Comments for Web 2.0 Summit Wrap-up

Web 2.0 Summit Wrap-up

2006-11-11T02:34:26Z

Read/WriteWeb's Web 2.0 Summit coverage sponsored by Yahoo!

It's the end of a hectic week of conference-going for your R/WW correspondent - and so time for a wrap-up of my thoughts on the Web 2.0 Summit. Firstly, my overriding feeling is that this year's conference was a lot different from last year's. It was still a great conference, but in a different way - perhaps reflected in the name change to Summit (a more business-sounding title). Last year there were a lot more developers and designers running around, this year the crowd was overwhelmingly from the media and business worlds. No doubt because of this, I also felt this year's conference lacked in cutting edge new products - and I didn't learn many new insights about Web technology. Having said that, it was still a very enjoyable conference - O'Reilly Media and CMP put on a great show. There was plenty of schmoozing in the hallways and lots of excellent discussions.

Why was 2006 different to 2005?

As others have pointed out, the Summit had an 'exclusive' feel to it due to the $3k price tag and business focus - and this meant a lot of the development and design innovators in the Web world were not present. The reason why the developer/designer set has been crowded out of this conference reflects the fact that, over the last year, traditional media companies (e.g. EMI, Fox Interactive, the TV networks) have entered the Web 2.0 world in a big way. That is a trend that will only intensify over the coming year, as web innovation becomes mainstream. Also more traditional big tech companies are doing 'web 2.0' things - e.g. Intel released an enterprise suite at the Summit and companies like IBM and Symantic were in attendance. These trends are inevitable - and welcome. Because how else will little web 2.0 startups be ultimately successful, unless they're embraced by the mass market that big companies (or VC money) can bring them?

I do feel sad though that the developers and designers aren't as much a part of the Web 2.0 Summit (nee Conference) any more - but perhaps this is where the Web 2.0 Expo will come in, the new sister conference being held in April 2007. I certainly hope so, because finding out about new web technologies and trends is what I love the best.

The Best of the conference

To be purely selfish, undoubtedly my personal highlight was seeing Lou Reed play live (courtesy of AOL). I've read some cynical reports about the 20-minute set he played - that he was surly to the crowd and ironic etc. But isn't that what you always get from a Lou Reed show? I thought his set was great and he's a legend to me - 'nuff said! :-)

But onto actual Web stuff... highlights included:

Jeff Bezos, who spoke on day 1, was especially interesting - talking about Amazon's WebOS initiatives. This is a topic that Read/WriteWeb has covered extensively and hearing Bezos describe the background and strategy around this was fascinating. I would've liked to hear a bit more about their future plans, but then that's something R/WW will dig into for you! ;-)
The desktop/Web integration theme was hot this year - with Adobe and Laszlo both in attendance. I will explore both technologies in future posts. Also Zimbra announced an offline mode for their web office suite. As Scott Karp nicely put it to me later, the offline technologies we're seeing are very reflective of this transitional online/offline period of the Web. Broadband is not ubiquitous yet (ironically demonstrated by the poor WiFi at the Summit venue!), so that's why we're seeing all these offline solutions.
Mary Meeker's The State of the Internet, Part 3. It was another 10-minute quickfire powerpoint show by Meeker, with data points hitting the stunned audience like machine gun bullets. But it's great data and I will be delving into the powerpoint when I get a chance!
A Conversation with Ray Ozzie - although Ozzie didn't reveal anything new, he's a person who commands a great deal of respect and so is a worthy successor to Bill Gates in terms of vision and strategy. I also enjoyed hearing the counterpoint "office is dead" view from Steve Gillmor in the press room afterwards.
The panel featuring 5 teenagers and 5 parents talking about what they use on the Web was interesting, if a little awkward at times. What would be great is if some of the Web research or analytics firms did bigger studies of this - and released it to the blog world. Then we'd have some substantive data to build on and analyze. It is certainly important to know what 'real world' people use on the Web, so I viewed this panel as just a taster for the kind of data we're crying out for.

