WidgetWebExpo roundup

Well, WidgetWebExpo New York has come and gone. Despite reasonably weak attendance numbers, I thought that as a conference it really couldn't have gone better. The speakers were all top notch, the attendees were high quality and committed and everybody had a great time learning and networking.
Of course I really enjoyed myself and got to meet and talk with as many speakers as I could. As usual, with two tracks and several panels I missed some people completely. But I added hugely to my store of widget links and I know that lots of attendees made a bunch of new connections of their own.

I really don't want to pick out many individual for praise, as I honestly felt that every single speaker and pannelist was excellent. However, just some extra kudos to Khris Loux for both presenting and chairing (the mobile widget panel, on which he admitted he knew next to nothing); Hooman Radfar (Clearspring, presentation here) and Fred Wilson for keynoting; Richard Krueger, David Armano for excellent panel chairing; Chad Catacchio and Chris Saad for Twittering and questions above and beyond the call of duty; Patrick Sexton and Linda Abraham for surprisingly excellent presentations; and David Cushman and Chris Thorpe for travelling from the UK to be there. I'll be doing a roundup of every session in the next week or so when my jetlag wears off. In the meantime, the conference site is still up and we're already working towards London in October if you feel like submitting a proposal.

We'll have most of the New York presentations up on line soon.

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WidgetWebExpo sponsorship options

If you are in the industry you should be getting involved with WidgetWebExpo. All our sponsors are part of the conversation. And here is full information in widget form ...

Read this doc on Scribd: WWE NY08 SponsorInfo

Date for your diary - WidgetWebExpo New York

My conference, which last year was Widgety Goodness in the UK, has transformed into WidgetWebExpo and will take place in New York on June 16th and 17th this year.

Widgets for beginners: Widget tools: Widget marketing: Widget destinations: Big Media: APIs: Mashups: Programmable web: Large companys using widgets: Where’s the money in widgets: Enterprise widgets: Non-profit widgets: widgetized Intranet: Widgetising established content: Blog platforms: Social networks relating to widgets: All Google’s widgets: The power of Affiliate widgets: is SEO the hidden value in widgets: widget Metrics: Case studies: choosing widget technologies: Tools and platforms compared: Making widgets go viral: managing Widget content: Widget publishing: Licencing widget content: Open standards for widgets: Opensocial: Dataportability

I'm deep in planning the agenda - we've got some ace widgety speakers lined up already with a lot more to come. We have two days and two streams with some extra events thrown in around the edges. We're working on making it a unique widget industry event where all sides of this increasingly important space come together to understand developments and where we go from here. Feel the need to join the conversation? Sponsors welcomed.

More Stuff
In addition to the two days of speakers and panels, we'll have workshops, a Widget Standards BoF meet, WidgetWeb TV providing social networking via everyone's video input and the widgety goodness awards.  Yes, I'm launching our very own industry awards, The Widgeties.

Speaker Search
I'm currently assembling the speakers and panels and am looking to shed light on all the corners of the industry. Take a look at the list of subjects above and fill out this form if you want to suggest yourself or someone you think should be speaking.

Lots more on all of this coming in the next few weeks. For the moment, the main thing is to clear the decks so you can be in New York on June 16th and 17th. Don't accept any other invitations, this is going to be a biggie. And if you can't make New York, we're also going to be in London in October.

Widgety Goodness UK Widget Conference

Vint Cerf, god, talks nonsense

It is mandatory to bow down before the godlike genius of Vint Cerf. He was vaguely in my world last century during the domain name wars. Now he works for Google, which makes him an emissary of god. That said, he does have a rather dull and predictable interest in using internet protocols in space. He's long banged on about this - now here he is adding it to his lecture on the future of television:

Vint Cerf, aka the godfather of the net, predicts ...

Dr Cerf also revealed that he has been working on future developments for the internet, taking it beyond the confines of planet Earth. With other researchers he has been developing systems for using the net to communicate and control space vehicles, including interplanetary landers sent to explore the surface of Mars.

"Up until now we've been using the so-called Deep Space Network to communicate across space with radio signals. What my colleagues and I would like to do is use a version of internet."

I just can't work out why what protocols are used to control space vehicles are of interest to anyone. It's not as if we're all going to be getting control over them from our browsers, despite the implications of using a 'version of the internet'. It's like me saying I'd like us to use widgets to control satellites - why would this be of interest to anyone except technicians on the project?

