Great Sessions at Web2Open
Web2Open is coming together with some sessions that I’m pretty psyched for. The Open is the free unconference side of Web 2.0 Expo. Like other unconferences you can show up the morning of and add your own session to the open grid. But we’re also doing some pre-planned content and tie-ins with sessions from the main track.
Here’s what’s going on:
Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business. We’re doing a hybrid with Charlene’s session where you go to the normal session and then can do a more participatory discussion version of it at the Open. If you’re a business this is a great session to find out how to find out how to pick the parts of social media that are going to do you any good. As a social media business owner, I’m going because I want to start making sense to my customers.
UI for Data Portability. I know plenty of people who get excited and heated talking about standards. I think most people though want to see the standards in action before they make a decision about usefulness. That’s what this session is about. Chris Messina (champion of many things in Data Portability) is moderating and we’ll have the actual UI designers behind some of the first consumer applications to make use of things like OpenID, OAuth, microformats, and social graph portability. First you’ll say, “wow! that’s useful.” Then you’ll get to ask questions about the design tradeoffs they made in order to make sense to the widest audience.
Troll Whispering. This is a technique discussion from some great moderators (and moderated by BoingBoing’s moderater, Teresa Nielsen Hayden). You should check out Sarah’s post about this if only to find out the alternative view that this session is a plot by “fairly rich people and/or their proxies” to “PERFECT FASCIST BUSINESS PLANS.”
Social Responsibility. I’m constantly running into people or companies who are trying to be more responsible. There’s always going to be people like my friend Rabble who are idealistic activists (maybe idealistic is too strong a word for Rabble), but I there’s also people like Wesabe who organized around a mission that they felt was profitable both financially and socially, companies with even more direct social missions like Kiva and Volunteermatch, and then companies you’d never expect like Salesforce which has a huge philanthropic arm. I wrote about this a bit in my responsibility revolution post. Jeremy Toeman (of Geeks Doing Good) is moderating and we’re working to line up some awesome participants.
Small Business Hacks. I could go on for hours about how much more fun it is to work on something you own rather than on something someone else owns. But instead we’re going to find other people to say that. My friend Terrie put it best in the comments of my take the next step post: people want to work on things that matter. When you’re a small business, everything you do matters. The problem though is that a lot of advice for Web 2.0 companies is coming from a venture mindset. This session will be all about advice for the owner mindset.
Influence is Overrated. “Have you ever actually met an influential that can repeatedly and consistently make a product go viral? Probably not, because the latest science and real world experimentation shows that “influentials” don’t really exist.” So how do you get your product to go viral? This is another hybrid session, go to the session in the main track and then come back to the Open for discussion.
Secret Hybrid Session #3 and Secret Hybrid Session Shootout. I’m still waiting for confirmation on speakers before announcing this. Let’s just say that it’s going to be intense.
All the sessions that are part of the Open are free including the hybrid sessions from the main track. But you will need a badge. Register the code websf08opw. This badge will also get you into the show floor and the keynotes!
More info:
Web2Open Wiki
Web 2.0 Expo Home
Web2Open Attendees on CrowdVine
