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Later this month I am going to Berlin for the second edition of Web 2.0 Expo Europe.

It will a very good opportunity for European networking, You cannot miss it!

You can save 35% on the ticket price with this code: webeu08gr19.

There is also a social network to start meeting people.

See You in Berlin :-)

I was part of the mid to late 90's run up to get websites. It was like a gold rush at advertising agencies as client came to them and said: "we need a website".

Image via Wikipedia

And from that, we have many millions of websites from local restaurants, to international oil companies, to everything in between. And a long the way, we seem to have settled on a form and function that was really designed back in the day when the only goal was getting up there

Websites have 'home pages' and navigation to take one through the seemingly boundless amount of information about a company.

What must we have done before the internet to discover the wealth of information in the about us. We wouldn't have known about them!

Anyway, back to the question: what is the goal of the website? Because back in the day, analytics or tracking was expensive and the realm of programmers. now it's free, and as easy to use as web e-mail. So we should all be using it to track more than hits. Incidentally, at Web 2.0 Expo I learned that 'hits' stands for "How Idiots Track Success".

Analytics lets us track goals through conversions. For example, the goal of the website could be to get people to click on the about page. For this website, that would be a legitimate goal that I would track (currently, the about page is the third most requested page.)

Just think how differently we would approach a page if the goal was to have people click on the "about us" page. First of all, we would make it interesting. But more importantly, we would build the site with a goal. And we could tweak it on the fly to see if certain things help achieve the goal.

The brand website is finally coming of age. I heard someone at my agency call it "traditional interactive", meaning it's old enough that we should be doing a better job with it. In an era of free and available analytics, the time to start is today.

I oktober afholdes Web 2.0 Expo i Berlin med endnu en lang række spændende talere. På Facebook leder Hans Henrik Heming fra Wemind en gruppe, der forsøger at organisere en fælles tur til Berlin ned og deltage på konferencen.

"Legacy is greater than currency."

I wish I could have thought of that. I know some of you are saying this right now-"Dude, do you have any idea of the financial straits I'm in?" Trust me, there are very few people right now who are not hurting, I get that. But the point of me letting you in on Gary's point is this.

Times like these, lend themselves to people who can help others. Times like these allow people to really share their knowledge with those who can benefit the most from it.  For example, If you're on the tech, or marketing side of the house, do you have any idea how much or how valuable the things you do or can do, are needed right now? The things, the actions, that you leave behind in your life will be greater than the money you made and the money you've accumulated. Your legacy, your footprint is more important.

Your legacy right now can be defined by what you do in the next 12-24 months. If you start today to define it. You can either complain or bemoan the current state of affairs or you can try and do something that can make a difference in your life which can inherently make a difference in others. It's up to you. Are you going to take? Or are you going to give? It doesn't have to be a lot. But reach out to someone and help them out. They really need it right now.

Maybe we need a national, "Reach out and affect someone's life day?"

This is one of the best videos I've seen in a while, and it's clear to see why it's gone (and will continue to go) completely viral.

I recently passed some of Gary's work onto the CEO of a wine business here in Toronto, and after reading further, found Gary's latest talk at the Web 2.0 Expo in NY.

Gary says a number of things that hit it home. If I had one wish, it would be that teachers showed this to students at the beginning, middle and end of their courses.

Things Gary says that I would consider permanently putting on my body (please no one hold me to this):

• "There is no reason, in 2008, to do shit you hate. None."
• "You could lose just as much money being happy as hell."
• "I thought, "I can do that shit." So that's what I decided to do"
• "I became 1% not happy with selling wine. That's when I changed my life."
• "Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, 'What do I want to do everyday for the rest of my life?'. Do that. I promise, you can monetize that shit. If you like Alf, do an Alf blog. If you like Smurfs, Smurf it up."
• "There's a billion 70 year old 'd-bags' in control right now. But, the #2 person - that 34 year old lady - she's going to buy that shit. It's coming."
• "HUSTLE is the most important word......EVER."
• "Legacy is greater than currency."
• "I hustle about meeting every single person on Earth."
• "We are sitting where the gatekeepers are no longer in control..."
• "If you're pumping out good shit....people will follow."
• "If you for a second, half a second, don't believe in what you're doing...you need to get out now. Please."
• "We only get to play this game one time."
• "You have to do what you love. If you love it, you will win."
• "The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent. Everything is exposed. You're legacy is all you've got."
• "7am to 2am is plenty of time to do damage. Everybody has time. Stop watching f'ing Lost."