What comes after content?

I'll be speaking at the NMK Forum 07

Want to know what lies beyond the revolution in social media and what it means for business? 2007 is the year to cut the hype and start doing business in this new online environment.

I get to speak for two minutes at 2.45 precisely. Don't blink.

2.45pm-3.00pm STARTUP SHOWCASE: “The Disruptors”

Six firms, 2 minutes each, six potentially disruptive ideas to media, marketing and technology.

Actully, they've got a great lineup and I'm looking forward to it. Hope to meet a lot of new and old people there.

Widget Nation - report

New Media Knowledge - Beers and Innovation 10: Widget Nation

New Location for London OpenCoffee

Saul announces new location, in the stunning Waterstones on Picadilly - now that's a real building!

   

New Location for London OpenCoffee

Thanks so much to Walid and the guys at TrustedPlaces, we have an excellent new venue for London OpenCoffee Club.

Starting from this Thursday, every 10-12, we'll be having London OpenCoffee at the very cool 5th View Bar at the top of Waterstone's at 203-206 Piccadily. See the Trustedplaces review here.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I'm with Pete on this bullsh*t

Amazon sues Statsaholic…Web as Platform is Bullsh*t.

Amazon just dug its own grave, I think. At least in the world of web services, it’s going to be hard to save its reputation. You see, while Amazon used the Web 2.0 Expo as a platform to promote its web services - particularly the hosting service Amazon S3 - it was simultaneously suing Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic). Mashable and, in fact, most of the blogosphere, criticized Amazon when the company threatened Alexaholic, forced it to change its name to Statsaholic, and then persisted in trying to shut down the service by blocking the Alexa graphs from being displayed on the site. Remember that this is basically one developer who created something cool, and is now being pursued relentlessly by Amazon.

So if you were planning to use any of Amazon’s web services, may we suggest you consider some alternatives? And if you’re using the Alexa toolbar, please uninstall it. After all, isn’t Amazon stealing your proprietary surfing data?

mashup* - OpenID

As big fans of OpenID, we're pleased to see that the next mashup* event here in London is on the theme of Identity 2.0

mashup* - 6pm, 24th April 2007.

The next mashup* will be held from 6pm - 8:30pm on the 24th April at BT Centre (St-Pauls), London.

The theme will be:

Identity 2.0: my digital identity is an asset, but who owns it?

The evening session will address the following issues

-          What is Digital Identity?

-          Why is it so important?

-          Trust.  Who should I trust and why should I be trusted?

-          Authentication. How far is reasonable?

-          Interoperability. Does this OpenID provider work with that consumer?

-          Transactions. Don't confuse Paypal's needs with Digg's wants?

-          Complexity. OpenID is relatively easy, Cardspace is somewhat harder!

-          Real world use cases. How do I keep my profile up to date everywhere?

Widget Nation

Beers & Innovation 10: Widget Nation at The CC Club Tuesday, May 22, 2007

In the Seventeenth Century, Britain's merchants drove its economy, establishing trade routes and alliances that formed the basis of the Empire. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, it was the Spinning Jennies and steam engines of the Industrial Revolution that drove our commercial success. In the Twentieth Century, that changed again and we developed a knowledge economy that generated income from our skills, understanding and creativity. And in the Twenty-First Century... we have widgets. The snippets of code that bring the content of other sites onto your own or allow users to create miniature applications, media players, and more

The Premise: On December 30, Newsweek magazine declared that 2007 would be the year of the widget. What did they mean? That while in 2006 it seemed that every notable web business revolved around 'user-generated content', this year would not so much be about content as about distribution. Widgets allow publishers to extend their reach far beyond their own websites, into blogs around the world, into 100 million social network profiles and onto users' desktops. Is this happening or about to happen? Is it really possible to build or extend your business on the basis of something that sounds so improbable? The sale of MyBlogLog to Yahoo! in January showed that widgets certainly have some value, but are they really as powerful as Newsweek and other pundits would have us believe?

The Panel:

Matt Loney (Chair) is the editor and site director of ZDNet.co.uk, recently overseeing the site's adoption of reader blogs and other Web 2.0 features.

Ivan Pope is the CEO of Snipperoo, a British Web 2.0 company that promises to organise your widgets like no other. Ivan started his internet career as publisher of The World Wide Web Newsletter in 1993, then did things like NetNames, WebMedia and .Net magazine.

