Web 2.0 NEW YORK 16,19 Nov 2009

I intentionally waited some hours before writing about the Web 2.0 NYC conference so that I will only remember what really reached my inner senses and intrigued me.

Globally it was good conference even if I think that the tagline "The power of less" was not really explicitly coming out from most talks and sessions as I expected, especially by @timoreilly.

Workshops

The first day was about workshops, I found very interesting and practical the Erin Malone @emalone one about Designing Social Websites Part I as it gave a very structured set of patterns to approach the design of social aspects of web sites. This is something I will import into @deltatre workflow.

Being a workshop it also made us work in teams and created an immediate network effect and put people to share heterogeneous experiences. We pitched for a Urban Farming Social Site, the most audience acclaimed idea was vegetables tweeting about being ready or needing water.

Team was composed by Jennifer Carey, Gerardo Lopez, Jim Piccariello.

Web 2.0 NY Workshop - Designing Social Interfaces

View more presentations from erin malone.

Keynotes

Keynotes were good with some peak of interest and some great act.

Tim O'Reilly on The War for the Web. He think they are starting another war (Google etc...) putting again barriers and roadblocks to open web.

Caterina Fake Founder of FLICKR now with Hunch. Interesting conversation.

John Borthwick of betaworks and aggregator of companies among the coolest in the web 2.o space: bit.ly, twitter, tweetdeck, twitterfeed, chartbeat, stocktwits, uservoice etc... Companies selected to be connected at the data level NOT the biz dev level.

Baratunde Thurston and hashtags "A must-see"

Chris Brogan on being open.

Heather Gold on Tummeling. Dennys Crowley from foursquare.

Danah Boyd on Streams of content limited attention

Gina trapani on google Wave

Sessions

It was nice to see ADOBE and Microsoft hand in hand talking about RIA from a Flex/Silverlight perspective. James Ward (Adobe) and Josh Holmes (Microsoft)

Best And Worst Practices Building Ria with Adobe and Microsoft

View more presentations from Josh Holmes.

A second technical session was the one of Dwight Merriman on NOSQL: The Shift to a Non-relational world. Basically presenting alternative non RDBMS systems for storing data that are complementary to existing and spread SQL solutions. They are complementary to relational structures and not replacing them for all those cases when there is no need for relational.

An example is MongoDB JSon based. We already use AWS SimpleDB @deltatre and will keep these solutions under radar.

Technical session on HTML5 and the future of web apps by Tom Hughes Croucher. HTML5 is becoming interesting and getting traction now because of the webkit implementation which is not only fast on computers but is also becoming the de-facto standard for mobile, hence filling the gap and helping delivering rich web app on all platforms.

HTML5 and the Future of Apps

View more presentations from Tom Hughes-Croucher.

Interesting technical session on oAuth for application cross-signon (as compared to openID which for users). We are using it @deltatre for PULSE and for the deltatreCMS.

Jeff Dachis and David Armano Social Business Design. Very structured and well thought concept about an holistic approach to social in and outside the company. This i want to bring in @deltatre and also to some clients.

Social Business Design: Web 2.0 NYC

View more documents from David Armano.

Michael Lazerow on integration of social media with brands and content strategy, practical presentation and use cases.

Building Across The Social Web - The Implications of Social Web Technologies on Social Media Content Strategy

View more presentations from Michael Lazerow.

Rashmi Sinha on lesson learned from launching a product in startup mode and slideshare

Rashmi Sinha

View more documents from tieadmin.

Ignite

Ignite NYC at New World Stage packed theatre was an experience. The Ignite formula (which we should import in Italy) is based on people presenting on different matters with a strict formula 20 slides of 15 seconds each = 5 minutes (They are auto timed so it is really an art to sync the speech with the slides). There is a winner at every event, in this case against a bunch of young and cool presenters it was an experienced lawyer of anti-RIAA cases (music industry) Ray Beckerman who put together an incredible unintentional REAL crowdsourcing experience with simple tools but real participation. Basically debating and getting ideas from blog users about how to confront the case.

Also noted Nora Abousteit from BurdaStyle Social sewing! Lee Sean on saying no to 3d design and yes to 2d design. And the funny guy with the story on Second Life chickens.

People

Baratunde Thurston, Dennis Crowley, Hether Gold, Nora Abousteit, Gerardo lopez, Jennifer Carey, Tony Haile, Beth Noveck, Andrea Vascellari, Stowe Boyd, Brady Forrest, Jennifer Pahlka, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Brogan, Gentry Underwood, Erin Malone, Nancy Duarte, Danah Boyd, Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson, JAmes Ward, Josh Holmes, Dwight Merriman, Tom Hughes-Groucher, Caterina Fake, Rabble, Blaine Cook, Jeff Dachis, David Armano, Michael Lazerow, Douglas Rushkoff, Gina Trapani, Anil Dash, John Bortwick, Scott Berkun, Kevin Marks, Rashmi Sinha, Matt Mullenweg, Ulrike Reinhardt, Lorenzo Dell'Uva

Founders

I had the occasion to meet a lot of "founders":

DIGG: Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson

FLICKR: Caterina Fake

BETAWORKS: John Borthwick

SLIDESHARE: Rashmi Sinha

WORDPRESS: Matt Mullenweg

RAZORFISH: Jeff Dachis

FOURSQUARE: Dennis Crowley

CHARTBEAT: Tony Haile

SIX APART: Anil Dash

ME for now I'm just the co-founder of Chiara&Francesca :)

Memorable

"Do what you do best and link to the rest" Jeff Jarvis

"We need less think-tanks and more DO-tanks" Beth Noveck

"#theworldsthinniestbook" Baratunde Thurston

"Social business design" Jeff Dachis

"We are leaving the web page world for the stream world, that;s why widget don't work" anonymous?

"Being on stage is a powerful BUT fragile situation; needs balance of respect between speaker & audience" Carlo De Marchis

"Tummel" Heather Gold

New York

Some New York Stories:

I saw a man running barefoot in short and t-shirt in 5th ave at 11.30pm, he was a jogger not a bum.

I found a taxi driver Santiago Rossi (64) half italian half dominican. His grand father went to Dominican Republic. They were 10 kids, 7 survived. His father came to New York for first time and visited the Natural History Museum all day long, the next day he wanted to go back: "I have not seen it all"

I sat on a restaurant at the bar for a quick lonely dinner after the conference, a couple sitting close to me started talking and we spent 30 minutes on kids, NYC, rome, florence, iphone and life.

Conclusion

Worthwhile

Social media/tools/space maturity is coming

Content protection is the biggest issue going forward

Google and facebook are the new dominants

Mobile is happening finally

Directory

Photos are at http://bit.ly/w2ephotos

Videos at http://bit.ly/2KOFDx

Slides at http://bit.ly/13Iowh

That's all folks

Italian TV

A small update on the Italian TV scenario (with possible mistakes...) more to generate a debate then to really inform – I’m not a great journalist :)
Something seems to be moving lately.

Current scenario:
RAI – Public migrating to digital terrestrial (DTTV)
MEDIASET – Private migrating to terrestrial digital with PREMIUM pay on DTTV
SKY - satellite PAY TV
Others... Some new DTTV PAY offerings and some “telco” providing access to broadcasts simulcast (fastweb, alice)

Facts:
RAI has removed its channels from SKY satellites
RAI has a LIVE and VOD portal in MS-Silverlight
SKY has been able to preserve revenues has also during the downturn due to the fact that they were mostly based on subscriptions and not on advertisement
In the UK BBC iPlayer is dominating the online video offering

Latest News:
SKY is offering a new 19euro key to add to any decoder that will inject all DTTV free channels into their offering
MEDIASET is launching in 2010 a new MEDIASET CUBE project to bring all pay content on the web, PREMIUM WEB TV, catch-up TV, OTTV Over the Top TV...
RAI is sleeping (no news)
BBC Canvas project is the new frontier, BBC Trust was advised by Italian consultancy Value Partners

