In 2009, a twitter conversation at SXSW among three data geeks accidentally turned into a 30+ person data meetup — with no planning, nowhere near enough chairs, and yet a total success. Clearly, the web’s largest yearly convention needed a gathering of data geeks.

The idea is simple: get a whole bunch of really smart data geeks together, set up group discussions and a round of lightning talks, but leave the majority of time for people who admire each other’s work to meet and exchange ideas.

Five Panels:

• Operations (managing data) — led byHarper Reed of Rackspace and ex-Threadless
• Analytics (exploring data) — led by Toby Jungen, NLP + Hadoop expert and chief architect at Swingly
• Web Apps (humanizing data) — led by Joe West of knowmore
• Visualization (seeing data) - led by Cyborg Anthropologist and Dataviz Curator Amber Case
• Open Data (freeing data) — led by Gil Elbaz, Founder/CEO of Factual and CommonCrawl founder and Dhruv Bansal, rockstar physicist and cofounder of Infochimps
• Infochimps’s own Flip Kromer, together with Factual’s Gil Elbaz will lead a discussion on building a cross-domain data commons.

When?

March 14, 2010 (Pi day!)
6PM - 9Pm
Opal Divine’s, 700 W 6th St 78701
RSVP here (limited space left).

Note: Panels start at 8Pm. At 6Pm, there will be aRelational Database Smackdown, featuring Stu Hood of the Cassandra project. He’ll lead a discussion that will debate the merits of various non-relational databases.

FACING OFF:

• Cassandra core team committer Stu Hood (Rackspace)
• CouchDB core team committer Jan Lehnardt (Apache)
• MongoDB evangelist Wynn Netherland (Orrka, TweetCongress)
• … expert in another scalable DB tech? If you’re brave enough to step up, email us.

See you there! If you can’t make it, but you like Data Viz, be sure to check out my Flickr Data Visualization group - Innovation in Data Visualization and my Data Viz set on Flickr.

Great News! The next CyborgCamp will be in early May of 2010. That means its time to start planning!

This meeting is everyone’s chance to brainstorm on location ideas, sponsors and speakers. What kinds of topics are of interest to you? How has the idea of Cyborg evolved over the last year? What new kinds of technologies have arrived on the scene?

We’ll discuss volunteers and the wiki too. Come along, especially if you helped make CyborgCamp PDX ‘08 so excellent in the first place. Bring snacks and drinks to share with others.

This planning meeting will most likely be followed by general networking and fun at a local haunt.

RSVP on Upcoming.org

Where:

AboutUs.org

107 SE Washington Street, Suite 520
Portland Oregon 97214
United States

When:

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 from 7–9pm

—

What is CyborgCamp?

CyborgCamp is an unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. We’ll discuss topics such as social media, design, code, inventions, web 2.0, twitter, the future of communication, cyborg technology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

CyborgCamp’s aim is to have many communication channels, such as Twitter, Flickr, UstreamTV, Video and Audio recordings and live chats displayed on the screen.
Why May 2010? In March 2010, CyborgCamp will make its way to Brazil and back before landing again in Portland, Oregon for its second year.

—

Questions? Contact Amber Case @caseorganic or MJ @mama_j.

You can also follow @cyborgcamp on Twitter for updates.

Today I was excited to speak at BoCo, a great new conference developed by the Boulder Tech Community, especially Andrew Hyde. Rick Turoczy was there, among other awesome Portlanders, San Fransiscans, and Boulderites. It  was a sunny day and there were beautiful mountains all around. The morning sessions dealt with food and music and were very wonderful to listen to.

I spoke about Cyborg Anthropology, which is the study of human computer interactions and how technology affects the way in which we communicate with one another.

We Are All Cyborgs

When you read this, you are acting as a low-tech cyborg, because you are using a computer to view text that I have written. My writing is stored here in my website, part of my actor network of external technological devices that, when taken together, comprise my technosocial self. As cavemen, we began skipping evolution by crafting spears instead of growing teeth. We began making hammers as extensions of our fists.

My social self is part technology and part human. My technological self does a lot of networking for me through my social networking profiles and my Google search results. So do yours (if you have them). My technosocial avatar of a self networks for me when I’m not there.