Fergus Burns is the CEO of Nooked, a market leader in RSS Marketing, with a background in numerous start-ups as well as a six-year stint at Microsoft.

OpenCoffee-on-Sea

In homage to Saul Klein's OpenCoffee event last week, we will be holding our own version, OpenCoffee-on-Sea tomorrow morning in Brighton.

Sam Sethi from Vecosys is coming down to Brighton this Wednesday 7th
March; as an extension of the London Open Coffee morning held by Saul
Klein, come and meet Sam and chat about business, start-ups,
fund-raising & entrepreneurship.

Starbucks, 20-21 North Road from 10am.

http://upcoming.org/event/160155

For people interested in doing this on a more regular basis, please
consider coming to Matt Weston's Business Bricks meet-up which runs
every Friday:

http://upcoming.org/event/155370/

We interrupt this broadcast ...

I just wanted to show you this:

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

I discovered the networks in 1988. They changed my life.
I started a web magazine in 1993 when there was barely a web. I was in love.
I don't know if this is hyperbole or hype, but it scares me.
Pass it on.

 

Going to LIFT, Geneva?

There's a great conference coming up - LIFT - which is in Geneva, Switzerland. The list of speakers is insanely brilliant with some very off the wall choices including Sister Judith  who is Editorial director, Internet Office of the Holy See (or to put it another way, God's Webmaster on Earth) .

LIFT is a gathering of talented observers, explorers, and builders who discuss the current challenges and creative solutions presented by emerging technologies. LIFT is three days to face cutting edge business models, bold predictions, radical thinking, and get new ideas to inject into your own part of the planet.

LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.

LIFT is more than a conference! Beyond the opportunity to listen to some of today’s most influential minds, you can also talk during the open stage sessions or share and learn with others during a pre-conference workshop. And for the first time this year comes LIFT+, a living and creative platform intended to develop new ideas through active interaction between the participants.

Anyway, they have an Open Stage which gets voted for. The top 8 get to speak, and I'm currently at No.8, with my proposal - Blowing the Web Apart. I'd appreciate a few more votes to move me out of the relegation zone. If you are booked to attend, please go here and vote for ME (or anyone else, I guess, in a spirt of openness). [UPDATE: I just noticed they are closing voting on Sunday night - so vote if you will, fingers crossed]

God uses the internet

LIFT || A conference about technology in our society.. have just announced their latest speakers, including this fascinating woman:

Sister Judith Zoebelein from the Vatican will join us to talk about technology and religion. Surprised? Don’t be! Sister Judith is an early adopter of the Internet. She saw the immense possibilities for the web and internet technologies in her development activities around the world. In the 1990s she was called to the Vatican where she has been instrumental in developing their beautiful websites, which have drawn world-wide attention. Business Week featured Sister Judith and her activities in an article in March 2005. Click here to read the article, “O Click All Ye Faithful.”

I salute LIFT for their eclectic approach to speaker recruitment. I'm looking forward to meeting the eclectic attendees and speakers next month.

January 1995 Best and Worst

Thanks to the legendary Alan Meckler's blog I am led to this amazing list of Best and Worst from January 1995. It's amazing in that it records a lot of thoughts from a time when the web was still hot from the big bang. A long, long time ago - except that by that time I had already started and sold my very own internet magazine, The World Wide Web Newsletter (founded Sept 1993), and Alan had asked me to chair Internet World UK. Great times.

The proliferation of the World-Wide Web. Unlike other areas of the Net, once you access the Web, it makes no difference whether you're a new user or an old pro. The Web graciously accommodates all.

I remember the first time I saw a URL address: http://www.something.something.something. "Ugh," I moaned. "A whole new language I have to learn? I was just getting the hang of Unix!" I immediately resigned myself to the fact that this might be the end of my days in cyberspace. The Net had become somewhat of a runaway locomotive and I was the woman running behind it, screaming for the conductor to please wait! Then suddenly it all came together. A Net guru friend told me about Lynx. "All you have to do," he said, "is type the word 'lynx' at your Unix prompt, and presto! You're into the Web." That weekend I spent about eight hours a day exploring. I quickly found out that you could access all your favorite telnet, FTP, and Gopher sites from the Web, as well as tons of resources you would never find anywhere else on the Net. My cyberlife had changed forever.