More on Mediaset CUBE
They basically realized that

1. the TV set monopoly is fading, need to focus on universal access (TV, web, mobile, games console, more...)
2. hence the TV only advertisement model cannot guarantee solid future revenues alone and may be heavily impacted by
3. It’s not IPTV, they want to be telco agnostic
4. They are plan is to launch in 3 phases
   • pre-launch Jan 2010 – some PREMIUM channels and some VOD content
   • March 2010 – for DTTV subscribers access to all channels on web TV with catchup-TV features
   • Nov 2010 – MEDIASET decoder (needs any internet connection) will enable all content on Web TV
5. Telcos are for now looking and may not be so happy about this model

Question for the market:

1. What should we focus on, what will impact our business the most in this scenario (not only in Italy)?
2. Is there a new model emerging or a new technology or a new user experience that we need to consider and become industry expert in time as well as imaging our core products around?

Thanks for taking the time to ready this...
ciao

Grid Layout System for web sites

In deltatre we started using a Grid Layout System for web sites after we found this enlightning book "Making and breaking the grid" (http://www.amazon.com/Making-Breaking-Grid-Graphic-Workshop/dp/1564968936).
We immediately recognized the value of basing layout studies on such a framework as it did not only add consistency, solidity and productivity advantages but also increased creativity and flexibility of our layouts.
One of the major constraints in the area of design/re-design of web layouts, together woth legacy assets and content, is the IAB standards guideline for advertisement (http://www.iab.net/) - i.e. the standard space we need to dedicate to ad-serving boxes in the pages.
It's easy to see how many web sites based on the typical duality "leader-board in the header + medium rectangle (Mrec) in the right column tend to look very similar and reduce the flexibility of the rest of the page.

What is the Grid Layout System?

Some years ago most web sites were designed based on a certain fixed width of page (one of these initial standards on which by time to time Jakob Nielsen made his fortune) and an arbitrary definition of spaces both horizontally and vertically inside that limited width/almost-infinite height area.
Because of the way layout were implemented with HTML tables the horizontal space was divided in columns, originating templates based on - as an example - 3-columns models (left for navigation, center for content, right for related items and/or promotions). The width of each column was normally adjusted to whatever specific content needed to be accommodated.
Any alternative layout was again arbitrarily defined based on needs.

Other layout design worlds don't work like that.

Other fields of layout design don’t think in arbitrary columns, they work with grids, and these form the basis for the structure of page designs.
A Grid System defines exactly in terms of columns and dividers - or the combination of multiple columns - the horizontal width of any possible element.

Grids are a template, a framework within which creativity can flourish. Too many designers spend time looking at a blank canvas, trying to figure out where elements should be positioned, but, if you have a flexible underlying grid, many such problems are already solved for you. It becomes obvious where and how elements should and can be positioned, thereby leaving you, the designer, with more time to work on graphic design and other page components.

Instead of arbitrarily picking column sizes, grids enable you to create a common visual language throughout an entire Web site, rather than deciding things on a page-by-page basis. Components relate to each other, which makes it easier for users to scan content and develop familiarity with it.

If you want to have a more concrete and understandable example of what a grid is take any printed magazine that you can find at hand, and check it with the grid concept in mind. It will be easy to "view" the grid layout even if you never noticed it before.

Creating the "deltatre" grid (a.k.a looking for the magic numbers)

Four variables are key in defining the grid solution for a web site layout:

1. Page width
2. Number of columns
3. Width of each column
4. Width of dividers between columns
   

With the majority of users now having monitors capable of a resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher, the tendency for layouts is towards a width of about 950. For grid design, a 960-pixel total width is a good starting point, because it provides a massive amount of scope for divisions (960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480).
At deltatre we projected a number around 960 and waited the result of the combination of columns and widths to finalize it.

Even if many standards exist at deltatre we tried to find a combination of numbers that was able to solve all our needs and still be optimal for all OS/browsers/users.

Too many columns can result in excessive complexity, so when working on initial grid designs, stick to about a dozen columns. The reason for working with 12 columns (rather than, say, seven or ten) is because of the flexibility it affords you in being able to divide the layout evenly (1 x 12, 2 x 6, 3 x 4, 4 x 3, 6 x 2, 12 x 1) and also in various other combinations. In the image below, the underlying grid is shown in grey—light grey for columns and dark grey for gutters that provide white-space between page elements; the red stripes show how the grid can be divided up.

