Tag: conference

FOWA: The Edgeconomy (Umair Haque) [en]

[fr] Notes prises à l'occasion de la conférence Future of Web Apps (FOWA) à Londres.

Here are my live notes of this Future of Web Apps (FOWA) session. They are probably incomplete and may contain mistakes, though I do my best to be accurate. Chances are I’ll be adding links to extra material later on, so don’t hesitate to come back and check.

Laws of the Edgeconomy

FOWA 2007 80

steph-note: whoops, no more slides!

(organizing principles)

    1. Open beats closed

Huge companies are shifting to open business models.
A universe of external possibilities explodes.

    1. Betters beat goods
    1. Plastic beats specific

Bluetack vs. screw.
Widgets.
Glue that can hold stuff together.

Lots of companies get this, but it’s not enough.

How to make this work is about management. How do we manage all of this stuff? We really need to think about 3 key challenges.

  1. volatility of the economy – interdependence

Craigslist does not intend to maximise profits.

Trust. steph-note: slides are back

FOWA 2007 83

FOWA 2007 84

Purpose Beats Profits.

FOWA 2007 86

Guilds were there to protect a skill.

A purpose is a set of shared beliefs about how value is created. Encapsulates key trade-offs. Google: organizing the world’s information (that’s a trade-off). steph-note: I’m lost.

Failure Beats Success.

Fail really fast. Not like Bush… Can’t plan for the future in this kind of environment.

Play Beats Work. There is No Consumer. They are the people at the edges of the firm. Synergistic relationships with firms. Culture > Brand. Competition is a Commodity.

Markets, Networks, and Communities Beat Firms.

We don’t compete. This is what we have to build business models upon.

Advantage is in the DNA. It’s the stuff that makes the firm go.

Future of the recording industry: two futures

  • dynamic pricing
  • open pricing (a kind of “social price” — challenge: how do you get that to scale?)

Networks manage risk much more efficiently. Communities are better for managing fixed costs. steph-note: (?)

Future of big media corporations? They need to start by blowing themselves up, atomizing — before coming back together.

FOWA 2007 82

steph-note: can’t said I understood everything (and to be fair, I think Umair was a bit thrown off by the Powerpoint failure, or it’s just that I have trouble grasping all this “economy” stuff) but all this seems really interesting. Going to start reading his blog for a while to see.

FOWA: Customer Service is the New Marketing (Lane Becker & Thor Muller) [en]

[fr] Notes prises à l'occasion de la conférence Future of Web Apps (FOWA) à Londres.

Here are my live notes of this Future of Web Apps (FOWA) session with Thor Muller and Lane Becker of Satisfaction. They are probably incomplete and may contain mistakes, though I do my best to be accurate. Chances are I’ll be adding links to extra material later on, so don’t hesitate to come back and check.

FOWA 2007 71

The sacred hospitality code: serve people food and welcome them in before you ask them their name. A drink before introductions. Let’s look at customer service from that point of view.

Amandari, Bali: 8 waitstaff per guest

Great approach to customer service, but unfortunately doesn’t scale very well.

Different approaches to customer service:

  • customer-focused (Four Seasons, Zappos, Craigslist)
  • product-focused (Apple, Google, most web startups)
  • infrastructure-focused (telecoms…)

The best way to deliver excellent customer service is the stop trying. Because trying looks like robots in cubes answering the phone.

FOWA 2007 77

Funny Dell Customer Service Call YouTube video. In the US about 3% of the population is employed in related support roles.

“Customer Service from ValleySchwag” on Flickr.

Secrets of the Concierge (hotels):

  • they talk, get to know people
  • they have little control, but a lot of influence
  • smashing the silos

Enter the Cluetrain…

“Customer interactions are our best branding opportunities” Tony Hsieh, Zappos. Call centre, with no scripts, and no metrics for call length. Just do everything it takes to make a happy customer. A bunch of concierges rather than robots.

Online: how do you make conversation central? Look at the guys doing 30boxes. With their previous company, had so much success they couldn’t really keep up with their customer support. Worked from a business perspective, but they weren’t very happy about it. So with 30boxes, they set up a forum. Went to 50% questions unanswered (previous company) to 50% questions answered by other customers.

Once you start building a community, customers want to start telling you lots of other things. Lots of valuable stuff.

Disconnected support tools => disconnected customers. Contact page, FAQ, Trouble Tickets, Forum, Wiki… But they don’t produce and engaged experience, and it’s disconnected from the service that we’re offering. The common thing here is conversations, except with Trouble Tickets (separate).