Distributed Social Selves

Each piece of my distributed social identity leaves a geological trail of past self that my present self can interact with. These all comprise my future self, which your future self or selves will most undoubtedly interact with. The online optimization of self, when coupled with the analog optimization of self (i.e. real-life networking, person to person) is the creation of a stable identity that is uniformly distributed and presented all over the web.

Technology Resembles Magic

Technology is almost magical. Like the scrying pool of the past (or of fantasy novels), the iPhone or computer monitor allows us to view anything anywhere in the world through YouTube and Twitter, News sites and Facebook. We can summon up an image with a simple spell (a simple text entry into Google search or Twitter search) and we can extend our speech and ears across very large distances in seconds with the mere touch of a button.

Technology Gives Us Superpowers

Technology, when used well, gives us amazing superpowers. We are like gods, until we forget to charge our batteries. We are like gods, until we forget to upgrade our devices to the most recent operating system or device number. Our external prosthetic devices turn against us when they get old. Our old clothes go out of style. Our brick phones make us get laughed at in the streets.

From Physical Transportation to Mental Transportation

In the same way that cars transport our physical bodies, computers and cell phones transport our spiritual bodies. Don’t like the word spiritual? Use the word mind instead. We’re increasingly entering into a world of mental machines - mental transportation devices. These devices transmit our thoughts invisibly to others. They are taking up smaller amounts of space, until vehicles, who require increasingly large highways.

Mental Traffic Jams

We have traffic jams, too. Mental traffic jams. Jams on Twitter. Twitter fails. Rush hour around important events and deaths and wars and crises. We can now have multiple views of the same event.

Telephonic Schizophrenia

When telephone technology first came out, people felt it was crazy. The idea of going into a room and speaking into a machine sounded schizophrenic.

More

There is more: enough to fill up a hour and a half speech, but I’ll leave that to you to see the next time I speak. Until then, you can follow me on Twitter @caseorganic, or you can check out BoCo.

Last night, around 6 pm, an event at Substance brought together many members of the Portland design/creative/new media/innovative community. Those tags do not describe the types of people there, no do they describe how it was to be at the event. Why? Because I wasn’t able to make it.

I’m going to review the event anyway (or at least provide information for others who couldn’t make it), as well as use some great pictures taken by Haley Lovett. I’m including them here, so you can understand some semblance of the event.

Okay, so what is The New Communicators about?

According to a post on the Substance website, “New Communicators are compelled to engage in conversation. They stand taller and stride farther when traversing the current media landscape. They are a mixture of digital and analog. Their message is everything interactive. Everything transmissive. Communicating is a give-and-take, speaking-and-listening, and New Communicators utilize a mixture of new and traditional tools to share their point-of-view with the world. Evolving conversation, they share their ideas, their truths, their lives”.

The New Communicators Video

If you missed it, here’s a Q&A in digital video!

The New Communicators Q&A - September 1, 2009 from The New Communicators on Vimeo.

The gathering was “about the evolution of conversation: exploring the pathways through which an originator interacts with a receiver. These connections can be fulfilling and triumphant; the failures potentially tragic and illuminating. Regardless of the outcome, these experiences are relevant, useful and inspirational. They should be open, discussed and analyzed in the interest of understanding what it means to be a New Communicator”.

What Next?

From Wednesday, October 28th to Friday, October 30th, you’re invited to hold an event around the theme of Evolving Conversation and explore what it means to be a New Communicator. The intent is to curate events for specific time slots in the mornings (8am to 10am), afternoons (4pm to 6pm) and evenings (7pm to 9pm) across the city. However, if those time slots become filled and you still want to hold an event, we got you covered. Any individual, group or company who wants to be a part of the convergence is welcome to do so and we will promote your events on our web site. Although, get those ideas in early if you want top billing and mentions in press content.

Event Response:

There was a lot of buzz about The New Communicators on Twitter. Some of my favorites:

hillerns: I learned something important this evening. When you invite folks to engage, you begin by asking, “What do you think?” #thenewcom

momothemonster: Great conversations at #thenewcom meetup tonight. Consider my fires officially stoked.

ephanypdx: 2nd thing I learned at #thenewcom: exchanging contact info is so 2004. Now we just follow each other.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to hosting a session. Although I’m not sure on what yet. You can help me if you want by commenting below.

