for a web filing sharing service to transfer a file to a colleague – but they become consistent users, and invite others to use the application, because of the social dimension: how well does the application support the users’ needs for social integration?

Effective social applications bring people into the foreground by making the social dimension intuitive and natural, and integrating information flow into the social. Information architecture must take a back seat to social architecture.

This workshop explores the principles of successful social applications, and presents a Social Architecture approach to model new – or remodel existing – applications. Examples of well-designed and successful social applications – including Flickr, Last.fm, Facebook, and Upcoming.org – are explored in the search for general characteristics and recurring design motifs. A number of badly designed sites are contrasted with “well-socialized” alternatives.

The workshop includes two group activities to explore the application of the approach in small team settings.

And if I get the chance, I will also try to get into this workshop by Scott Hirsch, founder of Management Innovation Group (MIG):

Be Like the Internet – Collaborative, Disruptive, Networked!

After five years of working with major telecoms and media companies to understand where to play and how to win in a business environment that seems to re-invent itself every few months, we’ve come to learn what separates the companies that succeed in the networked economy from those that have been left in its wake. The key to identifying the strategies and business models that withstand the next wave of disruptive hype requires getting honest about the real assets you bring to the table and finding ways to work with the network instead of fighting the changes it represents. This means explicitly changing the way you work and collaborate to set direction, scope opportunity, and build capabilities to rapidly assess business changes and react to them … or choose not to react. Whether you’re from a large corporation or a consultancy (or even a start-up still searching for a business model), this workshop will provide new frameworks and mindsets that you can immediately put to use to understand your opportunities in a web2.0 world.

• Some big websites are running on Drupal, like the website of Britney Spears. This seems to be a system geared for intensive use …
• The Drupal community is big, plus there’s a big business ecosystem (developers, consulting, hosting, …) by now.
• One of the advantages: high security, (data base) security layers, and interfaces
• Scaleability, from shared hosting to multiple server settings

Some more introductory information (in german) on Drupal: Einführung in Drupal with related links.

Yahoo! Pipes is a neat way for fast prototyping, and to pull together little applications, filters and stuff. One example is my little pipe “Un-del.icio.us frogpond RSS feed“, that cleans up the original RSS feed of this site, i.e. that excludes the del.icio.us links from the feed, and provides only my generic posts. I needed this for my BMID-sidebar, where I wanted to include the last ten frogpond-posts but had no need for these “standard del.icio.us-Links for the day” posts. With pipes I managed to build this little helper in practically no time …

Some good information on pipes is here “Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes“, and have a look at my pipes posts on the BMID-blog.

I started off with Oliver Gassners session on Getting things done (links and writeup may follow), then a lifehacks session (dubbed procrastination, where I will provide links etc. as soon as I get to it – oh the irony …).

Now in the lunch session I am refining my slides for the session me and Frank will have tomorrow afternoon … and then it’s off for a session on OpenSocial (I think that we can understand this quite good from a Google business model innovation perspective). I better be on time – this will be a room packed with people.

I have prepared a session for the BarCamp and will provide some details soon.

If you want to meet me in person – whether at the BarCamp Berlin or at Web 2.0 Expo, get in touch (directly or via crowdvine) – I would be happy to shake hands with you.

On Sunday evening I will be at the Berlin Geek Dinner, organized by Stowe Boyd, on Mondy evening at the Ignite event and nearby the coffee outlets during the conferences anyway.

Now to the tracks I am planning to attend, obviously the BarCamp and Web 2.0 Open tracks aren’t fixed yet, so let’s delve into Web 2.0 Expo, here’s the overview of the five tracks:

Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin will cover a wide variety of topics, organized into five tracks:

* Design and User Experience
* Development and Web Operations
* Fundamentals
* Marketing and Community
* Strategy and Business Models

These are my planned sessions (for an overview of all sessions see here):