The way I figure it, the arachnid family (I speak of spiders, of course) have had the right idea all along. Spin a Web, then use it to capture the best of the best. How do you spin your Web? Type "lynx" at your Unix prompt or load other Web browsers such as Mosaic. You'll find the best of '94 at your fingertips!

Unconferencing the Unconference

Hmm, Le Web, Paris, is over. And boy, did it throw up a storm, which I've touched on and don't want to repeat here. There's plenty of commentary all over the web, even from Americans who went to a wedding instead (a wedding?). My view is not specifically that the organisers blew up their own conference, but that they never really tried to understand what a conference at this point in time should and could be - a 2.0 Conference maybe.
The organiser, Loic Le Meur proudly and repeatedly told us how many countries were represented (37?) and how quickly it was put together (ten weeks?). But he never really acknowledge that there was an audience who were more knowledgeable and more interesting and more excited than the rather tired conference speakers manged to be. And that was before he introduced the politicians.
You'll hear a lot of people at these events saying how it's really the neworking in the corridors that makes it worthwhile to attend. And that is certainly true, though probably only because the 'big name speakers on stage' format has got so tired.
What isn't acknowledged here is that the attendees (who pay for the privilege) generate the real content of the event. In other words, they should benefit from being content providers. I see a lot of startups that offer to share advertising revenue back with visitors and contributors to sites. But I've never seen a conference that does anything but take the attendees fees - and then sell those attendees to the Sponsors and pile their money on top of the fees.
How about a conference that foregrounds the attendees. That understands that they bring the content, the User Generated Content, and rewards them for this. How about some tools to put into the hands of conference attendees so they can really leverage their time and attention. How about sharing the sponsorship and advertising revenues with the attendees. How about charging the Press and letting Bloggers in for free? How about trying a bit harder:

Give all attendees a small stand to occupy for part of the event. I'm fed up with a bunch of pointless stands occupied by Orange/Nokia/Microsoft/SixApart/et al. I'd like to mix with a few hundred people who were standing by thier own mini-stands - maybe just a plinth or lectern - pitching for attention.
Give attendees the option of a sandwich board or a protest banner on a pole to carry around, setting out what they are there for and what they want out of it - or whatever.
Draw lots for speakers. Anyone attending can pitch to speak, even if it's to read Howl or  announce their startup. Speakers are drawn from a hat.
Give everyone a simple conference address (email, web, blog) and print it on their badge IN BIG LETTERS (at Le Web you couldn't even read the names on the tags). Let them put what they want on this page in a simple and quick manner. Then, when we pass someone in the hall or overhear their name in someone else's conversation, we can track them down.
Better still, give us some real time networking tools so we can sift and filter and suggest and follow and meet and greet and engage with eachother. Currently it's a bit like playing blind-mans-bluff. You know there are a lot of interesting people around and you hope to meet some of them, but you might as well put on a blindfold and grab people at random.
Make the WiFi work. Put the director of WiFi on stage in stocks and hand out buckets of rotten fruit. We'll soon voice our opinion. (Oh, and if the audience shouts that the WiFi is down, don't laugh at them. They are in pain and you know nothing).

This may sound like a recipe for chaos, but I guarantee that it would make an incredibly exciting conference.

Party on down

The Le Web party was crazy and went on far too long. Could I have just gone home? Oh, I suppose I could. It's a mite annoying watching four barstaff endlessly preparing a bucket of champagne for the VIP room while hundreds of hard working partygoers (we pay the bills, remember) clamour for service from two overworked barstaff. But hey, it's their event, I guess they can be VIPs for a day.

Le Web Great Conference - NOT

Le Web, the greatest web conference in Europe ever. Maybe. Frankly, I'm pissed with it.
The WiFi is atrocious - but whenever the subject is mentioned it's laughed off. If you've sat through a whole day of conference like this with no connectivity, it's killing (ok, ok, I'm out in the lobby where strangely there is a signal - everyone clusters here like smokers getting their fix).
We got bumped from the Startup presentation room. Despite the fact that we were the second company to put ourselves up for presenting and that we've been on the list since day one until Sunday. Suddenly this morning we're no longer on the list. Oh, they emailed us 'loads' and we never replied. Well, we got no emails anywhere. And how hard are we to contact? Yadda, yadda, yadda. Just more pain and suffering from this conference.
And the speakers. Same old same old. Same old stories, same old corporate speakers. And same old friends of the organisers. It's like a love-in for a closed circle, with no fresh thinking or any challenge to the status quo. Very French.
And the conference is totally sold to the sponsors. So much so that the logos rotate ceaselessly above the speakers. Every inch is sold. Sure, it's a commercial conference, but hey, I've never seen that level of sponsor love before. They aren't just on the program, they are on the stage.
Ah, that's better, I've vented. Apart from the above it's been a great day with loads of interesting meetings and a lot of good conversation. And a great lunch with Simon from etribes.