A clear example of page layout based on the gris is the following figure were a lot of modules of various sizes creates a complex layout but still being ruled by the grid.


The Grid Layout System allows for a very modular and flexible page design and optimize both IA tasks (assign content to areas in a page) as well as development tasks (implement modules to be used in multiple pages and positions in pages) leaving enough freedom and creativity.
Because of the grid a well designed module can be developed once and used/placed in multiple pages in multiple positions without requiring any implementation changes.

After having tested on all OS/browsers, verified the size of video 16:9, checked other standards content elements and checked with most used IAB guidelines Ad units at deltatre we have defined a grid with following magic numbers:

12 columns of 77 pixels + 11 dividers of 6 pixels = 990 pixels total width

Excerpts from Grid design basics: Grids for Web page layouts By CraigGrannell

Twitter MetaSyntax proposal #YSF YouShouldFollow

This blog post is about twitter...

I've always been impressed and intrigued by twitter simplicity and endless extensions possibilities. It is clearly the most developed/active ecosystem for third-party apps in the social media area today (it's a feeling, I maybe wrong).
See: Mashable twitter list

Apart from a wealth of server-side and client-side apps, we have lately seen the developments of communication activities purely based on the extension or definition around the core twitter syntax.
Just to mention one of the most popular: #followfriday
See how it works http://mashable.com/2009/03/06/twitter-followfriday/
Started by Micah Baldwin

The basic element is the hashtag that is also used by twitter itself and a variety of other apps to understand/measure current trends of hot topics at any time
See http://hashtags.org/

Most of them are very often for humans by humans with no need for extra apps, in some cases then apps are built on top of those hashtags.

I would like to propose the concept of twitter meta-syntax to denominate all similar cases in which something is built on top of the core twitter syntax, maybe is not 100% formally correct but i hope it convey the idea properly.

Around that topic i have often felt the need to give recommendation to some friends/followers about following someone I believe could be of specific interest for them, hence something less generic then #followfriday.

I came out with the idea of YouShouldFollow #YSF to be used in messages with this syntax:
@recipient-screenName #YSF @recommended-screenName optional text

example:

@loic #YSF @scobleizer it will be fun

Which recommend Loic Le Meur to follow Robert Scoble - just for fun :)

What would I do if I receive such a tweet? Depending on who is sending it I would at least click on the screenName to see the level of tweeting of the recommended user is of interest and then decide to follow or not.

There is an obvious consideration around preventing spamming to be done as with other hashtags.

Does this exist already in some form or shape?

If it makes sense I will start thinking about applications around the concept and some form of automation for accepting the recommendation.

To be honest apart from the definitions around it and the need for myself to write it down i'm not so sure this would make any sense or is it at any stage needed, but a formalization of something that we very often do informally may provide some more unified and easiest to diffuse user behaviors that would enrich the platform eventually.

Comments are welcome or best are NEEDED... not sure about it at all...

Follow me on twitter

Is facebook the new desktop?

I have seen a lot of debate happening around the theme: is the browser the next desktop? Is the browser replacing the desktop? etc...

Will the Browser Eat the Desktop?

http://www.appistry.com/blogs/bob/will-browser-eat-desktop

Techdirt - The Browser Is The New Operating System

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/0022021266.shtml

Dobbs Code Talk - The browser is the new desktop

http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=The-browser-is-the-new-desktop---take-II.html&Itemid=29

Just to mention a few of the hundreds of posts that can be found in the blogoshpere lately.

What I've personally noticed lately, due to the massive adoption of social platforms - but more specifically facebook - by non-skilled users, is that even people with no previous skills, no big interest in computers and the internet, no clear idea of what the social web is are currently spending a lot of time on facebook.

As a result they tend perform many tasks direclty in facebook:

- they can write to friends on the wall or as an email

- they can chat with friends live (IM)

- they can share photos (once they uderstand how to do it)

- they can directly from Facebook record live webcam videos

- they can participate in funny and very often useless quizzies and games

- they can send gifts and other amenities

- they can discover new friends

- they can get Facebook n their iPhone too

... and remember they just do it because they see other doing it and they want to be part of it.

