Archive for January, 2007

AlwaysOn conference day two

January 30, 2007

Day two of the AlwaysOn conference saw an exhausting program of showcases, panel discussions, keynotes and workshops. The showcases were very interesting with up to six CEO’s per session having six minutes to explain their business. The moderators were very strict on time, marching onto stage to stop the presenters after their allotted time. How we could do with that at other events!

With sessions running concurrently it wasn’t possible to see everything but I did manage to take in: -

  • Panel – are there chinks in Googles armour? – Answer = no!
  • Workshop – becoming a power blogger – I’ll let you decide
  • Showcases – Advertising service providers, Consumer generated media, Technology enablers and Community – 20+ presentations!
  • Panel – Keeping the IM generations mindshare – how to build products for the 13-17 year olds

The general themes running through the day were: -

  • There are a lot of people trying to crack video both from a search and social media/editing perspective.
  • Social media and giving up control to the audience is the new model not just for publishers but for advertisers too
  • Lots of great technology on display from web based video search and editing through to complete virtual worlds

I’ll be blogging separately on the interesting technologies so watch this space…

Posted in AlwaysOn, Events, Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment »

AlwaysOn conference day one

January 29, 2007

Started in NY tonight with Tony Perkins and Bill Cleary doing a double act where they presented video blogs from Davos and San Francisco respectively. These were a bit like “You’ve been framed” only not as consistently amusing but did set the tone for presentations that are now sure to be laced with video for the rest of the event.

While videos clearly add an element of interest and production not previously encountered in Powerpoint slides, I can’t help but think it’s cheating a bit to rely too much on them.

They were followed by Peter Hirshberg from Technorati giving a similarly light hearted, video laced presentation about web 2.0 and their new product built in association with Ogilvy.

Not exactly sure what that product is as it wasn’t really that clear and no demo was forthcoming.

The main theme, as to be expected was all about how social media is taking over and the need for publishers and advertisers to take an active role in the “conversation”. The intro’s were obviously designed to be lightweight rather than in depth. Let’s hope tomorrow brings a little more substance on what and how publishers and advertisers can engage rather than lots of people simply urging them on.

Posted in AlwaysOn, Events, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment »

ZDNet stars at Association of Publishers event

January 18, 2007

I blagged myself an invite to the latest AOP event this week where Suzie Daniels was up on stage with the likes of Yahoo to talk about the social networking experience ZDNet has gained from this part of the site.

The audience were all on-line publishers of one description or another and Suzie talked about the lessons learned so far, the importance of having built a solid platform and the cultural changes that are taking place inside the organisation. There was a very lively Q+A session at the end and It just demonstrated how far ahead the team at ZDNet are with their thinking.

It has prompted several comments across the blogosphere, the most notable, this one at the Guardian.

Posted in AOP, Blogging, Social Media, ZDNet | 1 Comment »

Compound Media is born

January 9, 2007

36-compound.gifSo the big day finally dawned when I left the corporate world and started my own business. 1 Jan 2007 at 00:01, when everyone was celebrating, I was tucked up in bed asleep in preparation for the task ahead. Actually that was more a combination of beer, wine, a long day and residual tiredness kicking in from staying up all night at the very long goodbye party before Christmas than preparation but…

Why leave CNET? It’s a great place, full of great people and fantastic memories for me. It was probably the hardest career decision I’ve ever made (in the past I’ve been “helped” to decide!) but this is a very interesting time for the media business and my chance to use the skills I’ve acquired in the past 6 years with Silicon and CNET so Compound Media was born.

Very rarely in one’s career are you in a situation where there is such a shortage of practical knowledge in the area you that specialise in. Publishers are still struggling to build robust, scalable, integrated on-line systems. That was the case for the traditional publishers in the Web 1.0 era but is increasingly true of the on-line publishers as well as we embark on the Web 2.0 revolution where the users take control and we have to build applications rather than web sites.

So what of this blog? My first task is to carry out some research. Researching the platform, product development and business process issues facing publishers in these turbulent times and investigate the myriad of new technologies and companies that aim to address these problems. I’ll be blogging on what I find as I carry out this research, new and interesting technologies around search, content management, reporting systems, user generated and social networking platforms.

So if you come across anything that you think is interesting/new/out of the ordinary on the web, send me an email and you may even get blogged about here.

Posted in Compound Media | Leave a Comment »