Startup Room kicks in to life

The startup presentation room at Le Web has now kicked into life. I'm watching a presentation by Musestorm where they have just announced a bunch of integration partnerships including one with us. We're really keen on this partnership as it brings the Snipperoo button to life for the first time. Next year will see our button integrated with every Musestorm button. Look out for a lot more partnerships in the near future.

Lunch at Le Web

Not much to report, but I think this is where we will be having lunch.

Politicizing Le Web?

It has just been announced that Shimon Peres is in town and will address Le Web on 'freedom of speech' or somesuch. Hopefully they will invite the Palestinians who have views on the same subject.

At LeWeb getting down with the WiFi

Here we go again at Le Web. Looking good for two days of crazy european 2.0 networking with a late night party from Netvibes tonight. Lot's to look out for, but what we really want is the WiFi to work well. And so far the evidence is, well, wobbly.

Presenting at Le Web, Paris, next week

Snipperoo at LE WEB 3 Conference Nov 19th, 2006

Snipperoo founders Ivan Pope and Jay Caines-Gooby will be attending the LE WEB 3 conference taking place December 11th, 12th in Paris. We'll be demoing our Universal Widget™ and our new Snipperoo button. The demo and discussion are going to take place at the Startup room, December 11th at 2.40pm - though as we only get ten minutes, it will be fast and furious. If you'd like to meet Ivan and Jay during the conference, drop us a line on ivan.pope@gmail.com

NW Start Up 2.0 this Thursday

If you are anywhere near the north west of England, don't forget this event on Thursday. It could just change your life. I'll be there to talk startups, 2.0 and the entrepreneurial life

 

NW Start Up 2.0

When Thursday, November 23, 2006 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Where IoD hub Manchester
Peter House, St Peter's Square, Oxford Street
Manchester, Manchester M1 5AN

(Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)

 

Starting an internet business? Seasoned entrepreneur? Got the killer idea? Wondering what the 2.0 this and 2.0 that is all about? Looking for investment? Looking to invest?

What about SaaS? Do you know how many SaaS vendors have entered the market recently? Have you considered starting a business in this space?

Web 2.0 (mostly consumer driven) and SaaS (B2B) are the two main evolutions taking place right now.

Come along to the north-west's first and premier 2.0 networking event for an evening of conversation and potential dealmaking. We aim to encourage creative thinking. With input from Techcrunch's Sam Sethi (http://uk.techcrunch.com), internet original Ivan Pope now Snipperoo (http://www.snipperoo.com), David Terrar of Twinfield and D Squared C (http://www.d2c.org.uk/) and Manchester entrepreneur Manoj Ranaweera of ebdex (http://www.ebdex.co.uk)

The event will be sponsored by KPMG. Imran Ali, Strategy Director of Orange will be the keynote speaker. Stuart Bruce will provide podcasting in true web2.0 style.

Techcrunch UK launch video

Finally we get a glimpse of what the Techcrunch UK launch party really looked like. If you watch closely you'll see me pop up behind Mike Butcher as he announces the what, why and when of it all.

As Mike Butcher says, 'This is not intended to be an in-depth piece, more an overview. Instead, we also shot a number of longer interviews with various starups at the event which we’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks.'

Widgets Live wrapup

For a great wrap up of WidgetsLive! read Widgets Live! Everywhere : Somewhat Frank ~ Blog by Frank Gruber.

Widgets Live! was a fabulous day of festivities  (November 6, 2006) which attracted the thought leaders of the web, mobile and gadget industries to discuss one of the hottest topics, widgets.

WidgetsLive!