Killing the Org Chart: Organizational, Cultural and Leadership Models on the Bleeding Edge
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Self-organizing teams, transparency, and leaderless organizations have captured the imagination of the business community, but the paradigm of traditional hierarchy still dominates. What seems to hold us back are the huge unknowns of change: what happens when you restructure around these new principles? This session describes CoreMedia’s adventures in tossing out their organizational chart, redefining roles and teams, and decentralizing decision-making. They have defined personnel and technical management as discrete areas, and all staff members are assigned to one of the three Competence Centers. The directors of these centers give staff regular feedback, foster personal development, manage the career models and also oversee the assignment of staff to projects based on their specialist skills. Projects themselves are offered as “invitations to tender” and in regular “Waterhole meetings” any member of the staff can present an idea to work on. These are just a few examples of the structures of this self-organized company. They’ve made some bold moves and have real-world results to share with you. But one result upfront – creativity has boosted throughout the company. The second part of the session is an open discussion with attendees about what has worked in other organizations and the challenges and benefits of evolving and/or revolutionizing your organization. Attendees will receive the results of research on Enterprise 2.0 acceptance, challenges and tools in German companies.

This is my ideal start into the conference, I look forward to hearing the experiences of Sören Stamer and the CoreMedia team. Sören is a guy I would really love to meet.

Business Models for Web 2.0 Companies
Tuesday, 6 November – 10:10 am–11:00 am

Make traffic, not money – that seems to be the mantra of many Web 2.0 sites. Yet, as many VC-backed companies start to explore exit opportunities, successful execution of the business model is key. So how do you translate consumer adoption into hard dollars? Network effects are probably the single most important driver for the remarkable success of Web 2.0 properties…can these be used to fuel the revenue generation engine, and how? Are the low CPM troubles of social networks a sign that advertising is not the solution? And what kind of content do consumers actually pay for? Where are the trade-offs between the different models? These and other questions will be answered, along with a look at the current market situation and the future of monetization on the web.

Algorithmic Business Strategies – If everything’s being uploaded and shared, what might be next?
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Google’s commercial success is based on the idea of identifying a variety of factors, from text analysis to human interest, and use them as variables in a giant mathematical equation that generates billions of revenue, widely known as AdSense. But how would a traditional corporation look like when it’d work like AdSense? Will we offshore intelligence to machines? What are the opportunities and threats? What happens when the whole world, from culture to politics become financial markets driven by algorithms? A joint state-of-the-art review of a new breed of businesses relying on mathematical models, potential scenarios how this approach will become mainstream and what this might mean to you and your business.

Looking forward to Dirk Baecker, but I am not sure whether I will dig this really. Hopfully not too fuzzy.

Web 2.0 Design Patterns, Models and Analysis
Wednesday, 7 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

Many enterprises seek knowledge of the design patterns used by successful Web 2.0 companies. This session starts with Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 examples and distills the abstract architectural patterns from behind the examples. By using the patterns notation, the core knowledge of the design principles is preserved in a template which can be reused in multiple contexts.

Duane will also show the evolution of the client server model into a 5-tier model based on the consistent concepts of most successful Web 2.0 patterns. The model serves as a useful starting point for anyone either designing business models or technology for Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 model is also used to illustrate a reference architecture. This abstract set of technology components allows developers to start thinking about the types of technology decisions required for building Web 2.0 projects.

Now this is interesting for its business model innovation implications, so I am deeply invested in this track.

Federated Social Networks
Wednesday, 7 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

Up till now, so-called Social Networking services have been built as walled gardens, where people can interact only within the confines of that service. As people’s preferences differ, they tend to be attracted to different services, roughly around the same kind of social objects, than some of there friends, family. To keep up with everyone, people tend to just sign up on several competing services. Then, for example for microblogging services like Jaiku, Twitter, etc., they need to post to all of them to keep everyone up-to-date. Let’s make Social Networks be social, too. This talk will go into federating different social networks using the protocol behind Jabber: XMPP. It will focus on sharing activity streams between services in near-real time using a number of XMPP extension protocols. For example, subscribing to someones Tweets from Jaiku and seeing updates appear in your overview or sent as a notification via IM as they happen. It will show you how to use these protocols to interact with other services.

OpenID: Emerging from Web 2.0
Wednesday, 7 November – 3:50 pm–4:40 pm

While OpenID is certainly gaining traction around the Web, many questions around security and privacy have been raised. Additionally with companies like Sun Microsystems shipping OpenID code, the question of how OpenID helps the enterprise becomes increasingly important. In under two years, OpenID has grown from a thriving grass-roots community to being supported by major companies, service providers, and open source projects.