But nothing does it like Gary himself. Check out the vid below:

The word filter can mean many things. It can mean the literal SPAM filter that lets in e-mails about growing "penis size", or it can mean subtle filters like newer Twitter users automatically following someone who follows them (and not being able to filter out marketers who simply follow many people)

Image via Wikipedia

On the active side, it can mean building up an RSS feed reader, where a user filters the content they want. The RSS feed of the front page from the New York Times, the entertainment Feed of the LA Times, the opinion feed of the Guardian UK, and the gossip feed of the Superficial, all pulled into one "Newspaper" that is self-filtered. IE, it wasn't put together by someone who's job it is to appeal to the masses, it was put together by a person who only wants what they want.

That's what I mean when I say filters. Some are obvious, like the RSS feed example. Some are less obvious, like the Twitter follow. But all are challenging our notion of what the word filter means.

And I think, there's an opportunity for marketers. The manner of advertising using filtered content has worked for a long time now. And it was profitable because there were only a few filtered entities that could reach the masses. To break through the channel changer, marketers worked on being edgy, funny, engaging. But it was pretty damned easy to tell an ad from content.

Now though, the rules have changed. YouTube can reach a critical mass. Yahoo throws paid results in with real results. Our marketing filters are being tested (like in the case of Twitter follows) in ways we aren't even sure of.

Fact is, people aren't sure of their filters right now. I don't mean this to sound like we should "get them when their guard is down." I mean that if you're entertaining, and engaging, you can create a strong brand impression with people because their marketing filters aren't keeping up with the tools.

As social media enters the marketing toolbox, marketers can be entertainers in some way again. Instead of being content interrupters, we can be content creators.That's what Facebook Applications are. That's what a blog from a character can be.

Content brought to us by marketers. As the filters we've come to rely on in marketing disappear, there will be two battles fought. One will be for trying to buy space on the limited filter networks. In other words, a page in the NY times will be more expensive because there is no longer easy ways to get the GRP's. A 30-second interruptive spot on NBC will be more expensive for the same reason.

The other option? Bypass the old way, and create the content. Engage with people.

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• Information Overload Is a Filter Problem
• Information Overload is Filter Failure, Says Shirky [Information Overload]

A few favorite quotes from Gary's talk:

• PP - patience and passion
• We are going through a gold rush of branding
• Legacy is better than currency
• Work 9-6, get home, kiss the dog and go to town (on where do you find the time to build something if you have a day job)

At both BlogWorld Expo and the Web 2.0 Expo, BlogTalkRadio held drawings to give away iPod Nanos. We're pleased to announce the winners:

Rob Lloyd from Bloggeries.com who threw his business card into the pie tin in Las Vegas,  and Robert Hauser from TauiEnterprises.com who visited our booth at Web 2.0 in New York City.

Congratulations to both winners and thank you for dropping by the BlogTalkRadio booths.

Image: Hilary Leewong

He cites Shel Israel's post about social media becoming a vast wasteland which I won't go as far to say as being the case, but I can see why he said it. David also mentions Tim O'Reilly's key note at Web 2.0 expo NYC which I attended, in which O'Reilly muses "And what are the best and the brightest working on?" displaying a slide of the Facebook app SuperPoke, which invites you to, "throw sheep" at your friends. Essentially asking, is this what we have been reduced to?

The point being it's time for more, we need to stretch our collective muscles amongst the group. I have to agree with David that seeing another "How to with Twitter or another "6 steps to conquer your fear of Friendfeed", or whatever, is not going to do us any good. Especially when we are essentially talking amongst ourselves. I mean that in the sense that the readers of our blogs, are in general, industry types.