Here we are at WidgetsLive! in San Francisco. The morning sesions are drawing to a close. Arlo Rose the founder of Konfabulator, now Yahoo! Widgets, talked about how they came to be. Dan Strauss was scarily professional and comprehensive in launching their product. More on this anon. The platform is for creating widgets for both the desktop and the web simultaneously. You can use their SDK to make widgets that will auto install in MySpace, which opens up huge potential - but the question of monetization and control is left hanging.
After that the morning got a bit technical with a session on building widgets with Flex followed by a session called Building widgets using HTML and JavaScript. This session was done by Alex Russell from sitepen. Alex was great, with a focus on effective widgets v. shiny widgets. He put it as: Shiny (not equal to) utility, Lickability! = Utility. Exactly the Snipperoo message. Quote of the morning, 'Widgets are a window into the emergent web of data'. He also pointed out that adverts are not generally seen as widgets, though they fit the definition. Heh, we have always thought of ad network code as widgets.
Meme of the day is how no-one called what they did widgets until everyone else started using the term widget - then they decided they had to. Same with us - why do you think we're called Sniperoo - because we called them snippets.

Start Up 2.0

If you're an entrepreneur and based anywhere near the north west of the UK, I'd encourage you to go along to this inaugural event that I've been organising with Manoj and Sam (Techcrunch UK). We started talking this because, although there are a lot of events in London, the north of the country has a bit of a dearth of them. We called it StartUp 2.0 because we wanted to get across the idea that it's for people who are inspired to or who are starting things. In a 2.0 sort of way - if that means anything. Anyhow, come along and have a great evening. If you intend of attending, please register at upcoming.org

NW Start Up 2.0 Inaugural Event taking place at IoD Manchester

The inaugural event for Start Up 2.0 will now be held on 23rd Nov 06 at IoD Manchester. It will run from 18:30 to 20:30 and doors will be opened after 18:15. Those who wished to continue networking could do so at nearby pubs thereafter.  This event will also coincide with BEX 2006 - B2B NW which runs from 10:00 to 17:00 at G-MEX, which is next door to IoD. Why not make a day out in Manchester by attending both.

The event is to bring entrepreneurs who operate in the IT and software industry and those who invest in this sector together. Those who gets involved in putting deals together in this sector are also invited. We are trying to attract about 50 people for this event. The second event will be held in Brighton in Jan 07. Details are yet to be worked out.

This event came about as a result of one of my comments on Techcrunch. Both Sam Sethi of TechCrunch UK and Ivan Pope of Snipperoo suggested I start an event. So here is the result. The Brighton event will be titled SE Start Up 2.0 and will be organised by Ivan. Both Sam and Ivan will attend the event.

Ivan will set up a blog to promote these events. Please do register once this is set-up. I will advice the URL in the near future.

We are currently seeking sponsorship and please do spread the word around.

We are also looking for a suitable speaker (well known local entrepreneur to perhaps say few words of encouragement).

Le Web

The event formerly known as Les Blogs has become Le Web. We're going for a couple of days of Parisian fun and frolics business development just before Xmas. Hope to meet lots of you there. If you want to meet up, drop me a line.

The first Les Blogs was held in April 2005, given the success of the 2nd edition in Decembre 2005  with 450 people from 25 countries attending the two days event we booked a room for up to 900 people this year.

Entrepreneurs, bloggers and web2.0 players around the world will be in Paris on December 11th & 12th 2006. The entire conference will be in english and as last year we expect about 50% French participants and 50% international.

The registration fee for this event will be 300 EUR (VAT excluded) if you register before Nov 11th or 500 EUR (VAT excluded) from Nov 11th to Dec 10th.

This includes the two-days conference, lunches on both days and the cocktail party on Monday evening.
Program will be available in a few days and you will be able to follow all the information about the conference on this weblog.

We really hope you can join us!

If you want to register now online just follow the link...

World Tour Lunch

The day after the Techcrunch launch I went along to a lunch in Brighton to meet Shel Israel and Rick Segal, who are on a world tour. Shel is writing a book on something around social networks and Rick,well, Rick is 'the friendly VC' who is hosting the world tour. A nicer pair of travellers I could not hope to meet in Brighton. And why did they come to Brighton? Because Shel met Ben Metcalfe in Menlo Park and he said 'you really must go to Brighton'. So here they were. And after they'd gone we milled around outside and said 'y'know, we really should try to do some of that stuff'. So we agreed to form up around a 'cultural entrepreneur' mailing list and shake some networking of the capital kind.
Thanks to Andy Budd for the organisation. Seeing as I'd met him on a 1am train earlier that same day, on my way back from Techcrunch UK, I was pleased to see the whole thing passed off so elegantly.