With a trouble ticketing system, Customer Service is often a firewall between the company and the users. When you make the conversations public, everybody inside the organisation gets much more exposure to the problems, questions, suggestions… Your successes are magnified too.

Dell IdeaStorm. Digg-like thing for their more loyal customers.

Dangers: the Digg revolt. (“The numbers.”)

These conversations are happening somewhere. Better be somewhere you can engage in them.

In your hands, but out of your control. JetBlue YouTube video (CEO speaking).

Don’t create systems that place constraints on customer interactions. (Time per call: don’t talk to people, avoid interaction… which is actually the wrong thing to do!)

Ning. Putting out major product releases on Fridays, as the only people who would be banging it around during the week-end would be their more rabid users. So they’d get feedback etc. from them, and by Monday the release would be nice and clean for “normal users”.

Pownce.

Think of your story as your customers’ story. They’ll put the word out for you and defend you in the marketplace.

Danger: people are messy.

Smash the silos: think like a network. Companies think of themselves as silos. Our customers are in a lot of different places. “It’s not our problem” is a problem. When something breaks, it can be hard to know who to call (ie, cellphone not working). People get bounced around from company to company. So, put the customer in the centre. All the stuff we’re building on the web is very interdependent. So, for customer support, we need to stay focused on the customer.

E.g. Dopplr, a web application that you can use all over the place without ever going on the website. Widgets, API, integration. But a customer support nightmare.

Growing belief that nobody is really in charge anymore. There isn’t necessarily one person/entity to go to. Participate in the larger conversation that’s going on.

Danger: competition? It’s difficult to speak about competition in an environment where everything is networked. Some companies don’t want forums because they don’t want customers talking about other products on their site.

“What would a concierge do?”

Genius Bar in Apple.

FOWA: The Future of Commerce (Robert Kalin) [en]

[fr] Notes prises à l'occasion de la conférence Future of Web Apps (FOWA) à Londres.

Here are my live notes of this Future of Web Apps (FOWA) session. They are probably incomplete and may contain mistakes, though I do my best to be accurate. Chances are I’ll be adding links to extra material later on, so don’t hesitate to come back and check. See Suw’s notes on this talk.

Etsy: soapbox for people who make things to stand up on.

FOWA 2007 69

Went to New York, faked college IDs to go and follow classes. Owning his education. Started about six different companies.

100’000 sellers on the site. Slow, regular growth. Only US$. Most of the users are in the English-speaking world.

If you engage people in a different way, you can change the way they relate to stuff.

Online marketplace: notorious tarpit where so many companies have tried to be successful. People go to offline marketplaces also for the people. The social aspect is important: who made what I’m buying?

Make things playful to engage people. Colour blobs you can play with on the screen, to choose things by colour. Time machine.

Userbase 95% women. 1500 people a day are joining at this stage.

steph-note: I don’t mind being shown around Etsy, and this is quite interesting, but I’d expect something else from a talk titled “The Future of Commerce”. This more “Story of Etsy” or “Etsy Demo”. I think it’s really important that the people making the programmes of conferences are very clear about what the sessions cover.

Etsy is still very much under the radar.

A brief history of money: going from very concrete (barter, silver coins with a certain weight) to abstract (paper money with number written on it, plastic, electronic — never physical).

FOWA: 10 Cool Web Apps Demo (Ben Forsaith, Adobe) [en]

[fr] Notes prises à l'occasion de la conférence Future of Web Apps (FOWA) à Londres.

Very brief notes from Ben Forsaith‘s session at FoWA.

FOWA 2007 5

  • Slide Rocket (Keynote/Powerpoint online)
  • Scrapblog: make visual stuff
  • Picnic: very easy to use, full online photo editor
  • MTV Video Remixer: not working
  • BuzzWord (recently purchased by Adobe)

Examples outside the browser (AIR):

  • Fine Tune: web radio station with randomized playlist
  • eBay
  • a Media Player of some kind
  • Pownce
  • a Google Analytics tool (sounds nice)

FOWA: How to Turn your App into a Business (Ted Rheingold) [en]

[fr] Notes prises à l'occasion de la conférence Future of Web Apps (FOWA) à Londres.

Here are my live notes of Ted Rheingold‘s Future of Web Apps (FOWA) session. They are probably incomplete and may contain mistakes, though I do my best to be accurate. Suw also blogged this session.