The disappointments

The Web 2.0 Summit Launchpad fell a little flat, in my opinion. There were some innovative products there (e.g. 3B, Omnidrive, Sharpcast), but some of the others seemed a little derivative. I don't mean to dismiss their potential, as no doubt some will make great businesses. And I admire anyone who goes out and does a web startup, so I wish all of them the best with their products. But I really wanted to see the next Zimbra, or the next JotSpot, or the next big thing. I don't think we saw that. I'd be interested in your opinions on this (feel free to comment).
I didn't come away from the conference having learned much - even though I enjoyed the conference overall.
The intent to have more international voices was great, but there still seems to be a cultural disconnect. Liz Gannes at Gigaom called the international speakers (and other people outside of the inner tech circles) "cultural exhibits". Personally I think the right intent is there from the conference organizers to make the event more international, so hopefully next year there will be more innovative companies from outside the Valley - both speaking and showing their products. There's a lot going on outside the valley in terms of innovation, as R/WW's International Web Apps series has proven.
Also disappointing was that I couldn't respond to all the email requests I got to check out new products, and meet all the people I wanted to! :-(

Summary

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the conference. Last year in my wrap-up I probably came across as a little too enthusiastic - even though I called last year's post Cautious Optimism and Cynical Buzz. This year I wasn't as excited, but the conference was just as busy and maybe a little more 'mature' in terms of where the industry is headed. So my feeling coming away from the conference is that it was a great crowd of people there and the web industry is still alive and thriving. Are we in a bubble? Absolutely, so the cautious optimism and cynical buzz remains.

Some folks, like Ben Metcalfe, think the conference has lost its edge. Maybe it has, but the Web 2.0 Summit is a different beast now than it was last year - and that's a sign of the times. Or to put it another way, so Lou Reed does corporate gigs now... hey, it's still great music! ;-)

Pics: Dave Forrest, RJ, Dave McClure

Poll

Tell us what you think in terms of what you learned from the Summit - either if you were lucky enough to be there, or from the reports filed by me and other blogs/sites. Let us know in the following poll. Plus comments (as always) are welcome.

Comment from Liz Gannes on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T03:12:20Z

Hi Richard,

Just wanted to point out that my "cultural exhibits" comment was not specifically intended to be about international speakers, but rather anyone outside of the inner tech circles. In my post I included cowboy entrepreneurs like Bob Parsons and the "real people" panel in this category of outsiders. I don't think this detracts from your point, though.

Liz

Comment from Vishal on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T03:17:58Z

I would like to know if there is a list of people who attended this conference. More specifically would like to know more about new Aussie startups other than which i have covered on yr blog previously. It will be great if there is a web page about these new startup contacts.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T03:18:39Z

Thanks for the clarification Liz, I've updated my wording to reflect that.

Comment from Emre Sokullu on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T04:05:43Z

Richard, thank you very much for your coverage, it was very helpful. $3K price?? Really?? I just walked in for some meetings and had absolutely no problem.. And your commentaries brought the whole conference to our homes. All in all, this was an exciting event but as you said, they should have included all ingredients of the industry, not just biz people...

Comment from Rand Leeb-du Toit on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T04:25:40Z

Nice wrap on the Summit, Richard.

Vishal, there were a handful of Aussies at the conference and notable both Omnidrive (Wollongong) and In the Chair (Adelaide) presented in the Launchpad session. Happy to give you a run down of who was there when we meet up.

Comment from milo on 2006-11-10

2006-11-11T07:51:23Z

How come, Lou Reed does corporate gigs? In a former interview with the Rolling Stones magazine he mentioned some bad words about corporate gigs, e.g. Aguilera for Daimler.