Which essentially means that the social media echo comes right back at us. But then it is spread by other N00bs who want in on the game and thus spread the same thing that we already have heard and already have come to learn. And it comes back to us. We're seeing a push of info that is the "same-ole, same-ole". Nothing new, just a push, that is spread virally.

So let me ask you.

• Do you want to repeat what someone else says?
• Do you have any original thoughts?
• If you hear someone else talking about the same thing, do you feel the urge to repeat it verbatim?
• Isn't it sometimes better to look at something in a completely different way?
• Are you so boring that you don't care about formulating your own opinions and thoughts?

Don't be a me too person. There is way too much under the social media hood here. We need leaders not followers.

- Embarq: Retail Incumbent Provisioning, Customer Service, Large Business and Enterprise Data Value
- Fibertech: Retail Competitor Sales Reps, Provisioning, Network, Customer Service, Large Business and Enterprise Data Value
- PAETEC: Retail Competitor Large Business and Enterprise Voice Value
- Qwest: Retail Incumbent Sales Reps, Billing
- tw telecom: Retail Competitor Brand, Billing, SMB Voice Value, SMB Data Value
- Windstream: Retail Incumbent SMB Data Value
Congratulations again to all the winners!

So yes, a busy week indeed. Now if I was out west at the TMCNet event ITExpo, I would have been at Stealth's party. On the subway this morning I was fortunate enough to run into Shrihari himself who, sleepy eyed, was delighted to let me know that he was happy with the turn out and reported it was a success (of course it was!). I was sorry I missed it as I knew some of my friends were there (Hunter Newby) and I would have had a nice time catching up. But since we're all in New York anyway, we'll just have to make time locally.

So that leads me in to another busy week here. I'm blogging on a Monday, which I don't normally do and a soggy Monday it was. Not because it rained - it was actually a gorgeous day marking the first day of Autumn. But I had to head in to the city for a meeting and a sick passenger on the subway caused extensive delays that with my perfectly timed day pushed me 40 minutes off my schedule. New client meeting started with out me, I arrived 40 minutes late. But all is well that ends well. I shouldn't let these things get to me but you know how it is - they do.

So if I didn't have a family and all I did was work and was a slave to my career I would have such a fabulous social career life! Today was the MIXX EXPO - FREE. I would eat and drink like a queen for sure... but alas.. another one bites the dust... maybe next year - http://www.mixx-expo.com/2.8/.

If you want more information about me, what I do or how I do it - just write me - ilissa@jaymiescotto.com you can also visit our website at www.jaymiescotto.com

I even got to go to several sessions strictly as an attendee and I learned quite a bit.  As a marketer focused on this market, I know all too well how challenging it is to stay up to date and relevant as marketing moves from an advertiser-driven, mass media monologue to a customer-empowered, one-to-one relationship building process.  I found sessions on building online communities, website optimization and writing copy for the web to all be very edifying.

All in all, it was extremely satisfying to see the event realized.

The footlong hot dog from Javits was also deeply satisfying but ultimately undeserving of it's own blog post.

I've now had a few days since I left New York and the Web 2.0 expo, to think. My last post was a quick shot at the highlites, and this post will focus on the specifics of what I thought were memorable moments and people. Keep in mind that I was focused more on the media and marketing tracks of the expo.

Jonah Peretti

One of the funnier and more informative sessions belonged to Jonah Peretti. Peretti co-founded  The HuffingtonPost. During Peretti’s session he cited some of his viral media experiments including the Nike sweatshop email, which was hilarious, as well as BlackPeopleLoveUs and the New York City Rejection Line. According to Peretti, all of these projects started small but spread through word-of-mouth to millions, illustrating the practical application of 6-degrees of separation and tipping points, though the tipping point was not the end game. To sum it up, you should add, test, tweak and optimize.

Words to live by in more than just this setting I think. Don't you?

Brian Solis

One of the sessions that I thought would deliver more just based on the quality of his blog and other writings was from Brian Solis. For some reason, and there can always be some that can prevent someone from knocking the ball out of the ballpark all the time, this one did not deliver. Though it did provide some nuggets, it mostly was Brian reading slides. I'm going to give Brian a free pass this time though, because his blog "over-delivers". With that being said, I still suggest that everyone take the time to read and then add Brian's blog to their reader list.