This session will provide an introduction to OpenID, thoughts on how enterprises can benefit from integrating the technology, as well as a showcase of innovation around security technologies combined with OpenID such as smart cards, browser add-ons, and the like.

I’ve been examining OpenID lately, hence this session may provide some more evidence. Hopefully also good information on LDAP, SSO and the like for wiki integration into the corporate IT.

Copy vs. Create: Learning and Innovating in a Flat Web 2.0 World (The TechCrunch Follow-up)
Wednesday, 7 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

As Web 2.0 is now a global phenomenon, its powerful concepts find their applications everywhere around the world. What primarily started as a trend among U.S. startups quickly spread to other continents where entrepreneurs recognized the potentials and were quicker than their role models to localize and launch similar companies. Whether you agree or disagree with this trend, it certainly can’t be ignored. So what are the lessons and what does localization mean in Web 2.0 terms? How do Web 2.0 applications differ internationally and where is there innovation? Using an extensive series of examples, this talk will cover what European, Asian and American companies have learned, invented and adjusted when making Web 2.0 a global/local phenomenon.

I would also love to go to these other sessions but I can’t – so if any of you my dear readers gets notice of any writeups, please let me know.

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0: Philosophies and Structures for Change
Tuesday, 6 November – 9:00 am–9:50 am

The 2.0 web world is more than just embedded technology – it is a philosophy. Companies who embrace this thinking are more flexible, agile, and innovative in their strategy and approach, but moving in this direction means rethinking structure, management style, workflow, and culture. How teams are structured, educated, and implemented in your organization is key. Are you a design firm, individual freelancer, or corporation trying to migrate past ‘old-school’ thinking and move yourself, management, or team into a more progressive era? Come hear how others have made innovation a priority – through carefully guided leadership and an environment that fosters creative thinking and collaboration.

Blogs, Social Networks and Podcasts: Corporate Communications 2.0
Tuesday, 6 November – 5:00 pm–5:50 pm

Today’s successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos – even Twitter and Jaiku – to reach customers, employees, and shareholders. Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.

This last session that I’ll have to miss is something I really miss:

Enterprise 2.0: Tools for Changing Organizations
Thursday, 8 November – 11:20 am–12:10 pm

The user experience is more critical today with the emergence of Web 2.0 during the past few years. Today wikis, blogs, and widgets are a part of the daily nomenclature in the work environment, but there are many questions around how this Web 2.0 world moves into the Enterprise world. How do software vendors bring the best features and functionalities to the masses? Are these companies spending their R&D on bringing to market small applications that focus on one task or are they focused on improving their core applications, or is both possible? Do Web 2.0 apps have enough speed, security, and stability for the Fortune 500 CIOs and thousands of employees around the world? This panel will explore the intersection of the Web and Enterprise 2.0 worlds and discuss what is ready for prime time.

I can’t be there, but hopefully Frank Hamm will cover this session … so I can catch up afterwards.

Um den gestiegenen Anforderungen der Informationswirtschaft gerecht zu werden, reicht es nicht mehr aus die Mitarbeiter mit E-Mail und Kalender zu versorgen. Es gilt sich neu zu orientieren und die Voraussetzung für den „Collaborative Workplace“ zu schaffen. [...] wie man durch eCollaboration unternehmensweite Arbeitsprozesse fördern kann sowie über Unternehmensgrenzen hinweg Geschäftsprozesse und den Informationsaustausch optimieren kann.

Der Einsatz von Social Software wie bspw. Weblogs, Wikis, Social Networking Plattformen etc. für unternehmensübergreifende Prozesse, bspw. im Rahmen von Open Innovation, ist ein Thema, das zunehmend an Fahrt gewinnt.

Ich habe zu diesem Thema eine weitere Präsentation ausgearbeitet (“Facebook, Twitter und Co. – Infrastruktur für E-Collaboration?“), die ich (in einer dann aktualisierten und überarbeiteten Fassung ) am BarCamp Berlin in einer Session verwenden möchte. Feedback und Kommentare sind sehr willkommen!

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Comments und Feedback willkommen …

Bei diesem Thema kommt mir natürlich Mario Sixtus wie gerufen, der gewohnt launig audiovisuelle Aufklärung rund um das Thema Twitter betreibt: