Web 2.0 Expo, Here We Are! [en]

It’s the big day today: Web 2.0 Expo Europe in Berlin has started. As you know, I’ve been involved in the “Blogging Web 2.0 Expo” effort, so it’s doubly exciting for me to see all we’ve worked on taking shape, with all these bloggers present thanks to their hard work promoting the conference during this last month.

The venue is wonderful. It totally makes up for last year. There are nice speaker and media rooms, and even a secret live-blogging room. There is wifi (and I’ve been told it’s been up all day), there are reserved rows in the front for holders of press passes, the main keynote room is round and has nice comfy red seats, introductory music is good, Tim O’Reilly is speaking, and the slide screens are huge. Of course, I can’t load the Flickr upload page to put my photos online and my Twitter updates through Twhirl fail (even good conference wifi can only take that much, obviously, your predictable share of network timeouts) — but this seems like a good start.

Tim is saying that we need to think about how we can make a difference, that we need to work on things that matter, rather than on building startups because we think we can get them funded or sell them afterwards. It’s idealist, but I like that kind of thinking. He’s giving us all sorts of examples of use of technology for “things that matter”. Ushahidi, Open Prosthetics Project, Open Source Hardware — these are only some examples.

With great challenges come great opportunities. The Berlin Airlift.

Interesting hybrids between profit and non-profit: Benetech for example, the Omidyar Network, google.org, Enchufate al software libre, AMEE, wattzon.org.

EveryBlock, click diagnostics, patientslikeme, 23andme.

Robust strategy #2: create more value than you capture. Less focus on “how do I make money” and more on “how do I create value for my users”.

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