Blogged Ted earlier this year at Reboot when he was encouraging us to learn about cats and dogs.

Simple idea: let people make web pages for their dogs and cats. Realised later that this could actually be a business.

FOWA 2007 64

What does it take to be a business? Suddenly all sorts of words like CTO, CEO, Incorporating, Titles… start flying around.

But mainly, being a business is about generating revenue, or at least having a pretty good idea where it’s going to come from. If you don’t have an idea how you’re going to make money, you’re going to run out of money.

Important: don’t think there is a new economy. There’s new technology, but the economy hasn’t really changed.

Dogster and Catster make money from advertising, partnerships, people subscribing… A lot like a magazine. Virtual gifts. You’re maybe disrupting the economy, but not creating a whole new one.

Learn your market. It took Ted a long time to learn these markets. You can’t pretend to know where the advertising goes because you’ve read magazines. Also, get ready to learn other markets. Ted thought at some point they were going to do classifieds, spent a lot of time trying to figure it out, but nobody was interested in their classifieds, so that failed. Don’t get overly attached.

Get advisers. People who understand the industry you’re in. But also people who understand how to run a business.

Learn business finance. Know how much money you need to spend, etc. Forecasting expenses, revenues. Some of these things are actually pretty basic, but you need to be comfortable with them. Don’t spend any money you don’t have to. If you’re cheap with your employees and your contractors, they may leave (steph-note: indeed!), if you’re cheap with your hosting your site might go down, if you don’t trademark your logo/names…

Sell, sell, sell. Ted is a designer, not a salesperson. Nobody is going to sell your business for me. Everything changed for Ted when he brought in a business partner. (Not an employee!) Important to choose well. It will be years of partnering with that person, startups don’t usually get bought. You need somebody who is as passionate as you are.

Make your business a business.

Very hard to make money on AdSense or that kind of advertising unless you’re serving millions and millions of pages. Sponsors and partnerships are more viable. Even a small market is interesting if it’s targeted. Subscription: emotional thing. Be part of the team. To show their support.

steph-note: lost some of the Q&A because of running around with the microphone.

Fail fast. They just removed classifieds three months ago. Important to see if the changes you’re thinking about are really worth it financially.

Q: when did you decide it could be a viable business?

A: thought it would be a kind of passive business where he’d get a check every month from advertising for a bit of maintenance here and there. Month 3, 10’000 people joined the site. A lot! Way more than he thought. Used the wisdom of his crowds to think about it, and then sat on it for a while before making the big decision. Making sure people are using it and spending as little money as possible the whole time.

Hiring is a real pain, specially if you want to be ethical about it (don’t want to hire somebody and lay him off three months later).

Short FOWA Complaint [en]

[fr] FOWA: wifi foireux et peu d'accès aux prises d'alimentation. C'est suffisant pour gâcher une bonne partie de la conférence pour les participants-blogueurs (surtout si on leur a donné un passe pour couvrir la conférence en direct)...

I’m here to live-blog, which must be a recognised activity as I got a “blogger” pass for it. However: the wifi is crap (sorry, I know it’s easy to complain, but it’s making my life difficult — uploading photos is a nightmare), and the power plugs are right at the back of the room. I think that crappy wifi and lack of power supplies are two things which can single-handedly ruin a good part of the conference experience for blogging attendees. Oh, and the rows are so tight that unless you sit in the front row, there isn’t enough space to type comfortably.

Do they really believe that people live-blogging the sessions are going to sit right at the back of the room? I take photos too, so I need to be in front. And the whole “power up then go back to it” idea just doesn’t work: there’s a session going on while I “power up” which I might want to follow!

Then, please let me say a word about the £4 sandwich I bought at the break. I know this is England, but… arghl! There are water fountains at the back of the room, but really (particularly when you’re blogging) bottles are way more practical. Which reminds me… I have an empty bottle with me, so I’ll do something smart and fill it up instead of just complain aimlessly (blame a bad day yesterday, food deprivation, and dehydration).

Oh, and next time, I have to remember that these boots are not good for sitting cross-legged on the floor. The talk in this room (which I’m only half-listening to, unfortunately) is about accessibility and actually sounds very interesting. I saw Suw typing madly a bit further down the row, so hopefully I’ll be able to read about it.

Aside from that, I’m really happy to be here and see everybody!

SET MODE GRUMPY OFF

Update: Suw wasn’t very happy either.

Informations et prévention: adolescents et internet [fr]

[en] An overview of the different talks and trainings I can do regarding teenagers on the internet. I can do them in English too, but most of my clients here are French-speaking. If you'd like more information about this in English, please leave a comment or drop me a line.

Alors qu’un ami me raconte un épisode désastreux de conférence consacrée aux “dangers d’internet”, je me dis qu’il est temps que je récrive à la directrice d’Action Innocence, avec qui j’ai eu une discussion tout à fait sympathique et intéressante il y a quelques semaines.

“Déçue en bien”, comme on dit par ici. Si nos avis divergent quant au risque réel que courent les enfants et adolescents d’être victimes de pédophiles à cause de leurs activités en ligne (chat, diffusions d’informations personnelles) nous sommes assez sur la même longueur d’onde pour le reste, ce qui me réjouit, vu l’important travail de prévention que fait Action Innocence dans les écoles de la région. (Après, on peut discuter des détails. Je n’aime personnellement pas trop leur matériel, par exemple, que je trouve alarmiste, mais dans le fond, on cherche la même chose: informer et prévenir sans diaboliser internet.)

Le mail que j’ai envoyé contient des informations sur le travail que j’accomplis dans le domaine “adolescents et internet”. Comme c’est une assez bonne synthèse et que mon site professionnel n’est plus trop à jour (quand je dis que la meilleure formule de site professionnel c’est le blog, je ne rigole pas!), je vais reproduire-adapter tout ça ici.

Donc, voici quelques informations sur les services que je fournis dans le contexte “éducatif” ou “adolescents et internet”, et mes tarifs. Je suis toujours ouverte à d’autres propositions — je n’ai pas de “liste de prestations” fixe dont je ne dévie pas.

Conférences

Généralement dans des écoles/associations. Approche information-prévention. Contenu adapté aux besoins du client (général, accent sur les blogs, accent sur le chat, la permanence des contenus numériques), et même si nécessaire en réaction spécifique à des “problèmes” concrets qui ont été rencontrés.

Parents: visite guidée de l’internet social, discussion des risques et difficultés rencontrés par les ados en ligne (environ 1h30)

Enseignants, Educateurs: présentation des différents outils de l’internet social, utilisation par les adolescents (+risques), ouvertures pédagogiques (45-90 minutes)

Adolescents, Elèves (dès la 5ème): adapté à la tranche d’âge, en groupes de 2-3 classes max. (environ 50 élèves), sensibilisation aux différents enjeux d’une présence active en ligne, prévention contre les risques qu’ils peuvent y rencontrer (45-75 minutes)

Formations

Diverses formations sont possibles, contenu précis à négocier au cas par cas. Exemples:

  • formation plus spécifique de responsables informatique, médiateurs, animateurs santé aux enjeux liés à la socialisation sur internet
  • formation d’intervenants “prévention/information” (générale ou spécifique, théorique ou pratique)
  • comprendre les mondes virtuels (Second Life) et les dynamiques relationnelles dans les relations “online”
  • technique: ouvrir un blog et l’alimenter
  • applications pédagogiques du blog, du wiki, et des outils associés
  • accompagnement lors de projets pédagogiques utilisant internet

Tarifs

Mes tarifs évoluent, mais au jour d’aujourd’hui, ils sont les suivants pour les écoles et autres clients “éducatifs-non-lucratifs”: dès CHF 500 par demi-journée, minimum une demi-journée (+ frais).

Par exemple, si je viens à midi, que je fais deux conférences pour des élèves l’après-midi, et une pour les parents le soir, on arrive à deux demi-journées = CHF 1000

Une conférence isolée compte comme demi-journée, donc CHF 500. Mais si je fais une conférence + une réunion dans la même demi-journée, c’est le même prix.

Pour les mandats plus complexes ou longs (formation, accompagnement de projet), les tarifs sont à discuter et fixer pour le mandat dans sa globalité.

A mon propos

J’approche internet comme une culture étrangère avec laquelle il faut se familiariser, afin de la connaître et de la comprendre. Je suis immergée dans cette culture depuis maintenant bientôt dix ans, et je la comprends en profondeur aussi bien de l’intérieur que de l’extérieur, avec le recul que me donne ma formation universitaire en sciences humaines.

On Liveblogging [en]

[fr] Quelques réflexions de la part d'une personne (bibi!) qui prend des notes "live" aux conférences...