Techcrunch UK launches

Went to the launch of Techcrunch UK at the swish offices of Olswang in London. It would be an exaggeration to say everyone was there, as a key participant was missing. But we had a good time fuelled by two wine sponsors and excellent food. Then again, I guess we'll all pay for it in legal fees over time.
Sam Sethi hosted the event with panache while Mike Butcher interviewed us on camera very professionally, and only later revealed that he was the new editor of Techcrunch UK. A job I know he has coveted for quite a while.
The picture above is the only one I managed to take the whole evening, Hugh McLeod signing his limited edition prints.. Must have been having fun. Tom Raftery flew over from Ireland and blogged it better.
Who didn't show? The legendary Mike Arrington. Never apologise, never explain. On with the show.

Update: Tom says Sam mentioned that Mike couldn't make it because he had to do a Gillmour Gang podcast. Ho hum, that's where we rank on the scale of things I guess.

Blog WidgetsLive! for us

Things can get a bit dull here at Snipperoo Towers in sunny Brighton, so when the WidgetsLive! one day conference was announced I got so excited that I bought a ticket on the spot. Then I got asked to take part in the Widget Aggregators panel, which brought me a free pass. Well, it's only $100, but I've got a ticket going begging. I'd like to pass it on to anyone who will be in San Francisco on the 6th and who would like to write us a review of the event. Email me on iapope@snipperoo.com
I'm not very demanding, you can write whatever you like. Something that can be published on this blog. That's all. And have a great day along with it.

Here's the schedule:

08:00 - 08:45	Registration and breakfast
08:45 - 09:00	Welcome to Widgets Live!
09:00 - 09:30	Keynote presentation
09:30 - 10:00	Arlo Rose: Konfabulator
10:00 - 10:30	Building widgets using Flex
10:30 - 11:00	Building widgets using HTML and JavaScript
11:00 - 11:30	Success story: MeeboMe
11:30 - 12:00	Success story: Photobucket
12:00 - 13:00	Lunch
13:00 - 13:45	Desktop widget engines panel
13:45 - 14:30	Homepage widgets panel
14:30 - 15:15	Blog sidebar widgets
15:15 - 15:30	Afternoon break
15:30 - 16:15	Widget aggregators
16:15 - 17:00	Widget hardware
17:00 - 18:00	Lightning demos
18:00	Conclusion

Beers and RSS

I was one of three speakers at an event the other evening as part of the Beers and Innovation series organised by NMK. The notional subject of the evening was RSS, and for the most part we stayed focussed on that - though my view is that RSS is just a delivery mechanism. What we are really interested in are solutions.
Thanks to 'David' for this report (sometimes bloggers are just too anonymous for their own good):

RSS can fill an evening.

Ivan Pope of Snipperoo. Ivan was the most entertaining presenter of the evening and he talked about retaining the 'openness and freedom' of the web. Ivan's vision for the web is not one that's monopolised by a Google or a Microsoft or a Myspace. 'These will pass' he says. The web is to be reclaimed as an open platform and he believes Snipperoo's model of really simple widgets will meet a growing demand for flexibility and individuality that is currently so restricted by the commercialised social networks. Personally, I wish Ivan all the best with his world of widgets and believe that with his help the web will continue to move away from direct html editing to 'non-codey' methods of page development.

Two themes struck me from this interesting session:

The tension between openness & commercialism of the web
Some of the questions from the floor from commercial organisations (such as BBC & VNU) addressed the challenge of accurately monitoring (presumably for marketing ROI purposes) a feed's audience. The technology's elegant openness and 'simplicity' makes its effective monetisation a challenge. This reminded me of an interesting post by Nick Carr over at Rough Type which discusses this point in more depth. In essence, we have a classic dilemma. The inherent freedom and openness of the Internet enables so many people and so many things and we like that. One of the things it has enabled is a new level of commercial activity which leverages the benefits of the open Internet in some respects but conflicts with its openness in others.

Here's an example. Myspace connects millions of social networkers to each other on a scale never seen before. In one respect an open playing field of, well, openness and freedom. Myspace is also busy biting the hand that fed it by threatening to compete directly with successful web applications that are used heavily by the Myspace throng (e.g. Youtube replaced by Myspace video?) This is just a logical progression for a company that must deliver financial growth. The pressure of financial growth would seem to be considerably stronger than the pressure to honour the structure that contributed heavily to its succesful growth.

