Upcoming part 1: Web2Expo Berlin

Im Vorfeld der Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin werden viele verschiedene Interviews mit den Protagonisten der Konferenz geführt. Speziell auf der Web 2.0 Expo in New York hat Ulrike zuletzt ein Interview mit Jen Pahlka vom Co-Konferenzorganisator Techweb geführt. U.a. wurde diskutiert, warum es dieses Jahr wieder nach Berlin geht.

Video ist courtesy of Johannes (mit dem ich mich interessanterweise beim BarCamp Stuttgart darüber unterhalten habe), und der zusammen mit den anderen Bloggern der Berlinblase die Expo wieder unter die Lupe nehmen wird. Einig waren wir uns jedenfalls, dass O’Reilly und Techweb ernsthaft und glaubwürdig an diesen neuen Anlauf gehen und wir daher mit einer guten Grundstimmung an die Sache gehen sollten. Er schreibt:

Insgesamt kommt klar das Gefühl rüber, dass die Kritikpunkte vom letzten Jahr mehr als deutlich gehört wurde und man alles dran gesetzt hat, es dieses Jahr besser zu machen.

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Ein weiteres Video hat Andrea bereits vor ein paar Tagen gepostet- ein Interview mit zwei der drei Initiatorinnen des Expo Bloggerprogramms, in dem die Motivation für O’Reilly und Techweb für diese Initiative deutlich wird. Ich spare mir mein Disclosure, das habe ich bereits transparent gemacht.

Um nun die Masse an Vorträgen, Workshops, Keynotes etc. zu organisieren bietet es sich zum einen an ein persönliches Programm zusammenzustellen, zudem sollte man das konferenzeigene Social Network (auf Basis von Crowdvine) nutzen. Anders als letztes Jahr ist es dieses Mal rechtzeitig am Start. Und um sich in der Vielzahl der Besucher zu finden bietet es sich einfach an – neben der Benutzung der üblichen Verdächtigen wie Twitter und Co. – dieses spezialisierte Social Network zu benutzen. Auch wenn ich ja ungern dutzende von Freunde, Bekannten und Kollegen von Hand dazufüge, ist es zumindest eine gute Eigenschaft von Crowdvine, dass die Beziehungen in friend, fan und “want to meet” differenziert werden können.

Nun ja, wer nun  noch Lust auf eine intensive Berlin Web Week verspürt kann sich mit meinem Promo-Code immerhin 35% Nachlass verschaffen. Bei der Registrierung also den Code webeu08gr17 eingeben …

Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008

Entered the Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program

I’ve entered myself into te Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogging program and as I detailed the language of this blog to be english and german, sollte ich vielleicht besser auf deutsch weiterschreiben …

Worum geht es? Vom 21 bis 23. Oktober findet in Berlin die zweite Auflage der Web 2.0 Expo Europe (das zentrale Treffen der Web 2.0 und Enterprise 2.0 Experten, nicht nur aus Europa) statt. Richtig, das ist (wie letztes Jahr) in der Woche nach dem Barcamp Berlin 3. Die BarCamp-Anmeldung ist für internationale Gäste weiterhin offen, deutsche Interessenten müssen aber mittlerweile auf die Warteliste.

Nicole, Suw und Stephanie laden nun für O’Reilly und Techweb europäische Blogger dazu ein, wobei aber ein paar Spielregeln gelten:

The way the blogging programme will work is that we’ll ask participants to do these few things between now and 6th October:

  • publish at least 4 Web 2.0 Expo-related blog posts, podcast episodes or videocasts, e.g. announcement of the event, speaker information, speaker interviews, or any other event-related stuff
  • encourage readers, friends, and/or community to register for the event
  • display the Web 2.0 Expo logo on their blog, with a link to the registration page, until the day of the conference

Nun ja, die Punkte 2 und 3 hatte ich bereits frühzeitig und ohne besondere Anreize erledigt, und auch dieses Jahr werde ich sicher wieder von der Expo bloggen (hier sind meine Posts von der Expo 2007 bzw. vom BarCamp Berlin 2).