Comment from Anne on 2006-11-11

2006-11-11T13:37:20Z

I enjoyed your coverage, Richard, but can't say I learned much new. I did learn about browser storage options because of the Zimbra announcement, but what I learned I got from blogs and other websites after reading about the demo, not from any coverage of their demo itself.

The other notable thing that happened was Mashery's hacking of the conference--sounded like that brought some real energy and edge to the happenings. It was a do-it-yourself on a shoestring bit, very Web 2.0.

Re: the panel of teenagers and parents... we are so lacking in real, detailed information about different generations use technology. In addition to quantitative data and studies, I'd be interested in more ethnographical, anthropological approaches to describing that. There are already people who do that, like danah boyd, but it doesn't get enough attention.

Comment from Lou on 2006-11-11

2006-11-11T14:02:22Z

An excellent list of "best of the best web 2.0":
http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/2006/10/best_of_the_bes.html

Comment from Greg Linden on 2006-11-11

2006-11-11T17:36:54Z

"This year the crowd was overwhelmingly from the media and business worlds ... This year's conference lacked in cutting edge new products and ... new insights about Web technology .... A lot of the development and design innovators in the Web world were not present."

Yep, exactly. Nail it, Richard.

Comment from Comedy King on 2006-11-11

2006-11-11T17:55:30Z

Even poor people like me (too broke to goto a summit) are creating Web20 applications to better the world (free apps), I made http://www.ImageGenerator.org for image designing online (basically replaces software Xara Webstyle valued at $79.95, plus many extras never seen in a software solution).

Eventually no one will ever have to install (installing on you computer has more security risks) or purchase software again. So long "BIG BOYS"! You can already get many free Operating Systems (Linux) that connect you to the internet to use these freebie tools.

Web 2.0 will dominate over comapnies over Corel, Adobe, Micrososft, etc... Already Google offers a complete Office suite in Web2.0 and thousands or web programmers (like myself) are creating even more useful web tools as you read this!

Comment from Matt Cutts on 2006-11-11

2006-11-11T23:49:02Z

Just a "me too" on enjoying your coverage of the conference. :)

Comment from Kevin Werbach on 2006-11-11

2006-11-12T00:26:14Z

OK, so what should have been covered at Web 2.0?

As the organizer of a conference that aims to be more cutting-edge, I'd be very interested in specific topics and companies that people perceive as "cutting edge." I have my own ideas, of course, but input is useful. Feel free to comment here or email me at kevin@werbach.com.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-11-11

2006-11-12T06:13:34Z

Kevin, good question and I will try to rustle a decent answer up. Or you could just subscribe to Read/WriteWeb and you'll find out over time ;-)

Comment from Leon on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T09:16:16Z

thanks,i got soo much from your site!

Comment from Kevin Werbach on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T13:54:34Z

Richard, I do subscribe. Your blog is a fantastic resource. I follow several news sources in this area, and do plenty of independent information gathering.

But a wise guru once told me that there is wisdom in the crowds at the tipping point of the long tail. So I figured it couldn't hurt to ask... not just you, but your readers viewing these comments as well.

Comment from D.VDA on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T16:33:47Z

Hi and thank you for you for the great resource you(r site is) are.

Your thoughts about this summit make my opinion about stronger. Web 2.0, if not a bubble 1.0-like, is definitivly the business flag on the Web planet, the age of Commercial Web for the better and the worst.

Best,

Dominique

Comment from David Scott Lewis (in China) on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T17:02:39Z

The presenters and panelists at the O'Reilly/CMP Web 2.0 Summit should represent the best that Web 2.0 has to offer, not based on political correctness. I don't like being the White "show monkey" at conferences in China (but I definitely was at an APEC conference a couple of years ago) and Jackie Ma probably didn't like being a "show monkey" at last week's conference. (The phrase "show monkey" is self explanatory. It's a phrase translated directly from Mandarin.)