Other bloggers for the event include:

Seamus McCauley
Ian Delaney

and no doubt many more that I've missed.

Generosity (and the absence thereof)

d.Construct was outstanding. A single stream of presentations on interesting and useful and current topics from genuine practitioners. I'd like to have been there for the whole day but the afternoon was good enough. I'd also like to think the guys could resist the temptation to add multiple streams, seminars, break-out rooms and all the rest of the cheesy conference paraphernalia but I guess they'll need to follow the money.

I love the friendly, collegiate nature of these geek events. It's all about meeting the next challenge, solving the next problem. As usual, the geeks set the standard for useful business conferences. Sales pitches are reduced to as close to zero as is feasible and openness (about errors as well as mindblowing hacks) is the norm.

Snipperoo's contribution: an attempt at the world record for the world's least generous free bar (the tab was closed in 10 minutes - beat that!) at the after conference party will, no doubt, live long in the collective memory. Maybe we should have waited until after we've raised the money...

My pics are here. There's a flickr pool too (and check out the spooky cat in this pic.

schwag

Bag of schwag at d.construct this morning

d.construct

At d.construct and though I'm really only interested in tonight's Geek Golf, there's quite an atmosphere already. And nothing has happened yet. Apart from a queue and coffee.

And Yahoo have brought a bus with a contingent of Merry Pranksters. Maybe. Oh, I am soooo right brain.

Beers & Innovation

I'm speaking at the next Beers and Innovation event on September 14th in London.

RSS Frontiers...

RSS (standing for both Really Simple Syndication and Rich/RDF Site Summary) has gained traction over the last year and is now filtering into the mainstream of information and news distribution.

Emerging markets for RSS appear to be corporate communications and marketing, and multimedia (MRSS) content distribution.

Both feed readers (aggregators) who can pull your RSS feeds together and newly emerging RSS marketing agencies are now springing up in the UK and Europe, and more exploratory development is also underway.

So who's doing what, what are conditions like for a UK-based RSS start up and what likely trends can we discern from the impact of RSS on UK media and business to date? How have things moved on since June 2005 when Guardian Unlimited's director Simon Waldman said: "readers want control"? Can the UK ecosystem support or sustain innovation in this sphere? And what can RSS do for your online content, marketing or business?

Come along, hear from practicioners and experts in the field and have your say.

Widgety things at Gnomedex

I'm sitting watching the product presentations at Gnomedex. Everyone seems to have a widget for their application, and that makes me very happy. I guess that from now it won't be possible to launch without a widget. And we're here to distribute them. Heh.

Pixsy are a visual search engine.

    Pixsy collects visual material from thousands of providers across the web, resulting     in millions of photos and videos for you to search and browse. Traditional image     search engines take a mathematical approach to search, with the focus entirely on     relevancy. With Pixsy, you can search for both photos and videos by “relevance”,     “category”, “provider”, or “freshness”.

They   showed their widget in the demo, but I can't find it on the site.

Bluedot

Dot the Web. Connect with Friends.

Use Blue Dot to see what your friends find interesting on the Web. It's a fun and easy way to stay in touch.

They also have a widget that I can't find on their site. More updates soonest.

Sleepless in Seattle

It's six am. Flew in yesterday (last night?) to Seattle for Gnomedex, the conference that gets stranger the closer I get to it. People ask me what sort of conference it is, and I have no response. At US customs they asked me what I was in town for and I said 'conference' and they said 'Boeing' and (resisting the urge to be facetious) I said, nope, it's a strange little internet conference and everyone will be there. We don't make planes, but we do fly people around.
I'm going to blog Seattle and the event, so watch this space.

Gnomedex

I'm going to Gnomedex this week.

• Who? Influencers, Entrepreneurs, and Enthusiasts!
• What? A confluence of leading bloggers and new media!
• Why? Because all things are possible!

I've no idea what it will be like, but I know loads of great people will be there and I'm going to show them Snipperoo live. I'm going to take part in debates and go for drinks and meet new friends and old friends and developers and potential partners and bloggers and generally take the pulse of this 2.0 thing. That seems like a good reason to go.
I'm happy to arrange to meet anyone who is there and demo Snipperoo. Drop me a line on iapope@snipperoo.com or skype me as ivanpope or look for me at the event.