Andererseits ist es sehr verlockend, dass Expo Blogger auch einen 35% Discount an Leser, Kollegen, Freunde (ja, Kunden auch) weitergeben können und u.U. leichter Zugang zu interessanten Interview- und Gesprächspartner bekommen:

  • access to information about the event suitable for re-blogging, such as announcements and speaker information/interviews (when possible)

Dass man evtl. auch in die “offizielle Blogroll” aufgenommen wird, ist da nur noch ein kleiner Extra-Anreiz. Also, die Frage hier und in folgenden Posts ist: “how can we use the power of Web 2.0 (in the Enterprise)”

Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008

Some recent enterprise social software notes …

Thomas Van der Wal ponders the uses of social software in mergers and acquisitions, referring a recent post by Stewart Mader on the opportunities of getting new employees up to “working speed” quickly (“Onboarding: getting your new employees cleared for takeoff“).

Ken Thompson on the relation between collaboration, teams and business process management:

It’s the human-to-human interactions of teams that count when it comes to innovation and agility. … you and everyone you work with must be able to function in and through internal and multi-company teams, and must also grasp what the latest concept of “team” really means

Matt Moore interviewed James Dellow about the Enterprise RSS Day of Action, here’s the mp3

Armin Karge tells us the story (in german language) of a tangible method of change communication:

Das “Cockpit” muss vor allem zwei Anforderungen gerecht werden: Einerseits soll es Alarmanlage und Kontrollinstrument sein. Andererseits soll es durch Offenheit und Transparenz zu mehr Akzeptanz der Beteiligten führen. Im Idealfall sind die Mitarbeiter beteiligt und identifizieren sich.

Stewart Mader and the team from Atlassian are sharing insights on wiki functionality, use cases and adoption (and they are giving away free copies of Stewarts Wikipatterns book, my review is here) at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, see what’s on the slate and drop by if you’re in San Francisco.

And finally Andrew McAfee reminds us of the importance of all this:

Enterprise 2.0 is not a hype, but it is also not easy, and it will serve to separate the winners from the losers

Andrew will keynote Heliview on May 7th, looks promising, I am thinking of going too – want to meet up?

More upcoming events at Web 2.0 Expo …

Planning the next five days, here’s some more: There’s an evening session on “The Starfish and the Spider” at the newthinking store (10117 Berlin Mitte, Tucholskystraße 48) on Tuesday evening 7pm-9pm.

Warum sind Wikipedia, Craigslist und Skype so erfolgreich? Wieso versetzten Kazaa und Napster der Musikindustrie einen solchen Schlag?

Weil sie das freche Seestern-Prinzip nutzen, das auf Dezentralisierung, Vertrauen und Kommunikation unter Gleichen aufbaut. Mit ihrer Wandlungsfähigkeit setzen die flinken Seesterne die hierarchischen Spinnenorganisationen immer wieder Schachmatt – und verändern damit die Welt.

Rod is an interesting guy:

[…] Stanford-Absolvent und Unternehmer, der sein erstes Unternehmen CATS Software Inc. an die NASDAQ brachte und u.a. auch ein früher Investor bei eBay war. Er engagiert sich für Umweltthemen und soziale Belange und half etwa bei der Gründung des Silicon Valley Social Venture Funds und des Environmental Markets Network. Zur Zeit verfolgt Rod mit der Firma twiki.net die Entwicklung von Wikis als open-source enterprise software.

Some reviews of his book, via newthinking store and my del.icio.us bookmarks:

Handelsblatt (german)
Welt (german)
Firstmedia (german)

Some english reviews: David Robertson and Harold Jarche, and here are some distilled book notes at the Socialtext Open Wiki – i.e. “main content of the book, but without the stories and examples”.

Coming up: BarCamp Berlin and Web 2.0 Expo

So I planned the coming next two weeks, tomorrow I’m at an IBM Lotus Connections event, thursday is a day off when I will meet some friends of old (I am going to practice my Enterprise 2.0 evangelizing skills ;), and then beginning with Saturday 3rd of November five high-voltage days of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 conferences in Berlin are scheduled:

Barcamp Berlin

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

web 2.0 expo berlin

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.