If that’s not enough for you, here’s a quick Q&A:

Who are you?

We are a group of like-minded individuals who believe the nature of conversation is evolving. It is our mission to illuminate this evolution, educate on how to traverse the new media landscape and inspire others to initiate conversations of their own.

What do you mean by “Conversations”?

Conversations are any kind of engagement in which thoughts are shared, ideas are exchanged and lives are changed. A Conversation is a dissemination of a point-of-view, a connection with an audience and a reciprocation to the originator. It is how we learn and grow.

What is a New Communicator?

Anyone who is compelled to engage in conversation by utilizing a mixture of new and traditional tools to share their point-of-view with the world.

Why are you doing this?

We want to seek out and share the stories of those who have found a way to break through to their audience in an authentic way using any medium, digital or otherwise. Too much emphasis is placed on the technology behind interaction, when it is the content and quality of the conversation that matters most.

How do you intend to make this happen?

We see our role as gracious facilitators providing an online space for participants to promote their gatherings, connect with collaborators and venues, and use our connections in the community to provide a context to share their experiences and promote their ideas.

Where is Substance Located?

Looking for 1551 SE Poplar? Here’s what it looks like from outside: http://twitpic.com/g5705

How Can I Participate?

Simply visit The New Communicators, or follow them on Twitter at @thenewcom, and the hashtag #thenewcom.

“One of the things that gets me excited about cloud computing is the access to resources and processing capabilities for very large data sets,” - Thomas Lockney, one of CloudCamp Portland’s earliest supporters.

CloudCamp was held June 30th, 2009 from 5:30-10:30 Pm on the 16th floor of WebTrends in Downtown Portland. The unconference was set up for people who work with cloud computing, were interested in learning more, or who wanted to understand what Cloud Computing was all about. You can see some of what was said on Twitter about  #cloudcamp, or #cloudcampdx.

This was a very interesting conference that dealt seriously with some very important issues. Many of us in the field will be running into these problems, or already do. The advantages and disadvantages of Cloud computing need to be recognized before they can be dealt with. In this atmosphere (not to mention the excellent weather and balcony we had) information and knowledge sharing seemed to prosper.

The conference began with socializing and then an Un-Panel composed of a handful of campers who were heavily involved in Cloud Computing, either in knowledge or participation. Then, the audience posed a series of questions which were written onto a white board. The panel gave 1-5 minute responses on the questions of their choosing. At the end of the responses and follow up questions, the Dave Nielsen asked how many people were interested in discussion the questions further in an Unconference format. The topics with the most interest became proposed Unconference topics.

This was a unique way to run an Unconfernece. It put everyone on the same page by giving background and preliminary Q+A around key topics. It also allowed experts to distribute knowledge before sessions, and it made it so that everyone got some form of information, so there was less of a liability in missing conference sessions later.

A shout-out to Mr. Walsh, whom I wish I had more time to speak with.

Abbreviation Key:

Software as a Service (SaaS). Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS).

UnPanel Questions

1. Would database as a service be also considering cloud computing?

Mark Johnson: It really depends if you’re an object guy or a relational guy. If you’re a relational guy you might think of it as a platform. If you have a really good database layer, it would be a infrastructure. If you have a business object later it would be a platform.

Dave Nielsen: There are still people who will offer SQL databases as a service, but there’s another type where people just need to store data and store it quick, not necessarily structured, and then there’s a third type where people need to store relational data like SimpleDB.

Right Scale: Your application needs to have a database because it needs to something, or you have some bit Oracle cluster and the application is the database.

Dave Nielsen: Data in the cloud was probably that most popular topic at CloudCamp San Francisco.

here, most of the audience was interested in Data in the cloud.

2. What are the security threats with company data? Solutions?

Mark Johnson: I think I’m answering a slightly different question, but the whole thing of security is — when they bring in security experts when they bring them in and get their opinion on Cloud Computing, they say “it’s not really our issue”, but I think that with cloud computing, it forces people to think about these things sooner.

