Topic: Media
It is hard to imagine getting advice on the future of publishing from the Cheezburger Network. Then again, questioning the status quo, and delivering what people really want, is exactly what Ben Huh has done. By using unconventional practices, he has built a group of very popular websites. So maybe it isn't such a surprise that they have published several hit books. In this keynote Huh discusses how they they engineered their books to be best-sellers.
In discussing the economic value of Google, Hal Varian focuses on the impact of Google Search in terms of time saved, and advertisements on Google in terms of profit, publicity, and communication. Presenting gains and losses with mathematical equations, social norms, and increasing use of technology, Google's Chief Economist presents Google's impact on the world at large and for specific demographics.
The disruption of innovation has yielded as many opportunities for those prepared to take advantage as it has brought disruption for those unprepared to adjust. New businesses have been able to profit with solutions that solve problems or enable previously excluded people to participate on their own terms. Michael Jackson explores some history and characteristics of disruptive technology.
In a time when iPad apps may become as popular as the Barbie dolls or Hot Wheels toy cars of the past, there are only a few that rise to the notoriety worthy of a closer look. Peter Myers briefly interviews two people associated with unique successes on the tablet and touch-device landscape.
With a good deal of sarcasm, Josh Berkus presents a sardonic critique about scaling tools that are trendy rather than reliable. Josh Berkus, CEO of PostgreSQL, gives a facetious list of do's and don'ts for database creation and application design that, while often popular today, are not stable techniques. In the same cynical tone of this short presentation, Berkus sarcastically places sexiness at the top of the list of qualities to maintain when scaling website elements.
Like most travelers, Gus Balbontin loves new journeys. In this keynote, he shares a collection of stories about adventure. Some of them are about the history of Lonely Planet and some are about his own history with the company.
By leading the shift of Lonely Plant from print to ebooks and apps, he may be on his biggest adventure yet. But this isn't the first transformational journey Lonely Planet has been on. Balbontin shares three three lessons learned, to guide anyone wanting to take the ebook transformation journey.
Not all data is useful, and not all presentations of even the useful data are good. John Rauser shows how to best utilize monitoring software to personalize the data gathered about customers, to highlight problems in a website, and to effectively troubleshoot. Using real world examples of unsatisfying data presentations to demonstrate the usefulness of relevant data collection, he talks about time, latency, and how to interpret your data.
Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group winds back the tape to present a folk history of internet infrastructure, beginning with the first inkling of Java, and eventually leading to a re-negotiation of the developer/operations contract. Seeing where the Internet came from helps show where it's going and what the next 'zero-to-a-billion-dollar' company will come from.
Vik Chaudhary, VP of Product Management & Corporate Development at Keynote Systems, Inc., talks about the increasing popularity of apps on a variety of smartphones and the corresponding importance of testing those apps for optimal efficiency. Presenting both the challenges and goals of testing mobile apps, as well as demonstrating remote testing of apps, Chaudhary emphasizes testing and data collection as key to mobile app creation.
During the dot com bubble of the 1990s European bankers went to telecom company CEOs and said you can be as sexy as the American dot coms. This is the basis of what went wrong for the telecom industry according to James Enck. He observes that this panel discussion has a wide range of speakers and backgrounds but there are commonalities he guides the panel to discuss with the 2008 financial meltdown in hindsight.
