Web 2.0 Expo in NYC: Katie Geeks Out On Social Media

This year my company hooked me up with an amazing opportunity and sent me to the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. It was a 3-day geekathon that covered all aspects of social media and the digital future. In short, it was incredible and I am very thankful that I was given the chance to go and see some really wonderful speakers.

Day 1 – The Arrival

Ah yes, there’s nothing like arriving in New York City after a delayed flight and near-death cab ride. You just cant beat it. The city lights are shining bright, the streets are singing a siren song of car horns and, so far, the people have been as cold as the crisp November air.

That said, I’m extremely excited for tomorrow morning. The Web 2.0 Expo signs are all over the place and the folks on the sidewalks have a certain “I’m a tech nerd!” look about them that is just so charming.

Tomorrow’s schedule is pretty full. I’ve got “The Future of Web Search: From Static to Social to Realtime” in the morning, followed by five other seminars that cover online engagement, ad strategies in Social Media, user-generated content and more.

Day 2 – The Hugeness

It would be an understatement to describe the Javits Center as humungous. The glass beast that stands on the shore of the bay seems to be an endless labyrinth of booths and rooms and signs – it’s just massive.

Once I finally figured out where I was though, I made my way to this morning’s first talk, which covered Web Search and the porgression from static to social to realtime results. Hosted by Eric Schonfield, Akhil Wable, Tobias Peggs, Vik Singh and Gerry Campbell, it was more of a discussion about the idea of realtime search and what it should be. The big idea that struck me was the concept of “freshness over timelines.” This speaks to indexing content based on what is the most fresh and useful versus what is the most recent. I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about this within the next few months.

After a brief lunch I was able to sit in the fourth row for the Ketnote presentations – wow. What an experience. It started off with Tim O’Reilly and his War for the Web analysis. He said some really great stuff about how companies need to focus on development for the greater good versus creating new technologies that lead to a monopolized system. From there, we enjoyed an interview with the CEO and Founder of Digg.com, two super young-looking gents with so many ideas – it was a tough act to follow. And yet…

Chris Brogan is a guy who never really charmed me. I heard all of these wonderful things about him, but it just never really clicked with me I guess. Until today. When Brogan took the stage he comanded the audience’s attention. His ideas were simple (worry about listening more than you worry about what to say), his delivery eloquent (”The difference between an audience and a community is which way you turn the chairs.”), and the response was noticeable (an applause that was more than animated). I have been converted. Mr. Brogan, you do know what’s up.

Caterina Fake, the genius gal behind Flickr also spoke quite a bit about startup companies, her new project Hunch.com (so very cool!) and “the power of less,” a running theme of this year’s expo.

Now I’m off to another seminar, so I bid you farewell!

Day 3 – The Exhaustion

Oy! Just got back to the New Yorker Hotel after another long day of idea building and concept crunching and boy are my brains tired – seriously. Speaking of the New Yorker though, they are a perfect example of how to use Twitter to resolve customer concerns. When I arrived I sent out a tweet that read:

“Made it to the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. It’s a nice enough place, but the room is tiny – I’m sleeping in the bath pretty much…”

And they replied:

“re: small room. Our apologies, Katie. We don’t have as much land space as you guys in Cali  ”

How awesome is that? A business that listens to its customers and responds in a timely manner? Yes please!

Anyway, the speaker of the day goes to Clara Shih who gave a terrific talk about how Facebook is changing business – and everything else. Explaining that the last decade was spent observing the World Wide Web, Shih says this new era is all about focusing on the Social Web. Shih is a wonderful public speaker – eloquent, poised and very charismatic. However, the highlight for me was winning a copy of her popular book, The Facebook Era.

At the beginning of her talk she encouraged the audience to participate via Twitter and announced that the person with the seventh tweet would win a copy of the book. At the end she revealed the winner – and it was me! WOOHOO! I was pretty happy.

Second place speaker goes to Mike Lewis, whose talk about ROI and Social Media was unfortunately hijacked by the audience. Instead of him being able to give a great presentation (and it was great at the beginning), it turned into a Q&A that would not end. People were so rude and disrespectful of his time and I was unbelievably irritated. Sigh. Mike was great though and has a lot of really fantastic things to say.

Tomorrow is the final day of the expo and I am happy to say that I have already learned a lot and met some great people. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye, but I miss my bed and my pup – oh and the Gunn/Jerkens office  .

Day 4 –  The Insanity

The final day at the Web 2.0 Expo seemed close to what a zombie convention might be like – people shuffling around looking tired and drained, but motivated by some unknown force to consume the nutrients from the brains of the speakers…

Okay, maybe that is a little extreme, but still everyone looked truly exhausted. The final day of the event was a good one, and what I took away was that while the term “social media” may evolve into various other terms, the concept itself is not just a trend. And here’s why: the kids are the ones in control and the kids are going to continue to develop new and more advanced interactive communities/technologies.

There has been a major culture shift. Today, people want to connect with real people. They want transparency. A great example of how this is already making an impact is Beth Noveck’s (Executive Office of the President/OSTP) work toward putting open government into play. This includes sharing government data with the people for full transparency. (She also had a great comment about the importance of “Do-Tanks versus “Think-Tanks” that I just loved!)

So this is it, the end of my week of social media madness. The event overall was really great and I am so happy that I had the opportunity to go. I’ve never felt more excited about the future, and if you have any doubts just remember this.