We have our own Web 2.0 conferences in China. They highlight the latest and greatest in China. And that's just fine. Fact is, just about everything and anything "Web 2.0" in China is something that was released 6-18 months earlier in the States. (There are some exceptions, but the exceptions are rare.) And the "Simplified Chinese" (as a language in contrast to "Traditional Chinese" used in the so-called renegade province of Taiwan) renditions often get funding at market caps much higher than their U.S. counterparts. But that's life in China, like it or not.

What might be interesting is to see more Web 2.0 firms based in the States with simultaneous (or near simultaneous) launches in China. This seems like an obvious play, but it's rare to see. A missed opportunity, to say the least. Too bad: Might be good for their market caps, too.

Comment from Gibu Thomas on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T19:58:18Z

Richard,

Good wrap up. Sorry I missed you while you were in town.

As one of the presenters, I would like to paint the other side of the story as to one of the reasons why the Launchpad perhaps failed to dazzle.

The logistics of Launchpad were extremely poorly organized. It is a great concept to get startups to convey the gee-whiz in 5 or 6 minutes. The DEMO conference does a great job of this. The critical difference that Chris Shipley has a crack logistics team that helps set up everything in advance, conducts a full-blown rehearsal and the presenter has to worry about nothing other than using their 6 minutes to communicate why they are relevant or important.

The Launchpad on the other hand gets an 'F' for organization. The startup presentations were clearly an afterthought because the Palace Hotel didn't even have enough room on stage for companies to set up their stuff in advance. If you have ever been at one of these types of conferences or presentations, you know that it is nerve-wracking enough for the prsenter to not have to fumble with their demo setup right before communicating the grand vision.

So, it shouldn't be surprisingly that many companies had trouble and delivered unimpressive demos. Nik (Omnidrive) didn't get through his presentation, I tried the high-wire act of lugging a Mac, a PC and a Treo on stage and setting them up right before my demo and ended up not having my network cable or power-cable properly hooked up to my PC thus affecting my demo, Gary (oDesk)had all his bookmarks and other presentation stuff accidentally deleted by the presenter before him and was visibly upset and discombobulated, and so on.

As you pointed out, the highlight of these shows for many people is the cool new stuff that people are working on and it is disappointing that it seemed like an area where the least attention was paid. On the contrary, I thought the interview sessions were pretty well organized, presumably because they are easier to organize and appeals directly to John Battelle's interests.

It would be understandable if it was a free event or if there wasn't enough time to plan. Startups paid $10,000 for the privilege of presenting after being selected to the Launchpad. As an aside, I guess you know you are in a bubble when you can charge $10,000 for an "early-beta", which is how John Battelle explained away the poor logistics of the Launchpad. It is a lot of money for a startup and we spend it only because unlike a Google or a Microsoft, the hardest thing for us to come by is awareness of our products.

So, it is unconscionable that the John would make light of the poor planning with an 'early-beta' hand-wave. The Web 2.0 organizers should frankly consider donating the $130K they collected from the Launchpad companies to some charity or offer to refund it to the companies.

I know some of the organizers of the event, and I know people like Amber worked really hard to make the show a success, so my intent is not to make excuses for the companies or rail too much on the organizers, but rather to communicate that these details had an impact on the companies and the audience's perception of them.

Having done all these conferences, for any entrepreneurs out there, the best bang-for-the buck remains DEMO, which really focuses around startups. It is more expensive at almost $17,500K (this was the 2006 rates and could have changed), but almost no one leaves DEMO without having ample opportunity to see what your company does. The dream situation is to get invited to D (http://d.wsj.com), where Walt Mossberg invites a couple of startups every year to present in front of an elite audience, charges zero dollars and gives you almost 15 minutes of on-stage time and a free pavilion presence.

The good news is that at the end of the day though, all this stuff is just noise and doesn't matter in the long run for the companies other than the $10 grand that they could have instead used to pay engineers. The products have to do the speaking for themselves and if there are any good ones from this years crop that are truly innovative, and I think there are, the market will reward them with recognition. So, we are back at work focusing on building a delightful user-experience.