Marcus: I work with government institutions.

Dave Nielsen: At cloud camp Paris I got a very specific computing. “How can I make sure my data is never seen by the NSA?”

Audience: Don’t ask that in public.

John Hartman: A project I worked on, it was much more secure in the Cloud vs. physical privacy. Easier to rob your house than to go up in the cloud and put that data back together.

3. Any examples of hardware integration?

I didn’t take any notes here. My apologies. If you have something to add, be sure to add it in the comments below.

4. How do you avoid Cloud Lock-in?

Jason Mauer: Issues with wishing to switch from Amazon to something else. How smooth is this transition? Does data get stuck? With Azure, GoDaddy could run a verison of Azure in the CLoud and there would be no issues.And I think we’ll see mroe and more vendors running certain flavors of cloud as Cloud COmputing becomres more prevalent. But I think we’re still in the infancy of cloud computing.

BrowserMob: Google provides a very specific way of turning your data to CLoud. But you have to be careful becase if you write your code to assume that certian pieces will be there, then you can be locked in. Just be careful with it.

Dave Nielsen: If you are interested in security, there’s actually a Cloud Security Alliance. Cloudsecurityalliance.org, contact Nils Puhlmann.

About half the audience was interested in security.

5. What are you running?

Dave Nielsen: how many of you are running something right now?

A third of audience raised hands.

The entire room said Linux.

What flavor?

Debian, Ubuntu, most pop. choices.

OSX!

(in the cloud?).
Laughter.

Windows 3.1!
More laughter.

6. What are the potential players right now? What do they bring to the table right now?

Dave Nielsen: Just shout them out.

VMWare, Amazon, Ubuntu, SUn wishes they were, Rackspace, possibly Google, Appengine. Some are software providers, but others are Infrastrucre as a Service. If looking at IaaS specifically, GoGrid, Flexiscale, Joyant, Engineyard is insutry - based on top of Ec2 Amazon.

BrowserMob: A small compnay called COntigex that’s rolling out their stuff any day.

Dave Nielsen: BlueLock is a VMware cloud.

7. What are the regulatory compliance issues?

HIPPA, PCI (payment card industry).

8. Are there open source cloud solutions? Cloud as a service?

Right Scale: Yes, out of UC Santa Barbara, they have a program called Eucalyptus which is very similar to Amazon EC2, and it works just like it…for the moment.

Dave Nielsen: Abiquo out of Barcelona (recently moved to SF), also 3tera.

Ed Borasky: Ubuntu, by Canonical out of the UK Intrepid Ibex contains Eucalyptus. They also have something called Nebuli, which I’m not sure what is.

Audience: That’s not part of Ubuntu, but it’s another open source project looking to build another EC2 layer like Amazon.

9. When would you AVOID cloud computing?

Sid (from Jive): When considering enterprise Dave Nielsening, which is very expensive. A lot of problems with some clients where the data can’t leave the warehouse. Also, it’s alittle more expensive because with Cloud Computing you are paying a little bit more for flexibility.

10. How soon will we be talking about connection speeds to the Cloud?

See 13. Performance Issues (question posed by Ed Borasky).

11. What’s the baseline for cloud computing? (When would you move to the cloud?)

Sid: The lead time to to get ne hardware set up can sometimes b 3-4 weeks, but we have a lot of people wh

So sometimes you can run into complicated capacity planning here, where you guess how many people will use it in the next month and then plan it beforehand.

Red Shirt: One way you can use the cloud if you have predictable spiky load, you can use the Cloud to cover it.

Dave Nielsen: Super easy example would be file storage - for images on your website to push them out tho the edge.

Reid Beels: Seems like they’re talking about finished applications. Where would the development process move from local to the Cloud.

Dave Nielsen: At what point did you in the audience move from local to the cloud?

Audience: When the client wanted to see it.

Audience: It actually was when I was steady to deploy.

@dodeja: One instance I saw was with Animoto, with these massive spikes of access. When you’re doing heavy computing it makes sense to push it out onto the cloud.