Via Bruno Giussani, a post by Ethan Zuckerman on liveblogging conferences. Again, a comment turned into a post — so here are some of my thoughts on liveblogging conferences, something I’ve been doing more and more regularly.

No big surprise, my reasons for blogging conferences are quite similar to Ethan and Bruno’s. “Taking notes” helps me concentrate on what is being said, I can search through them later easily, and this kind of “conference coverage” brings new people to my blog. I’m not yet at the stage where I’m being invited to conferences because of my liveblogging-fu — but who knows, in future? (hint, hint)

Here are a few of my comments (go read Ethan’s post first, it’ll make more sense):

  • no lapdesk for me — due to RSI, the best place for my keyboard is right on my lap, even if it gets a bit hot.

  • I take photos too, so I tend to sit in front, or further back right next to the central alley if there is one (the “distracting to others” side of liveblogging never struck me, but maybe I’m too engrossed in my typing).

  • I’m not good at summarizing (like Ethan and Bruno do), so my style of live-blogging is very note-like, with a few “steph-notes” to express my thoughts along the way. Actually, I started liveblogging because I took notes for myself on the computer (RSI has made handwriting “not an option”), and thought “oh well, they’re pretty crap, but I might as well publish them” — and to my surprise, they were very much appreciated.

  • I usually publish right at the end of the talk, which means I snap a few photos of the speaker at the beginning of the talk, upload one at some point during the session, and near the end copy my notes from WriteRoom (my editor of choice) into my blogging tool, add tags… I take note of Ethan’s “preparation” tip — I could really do with writing the post titles in advance. There are two reasons I publish fast (in addition to the little thrill I’ll admit to having at the idea my post might be “first up”): first, I get to enjoy the breaks, and second, it helps me continue to convince myself that blogging sessions does not create “extra work” for me — as I do it all during the session.

  • One point Ethan does not raise is tiredness — is he immune, or just more resistant than I? Maybe it’s lack of practice, or just the way I’m wired, but I find that I can’t go without breaks. Even without taking RSI into account, my brain just goes liquid and I become incapable of taking in stuff after 2-3 sessions. So, I skip a session once in a while, and even sometimes skip it completely, not even attending.

Ethan mentions collaborating: some people blog, some people take photos, others keep an eye on blogosphere coverage of the conference, etc. I remember how participants to the BlogTalk 2004 conferences took collaborative notes using SubEthaEdit. I have to say, I’ve never done it since. That gives me an idea for the next conference I’m going to…

Reboot9 Was Bub.blicio.us! [en]

[fr] J'ai écrit une série de trois articles au sujet de la conférence Reboot pour le magazine en ligne bub.blicio.us, qui couvre la scène "tech" de San Francisco et de la Silicon Valley -- et maintenant, aussi, l'Europe!

Les articles sont composés principalement de photos avec quelques commentaires. N'hésitez donc pas à aller y jeter un coup d'oeil même si l'anglais n'est pas votre langue préférée.

I’ve written a three-part series about the great Reboot 9.0 conference I attended in Copenhagen a couple of months ago for bub.blicio.us. bub.blicio.us? From their about page:

bub.blicio.us is here to help capture the excitement behind everything two point oh – especially the party and event scenes in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. No panels, no keynotes, no tradeshows, just a lens into the social scene that’s energizing and shaping Bubble 2.0 and the new Valley economy behind it.

Keep us on your party list. Let us know about your events. Send us the things we just won’t see on upcoming.org. We might just send someone out there to cover the soiree.

So, now that all the articles are online — full of photos! photos, photos, more photos! — let me point you to them:

Reboot9 Second Day 12

As a reminder (so that this can serve as a general wrap-up post), I also did my best to liveblog most of the sessions I attended:

And of course… the photos (here, by interestingness).

Talk: Languages on the Internet at Google [en]

[fr] Demain, je donne une conférence à Google sur le thème du traitement des langues sur internet.

Tomorrow 2pm I’ll be giving a talk at Google (thanks for the invitation, Kevin) about languages on the internet. It will be an updated version of the “While We Wait For The Babel Fish” talk I gave at reboot a month or so ago. For details, click on the poster Kevin made:

Talking at Google: Languages on the Internet

Update 11.07.2007: here is the slideshow!

Update 12.07.2007: and here’s the video!

Update 13.07.2007: and here are my notes for the talk… click on the photo to decypher!

Waiting for the Babel Fish Notes (Google Talk)