I have probably pissed away any chance ever of getting invited to anything Web x.0 again and my PR person will probably cast a silence spell on me, but I think this is an important message to communicate publicly.

P.S. Kevin, even though you had a similar venue limitation for the on-stage presentations of Connected Innovators at Supernova, I think you found a good compromise by setting up the innovators pavilion. That said, if there is one suggestion I would make for improvement for next year's Supernova, it is that you find a venue that is appropriate for the on-stage demos and enlist a good logistics team to help the connected innovators do a good job of communicating their innovations.

Comment from jim callender on 2006-11-12

2006-11-12T21:16:38Z

interesting info, good to hear that a good range of ages and skill abilities were involved.

looking forward to 2007's events here in europe

nice work readwriteweb :)

Comment from chughes on 2006-11-13

2006-11-13T20:37:14Z

Richard,
just throwing in another kudo to you for your write up on the Web 2.0 conference. My two cents were that i was expecting to see completely brand new companies being launched at this show --especially since there are only 13 slots--and was surprised to see a few startups that had already launched. Perhaps this added to some of the general commentary of Launchpad being flat? Anyway, it is good to here that the conference side did indeed have some dynamic speakers. I have high hopes that the Web 2.0 Expo will be an excellent show.

Comment from Clay on 2006-11-14

2006-11-14T19:30:13Z

Richard,

The Launchpad application process was a bit of a joke - one sentence describing the product and one more for the industry it competes in. With no follow-up questions and no explanation on the selection criteria we were a bit perplexed how the final list was compiled. Gibu, can you shed some light on this?

The requirements for Launchpad also didn't jive with the final companies selected. The requirements were for...
1. an official launch - many of the products have been in the marketplace for quite some time
2. groundbreaking/innovative products - making scheduling easier in Outlook, another blog search engine, and online storage service don't seem to qualify in my opinion. Only a couple really qualify as groundbreaking in the long-term.

How these companies were selected is beyond me but truly innovative products were certainly left out of the mix.

- Clay @ BriteClick

Comment from chughes on 2006-11-14

2006-11-14T21:23:58Z

I think Clay brings some really valid points as to Launchpad's requirements, which read exactly as he stated. I think LaunchPad would have had a better reception if more startups in stealth mode were showcased over those who were rolling out new "enhancements." On the other hand, I am sure having to review more than 200 submissions can indeed be cumbersome so I understand the need to keep things short with respect to a product/service description. If companies were not given word-count boundaries, they would go on and on in describing their product/service. I also thought that the follow up process was actually very professional. There were regular updates from the folks handling the application process as to the status of where they were in finalizing their decisions. This rarely happens from any conference/tradeshow so kudos to them on this front.

Comment from Clay on 2006-11-15

2006-11-15T13:35:05Z

There were regular updates but no follow-up questions and no indication of what they were looking for (beyond the standard criteria). The results speak for themselves...

Comment from Gibu Thomas on 2006-11-15

2006-11-16T05:46:05Z

Clay,

Frankly, I have no insights into the decision making process the organizers went thru. As far as I know, we went thru the same process everyone else went thru. Their only condition was that we would have to launch a completely new product if we were selected, which we did. With our new Hummingbird product,we demonstrated a completely seamless online-offline experience across a Mac, PC, a mobile device and the Web by editing a document in Word on a PC, picking up automatically where I left off in Zoho and doing the same thing in word on a Mac. No sync buttons, no emailing files, nothing. The documents part was just an example, Hummingbird can support any file-type.

I can't speak specifically to your complaint about not seeing anything really 'ground-breaking'. It is in the eye of the beholder I suppose. At Sharpcast, we are trying to solve a real problem for consumers in a simple and elegant way and we find that to be sexy enough and ground-breaking enough.

Cheers,

Gibu