Avanish Kaushik

If you are into web analytics, as I am, and you don't know who Avanish Kaushik is, then I would suggest you check out his blog, Occam's Razor. His session was informative, funny, entertaining and passionate, and it was about fricken web analytics.  With that being said, he topped off his session by giving away his book, Web Analytics-An hour a day. He even autographed it too, if you wanted to wait! Thanks Avanish!

Michael Lazerow

Michael Lazerow is the CEO of company called Buddy Media and he delivered probably one of the more intriguing and informative sessions on Why Brand Advertisers Will Be the Biggest Beneficiaries of Social Media and How You Can Participate. He started slow and I was thinking, "uh-oh" here comes more of the same.  I had sat in on a few other sessions in which it was pointless to take notes since the speakers were re-hashing what we read and write every day. But Lazerow didn't disappoint. He provided case studies and metrics to validate how brands can essentially use a company such as his (which he did not pimp) to promote and leverage a brand or product using social media.

While search dominated the last 5 years of advertising,  Lazerow is dead on when he says that social will emerge as the leading way for major brands to reach and engage consumers. As such, the social media application is both the new ad unit and the new media property all in one. I was very impressed.

Stephan Spencer

Stephan Spencer had a session titled, Best-kept Secrets to Search Engine Optimization Success: the Art and the Science, and to a certain degree it was. Throughout his talk he peppered the audience with the question, "How many of you knew this"? To which there were very few hands being raised, which in essence validated the whole theme of this session. He provided not only real world examples and strategies, but also a follow up email of content and links that certainly speak to the space of SEO. If you would like the email forwarded to you, let me know. I'm sure he would not mind.

David Armano

David Armano's session was titled Micro-Interactions: How Brands Can Influence Consumer Behavior in a 2.0 World. I was fairly familiar with this since I am a big reader of David's blog and his thoughts on micro-interactions. David focuses on new thinking in the web 2.0 world and his session did just that. Unlike some of the other echo sessions that prevailed at Web 2.0, David focuses on the little things that matter. To quote David:

We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter no matter how brief is a micro-interaction that makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a particular product, brand, or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviors more than we realize.

You can access a lot of these presentation Decks at the  Web 2.0 expo site, but it won't be the same without the audio. Overall, I'd like to see a little less echo going forward with these conferences, but I don't think that can be avoidable. With the above people I have mentioned, they have stuck to what they know, and what they know works and they have run with it. For that, I'm thankfull. It was, in the end, a good gig that some should plan on attending.

Session 1.
Building a People-powered Company
Panelists:

• Eileen Gittins @ Blurb.com
• Richard Moross @ Moo.com
• Michael Galpert @ Aviary.com
• @ Etsy.com

Discussion:

• Reach out to the expert panel at Flickr, Etsy, Blurb, Crushpad, and Moo - peoplepoweredpanel AT gmail DOT com
• Blurb.com Make your own book - create a book for a social cause: http://www.blurb.com/
• "Customers are our marketing department."
  
• You could be gap.com & spend mills of dollars or etsy.com & empower users to tell the story.
• Organic community growth - via Etsy.com's model. People-powered business.

Session 2.
10 Things We've Learned At 37 Signals--Jason Fried

• "Planning is vastly overrated" (I disagree with this entirely based on size of team & co. culture).
• Jason Fried of @37signals discussing rapid development/agile & how to avoid trending towards mediocrity.
• 4-day work weeks, credit cards, flying & banjo lessons - work @37signals - crazy long-term? optimize for now, not for what might happen.
• "Easy" is a word you use to describe other people's jobs (red flag words)
• Red flag words: need, can't, easy, everyone, nobody
• Business and tumors grow forever - and not in good ways. It doesn't have to be a billion $ co.
• Having worked for a small company that doubled in size, but, not in revenue & went sluggish - I believe we don't all need to be Google.
• Jason is talking about swearing at work, audience member yells "F%^k you" - everyone laughing.
• "Answers are temporary." (he's a great speaker, motivator, and has just enough crazy to make you think he's onto something)
• "Interruption is the enemy of productivity."
• The average work day has been traded for average work "moments." 2 many interruptions, a fragmented day is not productive.
• "Focus on core needs: People will always want great customer service, and usability – not Facebook apps."