Dave Nielsen: David Chappell (writes lots of books) - talked about two high uses of cloud, one when you need to scale, and another behind the scenes.

About 5 poeple were interested in use cases of when to move out onto the cloud .

12. IAAS sems to be a popular choice. Amazon seems to be the only one in the game right now. Why does it continue to be the most popular choice?

Makes more sense to Dave Nielsen there.

13. How does an application running in the cloud get accurate performance metrics (Ed Borasky).

BrowserMob: How do you deal with application performance in the cloud? That’s something people have a lot of concern themselves about because all sorts of things, including network bandwidth is not guaranteed. If you’re expecting to get x megabits of upload speed all the time, then that’s not a good mindset. To have the idea when you go in that you don’t know what upload speed there’s going to be is a better idea. If you need better performance, go with the more powerful equipment.

@dodeja: I think it would be more interesting to know the sorts of optimizations you can do to your infrastructure to make it run more smoothly.

Dave Nielsen: but that’s too specific.

Transition to Unconference Planning

Dave Nielsen: We’ll move now into the Unconference part, in which we’ll have 2 sessions of four topics each.

Proposed Unconference Topics

Pricing for different levels of the cloud, different needs.
Say you made a decision to go to the Cloud, but you want to estimate the baseline costs, the spike costs.

Eric was interested in practical approaches to data security for individuals and enterprise level. About half people attended were interested in this.

Practical uses of Amazon. Best practices.

Scott: Deploying Ruby apps in the cloud and making them scream.

Monitoring applications in the cloud.

Adam: Automation system for servers.

Steven Walling: Is Cloud computing a return to time-share mainframe style computing that we were formerly used to? And if so, does that

Lief: was interested in portability in platforms, standards and portability.

Alex Williams: Interested in defining different types of clouds: public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and use cases for each.

Session Notes

I went to the session on practical approaches to data security for individuals and enterprise level. About half people attended were interested in this.

Eric: It’s not that your data belongs to you - all of your data belongs to us. These larger companies that hold data. I’ve been working on a completely text based data store, flat files. Ideally, I’d like to have everything as secure as possible.

Lets start by defining things that are nice about the Cloud? What’s nice about Software as a Service (SaaS)?

Drew: It’s just easier.

One is reliability and universal access. The availability is everywhere.

Audience: Until a company goes out of business and the data no longer is there.

Aaron Blew: Scale.

Laura F.: Access.

Caseorganic: The fact that you can have one file, accessible by multiple users centrally updated, instead of 6 files, accessible by one person.

Eric: How can we get some of those benefits while still retaining our ownership of that data in the Cloud?

Cloud Solutions

Eric: Academics utilize primitive version control when they keep renaming files over and over, but they often store multiple copies on one hard drive instead of E-mail, and other storage spaces. What I’m suggesting is having a flattened data store that is diversified.

(At this point, I felt like data was becoming a grain store, and that data store needed to be safe from rats and decay so that it would store tons of grain without bursting or being susceptible to storms (data spikes)).
——–

Group on Amazon Tips and Tricks

I arrived at the group after they’d talked about large scale, heavy duty, and enterprise-level storage techniques.

Group host: For the data hobbyist, you can store all of your data on EBS - a data block. Attach it to an individual EC2 instance. You can at least do things like snapshots of it.

Audience: Klint would know something about this, especially EBS.

Klint Finley: We’ve seen big fluctuations with EBS performance. We’ve turned on CloudWatch to kind of see what’s going on.

Dave Nielsen: Do you have a recommended architecture at this point?

Kint: For now we’re trying to do more in memory. Also, caching everything so we can handle spikes in access.

(And during this session I was looking around, thinking, “this is the underbelly - the equivalent of what the printing press is to printers. What lies beneath. The structure of how things work and what things do”. In other words: the most important thing we can be having a conference about right now).

———

Second Session:

Steven Walling - Is Cloud computing a return to time-share mainframe style computing that wer wwere formerly used to? And if so, does that mean more centralization

Steven Walling: I’m sure you’ve all heard Kevin Kelly’s talk about what technology wants, that what every device will just be a window to the cloud.