If they use the computer just for fun and just because everybody is on Facebook, why would they need anything more than that?

They don't care about the browser... they don't care about the OS... they don't care about the hardware... they don't need to. 

facebook is providing a way for them to just do all of that inside the platform in a very controlled and self-contained environment, they do not need to learn too much.

If they have to learn something it is beacuse they've seen friends doing something more sophisticated and are then prompted to do the same - also not to appear too dumb to their friends.

This is happening even if starting to use the platform and digest the concepts of friends, wall, account, profile etc... is notably not extremely easy for a really non-skilled user.

So we can say with a provocative statement that YES for those users facebook is the new desktop.

On a positive note i think facebook is becoming a good entry point for those users into the world of  computer/internet/social web and that is a good thing for us all and for the economy I think, as those users will become more and more engaged and literate about the whole thing - creating value for them and for the community.

As a last provocation thought I also have imagined the creation of a facebook -device where all you can see is facebook (but it's a stupid idea!).

ciao - from a 50cm snow-blessed Torino, Italy.

Multiple-identities and social platforms

A lot of us today are using various social platforms (facebook, myspace, twitter...) at the same time with a process that is starting to become less and less manageable.
That's why many social aggregators tools/platforms are emerging (friendfeed, peoplebrowsr,...) to help us improve our workflow for the interaction in the social space.
These tools (aggregators) are helping ME - 1 individual - to manage various social tools at the same time - N social tools.
This is good. But... I would also expect something happening that looks exactly the opposite.
1 individual vs. N social platforms = aggregators
1 social platform vs. N individual identities = ???
Start from a fact: every one of us has multiple identities.
I'm personally at least:
- CTO at deltatre
- a dad
- passionate horse show jumping rider and community manager for some groups
- photographer
- musical geek
I've personally experienced some behavioral doubts when posting on various social platforms that I could confuse/bore/piss-off my audience if i mix all of that into a single place...
It'easy to get un-followed on twitter if you start posting about too much heterogeneous subjects - at least if you are not a web2.0 star as @timoreilly or others.

The portfolio of solutions that I have today to solve that are:
1. Create multiple identities on all social platforms that make sense for each identity (fairly unmanageable)
2. Partition the use of social platforms for each identity (i.e. flickr for photos, myspace for music, twitter as CTO, facebook for friends...)

Both are not satisfactory so I'm a bit stuck into creating policies on what to post where and when.

Most social tools try to manage some kind of audience partitioning with the privacy settings but I do not believe this is the right approach, it's not about privacy it's about context.
What I'm asking is a way to manage different context and audiences in the same social platform.
Facebook may be the perfect example of where a solution can be found as it clearly seems to me that they want to be THE social platform and not only one of many.
The best solution would as always be something that every platform/tool can embrace in form of a standard.
I have no solution myself for now :)
ciao

Earthquake in northern Italy - Twitter vs. big media coverage

We had a medium earthquake yesterday in the north of Italy and I experienced the media coverage both on big news/media Italian sites (repubblica.it, corriere.it...) and on Twitter.
Even if Twitter in Italy is not as developed and popular as in the US, I was able to find immediate tweets as the earthquake was happening from various locations in Italy from Novara to Reggio Emilia.
I was on the phone with a friend from Desenzano del Garda and after a while she sent me an SMS telling me about another earthquake just happening everything trembling again at 23.00 CET.
By the time I needed to check the twitter search page there were already various posts about it and I was able to tell her that it was not stronger than the previous one and keep her informed.
meanwhile repubblica.it needed 15 minutes to just put a single headline on teh top of the homepage announcing it and almsot 30 minutes to have more information about it.

Bottom line: twitter is faster and really working for nationwide events as source of information, the big news/media portals have later on deeper coverage.
I'm surprised that they still do not enter the microblog space consistently as it happens in more mature internet markets.

I used this URL to track twitter for the keyword "terremoto"
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=terremoto
and refreshed when needed.

ciao