Session 3.
Design for Sign Up--Joshua Porter

• @bokardo discussing 'designing for sign-up' - sign up is hard!
• @bokardo Talking about sites that get away with and create form friction and yep, boston.com is one of em'
• Motivation will trump bad user experience every time. @bokardo I bet @cshirky would agree.
• When designing think 'instant engagement.' @bokardo
• Love: 'Sign up for a free email and invoice' -- oh yes, I only get a 100 free emails a day @bokardo

Session 4.
Lessons Learned in Scaling and building Social Systems--Joshua Schachter delicious

• Johsua Schachter delicious founder discussing the lessons he learned building and scaling
• Until its relaunch delicious users were managed in a single db. Bad idea for scale.
• Did not use 'private' instead went with 'do not share' to give users the feature, but discourage use w/childhood guilt).
• History: delicious ran on a single machine for a year than on 2 the next. Also one of first public APIs.
• "Scale yourself. Be lazy; reduce."
• Go to @starbucks offer to buy coffee for strangers and have them look at and use your site.
• "I don't get along with browsers very well."

Keynote 2.0 starting ..... #w2e 02:50 PM September 17, 2008 from txt

FRED WILSON

• @fredwilson Gives well-deserved props to @gothamgal his wife for her role in his presentation.
• @fredwilson Asks that we bury Alley and go w/ New York or Broadway.
• @fredwilson 'All Hell broke loose in 1999' - remembering a lot of the parties, social scene blowing up around nytech.
• @fredwilson played clip of @jcalicanus and his 'drop out of ivy league and spend your tuition on an internet startup.'
• @fredwilson We may be 'there' again and let's be a little more humble.

JASON FRIED

• You do not have to agree and do what the vocal minority says. You are a curator.--Jason Fried
• Listen to users but don't do everything they say. A collection v. warehouse.
• Once you set expectations of 'yes' it's hard to ever reverse that trend.

GARYVEE

• @garyvee HUSTLE!!!
• @garyvee I create non-scalable apps!!!
• @garyvee Stop watching fucking LOST! Build shit!
• @garyvee" @charlesforman is a douchebag" -- be authentic, be yourself, and love it.
• @garyvee 7pm - 2am is the time to do damage and make shit happen.
• Love that keynote ends with 'oh god I'm scared' via @garyvee's speech!

APRES-SESSION SOCIAL
Dinner at Shake Shack (@iamcal, @dlifson, @jackiepeters, @gregarious, @rebeccaforever, @iamkyle, @gotwalt, @rdoshi, and a bunch more)
Park for Microsoft-hosted event

Online Customer Communities that Connect and Thrive: Creating the Right Mix of Purpose, Passion, People, and Platforms

• Discussing 'predictably irrational/rational' behaviors of community.
• #web20nyc @ building online communities - we're self organizing into micro communities - too early?
• Your community must be able to live and thrive in a yahoo group - the most featureless, anti-ux experience.
• This room is full of brilliant people, yet no one has an answer for how to foster a partisan political community in a positive way.
• It's actually the 'fringe' group that thrives and lasts the longest and is the strongest. It's not the status quo.
• @whatleydude Asking about offline activities for online communities - can you start an online com w/o offline foundation?

PM Workshop: Designing for Community--Joshua Porter

• www.ravelry.com is a fascinating community for/of knitters.
• 'Community is not a feature of software.'
• Social objects:
  
  • Yelp: reputation
  • YouTube: video
  • Amazon: review all create community to help people do an activity better

  
  

• Great case study: google 'fiskateers' amazing scissor-fanatic community that is a social movement.
• "Reputation" must decay over time for communities to thrive - Yelp Elite Squads.
• 'What you expose in an interface becomes the entire universe for the people who use it.' Josh Porter
• How's this for a brand/tagline: consumating.com The dating site that doesn't suck. Love that they had major problems
• How many of you do product research at amazon?
• You will always have fans, and when something bad happens AND you respond in the right way it's over quickly.
• 'Your reputation is equal to the sum of your past actions w/in a community.' Bryce Glass, Yahoo Reputation System
• www.perfectapology.com - great for community crisis mgmt.
• Porter discussing history of Digg and the Top Diggers. Really fascinating to have been a user then and think back on it now
• Also important is the role that ux designers played in fixing the top Diggers problem.
• @bokardo Talking about Ma.gnolia and the creation of 'gardeners' to weed out the massive spam problem.
• Dogster: Keyword study caused change across the site. This can't be done overnight but w/time.
• Are you helping your users be better at an activity? What activity?
• @bokardo discussing ravelry.com. @dlifson mentions knitting patterns in an open source community format.

APRES-SESSION SOCIAL
TECH SET, hosted by Stephanie Agresta and Brian Solis
#sms/@whatleydude
TechKaraoke, hosted by Brett Petersel at Chorus

1.  It would be great if the conference organizers could suck in my LinkedIn contacts and check it against the conference attendee list.  I ended up bumping into a bunch of people that I knew during the conference but I am willing to bet that there are a few that I missed.  If I knew folks were coming I could have set up some time with them, especially people I hadn't seen in a long time.  I'd also like to be notified of any '2nd degree' folks who are at the conference.

2.  Suggest sessions that I should attend based on my LinkedIn profile info (or even just my registration information).

3.  A mobile app or badge technology that could notify me if any of the folks in #1 were in my proximity.

4.  Show me names/titles of people staffing each vendor booth for each time period.  That way I know if Tuesday is the only day the CEO fo XYZ company will be at the conference, or if Wednesday is the day the VP of Business Development for ABC company will be around.  And let the vendors opt-out if they don't want to share this information.

5.  Let that little badge scanner device automatically send out a LinkedIn request to those attendees who wish to stay in contact with a person at a given booth.  You usually exchange business cards but that's a little clunky.  There could easily be an option for a booth staffer to select their name, and a check box that says that you want to get a LinkedIn request.

Any other ideas on how to improve the conference experience?  And are there any cool companies out there addressing some of this stuff?

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• Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibrary TV) about personal brand building
• Blogstring at the Web 2.0 Expo

Check out his keynote here:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1283699&dest=-1]

What do you think about his comments?

Ok so its been quite a week. In short order I went to New York, and attended the Web 2.0 Expo. I wanted to blog every day about what sessions I attended but there was always something preventing me from doing that. So the take below will be the high highlites and then I'll follow that up with subsequent posts on some of the more worthy sessions.

So why couldn't I throw out a dispatch daily? Either it was the back to back to back sessions that were for me personally,  or so I thought, all relevant; or it was the beer infuzed booth crawl that was a must. (more on that later) Or it was the keynotes which I tried to pay attention to, and take notes of in the dark; or it was recruiters calling me. I'm not sure why it works like this where all of a sudden in the middle of a "show" the karmic gods feel they must bestow more karma on you when you least expect it, but thats what happens.

Try thinking about what your next moves should be with your life and your family when you're trying to soak in what's happening around you at a conference. Mental multi-tasking- i was not really into. I think it was at this point that my eye would not stop twitching.

So anyway back to the gig. I thought that the highlites from my perspective were geared more towards the media and marketing tracks. That's the space I swim in and know best, so obviously my summation of the show is going to be different then the person who attended the show for the design and UX tracks, but...

With that being said though, One of the ironies of the show was that i thought that the emphasis on the conversation was not emphasized enough. To a degree isn't that the essence of web 2.0? A technology that allows us to collaborate and share and communicate in ways that are more seamless and transparent and with lower barriers of entry?

The de-emphasization of the conversation?

Case in point. Up on the expo floor there were these little pod like rooms where the Web2Open sessions were going on. A place where the attendees can "create the conversation".  Which was a cool idea. They almost got it right because that's what a lot of people wanted. Except that they were quite a ways away from where the sessions were taking place. And they were taking place to a certain degree while the sessions were in play downstairs. And on top of that, it was loud in the expo area.

Meanwhile, downstairs outside the session area, there were dozens of these 6 seat tables to sit and charge and blog and eat. Very quiet area for the most part with some mild chatter; but people were mostly doing there thing, solo.  My thought is that there has to be a better way to draw the attendees out. I know and have to believe they want to talk and exchange and share, but we need to give them a better forum or platform to do that in the future. We, they want to share and collaborate. I know it.

I also think that we need to do a better job of trying to tie in the intense micro-blogging going on while these sessions are in place. Yes there was a backchannel and I know that that can border on insanity and you may get some pretty wild comments but perhaps maybe a live chat function that ties in either the audience or people unable to attend. All visible live. Just a thought. Better yet, a microblogging room where all of the entries are posted realtime on the screen.

Also while I'm at it 5 minute  Q & A 's at the end of some of these sessions isn't enough. Don't you think? I think some might appreciate more time to pick the brains of some of these thought leaders. Perhaps more panel discussions? If you were at the web 2.0 expo what did you think? Send me the links to your recaps.

Next up, who hit it out of the park and who didn't, and why.

1. Agile web design developments core has to be building a window for failure, and a window for bypassing conventional software development process.
2. Agile process has a lot to do with iteration a  work cycle approach where you keep on entering and exiting the cycle as you tweak and tune. You handle challenges as you move on. Agile processes are largely collaborative.
3. Embedding quality in agile processes brings a better product after each iteration cycle
4. Time to do really good  design work has no alternative, path of least resistance makes for decidedly inferior products which are likely to be similar to many around
5. Cycle Zero must have defined receivables, mood boards or dummies should be handled during cycle zero or phase zero whatever you call it.
6. User stories stage and cycle planning is critical to cost and time management
7. Collaborative UX meeting and Collaborative UI meetings help in thinking out of the box and get everyone on the same page. Designers get a time to figure how the site is going to look like and what the challenges would be.
8. Stand-up stage of just an update and plan for the day helps in monitoring agile development and measuring it various stages.
9. Testing, Validation and Public Demos are parts of the cycle and are looked at at-least once in eavery cycle/ phase
10. Be rapid through your cycles and don't just et stuck at a point, move on, there are going to be other stages of iteration

"I really miss him," said Lyons, speaking in New York City at the Web 2.0 Expo, a tech conference sponsored by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Lyons stopped contributing to his popular blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, in July. He now writes a column for Newsweek and a blog called Real Dan.

According to Lyons, neither has been particularly well-received.

"I get these e-mails all the time: 'I don't understand how Fake Steve can be so good and you can be so bad. Your blog sucks, dude.'"

"I apologize," Lyons told the audience. "I really am much less interesting than Fake Steve as a writer."

Lyons says he had intended to bring The Secret Diary to Newsweek, but lost heart after Apple's (AAPL) World Wide Developers Conference in June, when it was apparent to all who saw him that the real Steve Jobs had lost a lot of weight. (Jobs had a malignant tumor removed from his pancreas in 2004 and has been having lingering digestive difficulties as a result of the surgery, according to friends. See here.)

"I woke up one morning and I kind of lost heart," said Lyons. "I said man, I just can't keep doing this joke."

But Lyons was heartened by Jobs' appearance at Apple's "Let's Rock" event earlier this month. "He's looking better now. Maybe we'll revive it."

David Karp & Avi Muchnick

1. You are different and you look different, don't confuse us with something which has been seen before and make a notion about what we are. The challenge of establishing your look and feel and building a design case around you.
2. You have to sell yourself to the user for the user to be convinced that he wins by engaging on your site, your design has to communicate ease of success to the user and the fact that you care for them.
3. Ultimately content quality is your responsibility and you are answerable for the quality of your content. You need to understand your communities profile and preferences while designing your framework and layout. Participative approach towards quality monitoring is necessary. Defining boundaries of content creation and management is important for communities, community members should know what is good and what is not.
4. User feedback needs to be prioritized and measured against your broader vision, community feedback is important, but don't dilute what you believe would work over what the users talk about. Segregating user feedback and looking behind the motive may not be an evil thing to do.
5. Design should encourage participation, and curb negativity. Hearing whispers would ensure that "ït sucks" messages just don't get written.
6. How do you get people to accept UI changes. Make your existing users choose what they want give them choice till they change over to the new one anyway. Let them understand the new interface is better, maybe underplay the existing page and down-sell it, tweak it to maybe, sub-perform. Beta testing your new UI and selective exposure may help.

Some of the facts as preamble to this discussion:

1. Content Drives Traffic 
2. Users don’t read online 
3. The content now comes in various unexpected ways 
4. We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text, the internet looks like writing, but it is actually a conversation

Types/ Classification of content 

1. Navigation & Orientation content 
2. Labels and action 
3. Help 
4. Non textual
5. Technical

Executive Summary:

You need a content strategy, and you need a content strategist to look after it. If you have lots of information flowing in from the UGC route, you would be better off dedicating an "Ïnformation Architect" to integrate it. Style Sheets and Content Guidelines are two of the few essential documents which you must have operational in any content development project. To cover against plagiarism, it is important to keep the background documentation and source for your creation handy.

For a successful content strategy you need the team to bring in Passion, Editorial Responsibility and Monitoring Responsibility. Sites which have a major flow of user generated content need to continuously evaluate content on multiple parameters.

A well attended but poorly presented session, too few takeaways from a very illustrious panel.

Stephan Spencer had his job cut - "I know my job, this is what I can give free comeback to me for business". Which is fine.

1. What's your competition and why do they come on top, and why do they have a second link, and what can you do to bring there second link out and get your another link in or anyone's another link in for that matter. He suggested title tweaking and cross link building to reduce competitors link value and get the sub-link out. Both are fine, but we must understand that "ït is a red hat approach with white hat techniques" nothing wrong about it though.
2. rel=nofollow needs to be used very effectively to avoid your pagerank dilution, especially on your homepage, preserve it by avoiding it to be distributed towards disclaimers, privacy policy and other such stuff. Wherever you feel the page can do without just use rel=nofollow and make your PR go that extra mile. Smart usage of a tag which is live since 2005.
3. Be wise in re-direction, be careful to use 301 and 302 properly, 301 would always pass the page rank and 302 won't. Know what you are doing and just don't let it be an accident.
4. Google's Directory allows your robots to visit and crawl it. Develop your spider to go to Google Directory crawl it and measure the page ranks of various sites, make a dump of high pagerank sites and work to get links from them. There are some merit based link selling sites which are not run of the mill, look at buying links from PR 8 sites. Also it is important to remember .edu, .gov and .org links always come on high pecking order.
5. Sitewide links from left panel and bottom may not help. One good link from the homepge may be the only thing you may require.
6. Do you have a matrix of your competitors links, you need it and you need it now. Chase and be there in that neighbourhood. Good neighbourhood matters and ensure that your links are in good neighbourhood.
7. There are lot of absolutely free SEO tools available from Google/ Yahoo/ Microsoft and host of other players, choose your tools and integrate them with your daily tasks.  Google Website Analyzer, Google Insights, Wordtracker, Server header checker, css zen garden, SEO title tag plug-in, keyword discovery etc...
8. You must use these tools twice once to grow your sites and second time to reverse engineer your competitors.

Stephan knows his job, but for me there was not much new, still revising what you know and hearing what you believe is a good feeling.

I struggle to understand how or why VCs are pouring money into these developments. I talked to Slide about their app on Facebook when I met them at a conference in San Francisco recently. Why build an app which requires you to forward to others before it can be downloaded? If it's a way to get more users on board, it's back firing. Slide pointed out that's not a requirement for downloading their apps but of RockYou. Sure enough, it was RockYou's apps. As for them, they dodged my question.

VCs should really take a closer look at the apps before pouring in money. Social networks apps must have a business model that benefits society and not contribute to nonsense. The financial industries downfall, ironically, is the best opportunity for the tech world to lead in changing the current economy. Otherwise, the bubble that we live in will burst as it did in 1999.

If you couldn't make it to the expo, check out the live stream instead.

Kudos to O'Reilly. On a different note, any chance of price reduction for invitees to Web 2.0 Summit?