@infovore: That everything is a dumb client, and that all the processing is happening up in the cloud.

Steven Walling: but i think that has some of the similar implications, that everything is running through the cloud, or just some of the really important things.

But if everything is running through the cloud there’s the idea that there doesn’t need to be storage anymore. Once everything is in the cloud, you just need a screen and an interface that, you know, you even touch the cloud with.

That entire vision is one extreme of cloud computing, as in, you don’t own anything, you just get to use the resources that someone provides to you.

That was the original idea of computing, that you’d just need a screen and a keyboard.

Bram Pitoyo: Like Thin Client.

Steven Walling: But that these actual computers were so complex and enormous

The reason we did that in the past was because it was cost convenient, and then we pushed it onto the web.

C: But this stuff - this Cloud computing - we’re doing it voluntarily - because it is easier now to store our things on the cloud and then access them from there.

Steven Walling: And what we’re doing is the same thing as before, just flipped upside-down.

Klint Finley: It wasn’t just a time function. you could have a terminal that was a small as a desk that you could access data from the mainframe with.

Joe: But we no longer have the space to be able to store the entire index of the web on your computer. You rely on Google to do that for you.

Some data is so large that you do need it on the cloud.

That was one of the big things Chris Messina was talking about at Open Source Bridge, that there is a need for those big kinds of supermarkets online that provide these large chunks of data service.

StevenWalling: Timeshare computing - too expensive to do anything but Really important science estuff .perosnal computing - anybody can have accress to it everywhere .Does timeshare cut out non-busienss use cases, does cloud cut out business comm?

Caseorganic: I think if a really important business does something online, it will be somewhat secure. But there is not really a set of standards in place for everyone.

Klint Finley: If we had a mesh wireless network it would work out if one network went down.

Jason Mauer: They did air strikes in Iraq in the gulf war to see if they could take down the Internet, and they couldn’t E-mal was used as a test to withstand attack.

Audience: What would happen is that we’d be able to pull off chunks of the Internet and have them function similarly to other chunks.

Audience: I know that a lot of people use Twitter now, or Facebook. A lot of our data is living on those networks now. There’s where I see a lot of problems. How do you get your facebook stuff out? Where does it go? It’s not even structured in the same way as your other data.

Audience: I started using Twitter and followed two people for a while. Now I follow 200. What happened? There’s too much noise. I don’t think I’m ready to handle that much noise yet. What what if I want to step in time? Filter it out? Listen to only the signals I need to?

Eric: It’s question of network structure. If you’re following 20,000 people.
You’re got a representative of every type, 5 people, totally, like Noah’s ark.
You’ve got a DBA, a marketing person. And you’ve got your neighbors, which are total wild-cards. and members of all these tribes i have. It’s about separating that data.

Lief: Yes, but aside from that issue, there’s another. If social networks are like TVs, there are only a few channels. If the channels are owned by giant organizations, then there’s no room for the next Twitter, or Flickr.

Steven :I don’t agree, because the flip side to that is that the guys in the garage don’t have to know anything about database infrastructure in order to know how to build an application. And that weakens the system if many people begin to use it.

Audience: But people are going to want to keep some private data: like family photos, or whoever knows what photos.

Mike Kaos: Consumers are king. They’re going to vote with their bits, so to speak. They’re not going to keep using a service to host their images with their friends, they’re not going to upload their data, unless it’s reliable.

——-

Conference Wrap-Up

We went over each of the Unconference topics, gathering summaries from participants of each. Since it was quite late, I did not get to take notes beyond the point.

Overall, the conference was a great success. The panel/Unconference hybrid model was refreshing and informative. I experienced only slight frustration in not being able to clone myself to watch simultaneous conference sessions. But this is usual.

—-

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and New Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. She is interested in Cloud computing for many reasons, especially since she uses Twitter @caseorganic, and stores her collection of over 18,000 photos, screenshots, and research notes on Flickr.

If there’s a Portland conference this summer that you don’t want to miss, it’s Portland’s Internet Strategy Forum. Where else will you be able to meet top-level experts and analysts like Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research, or Katherine Durham, VP of Marketing at Hewlett-Packard?

For less than $200, you gain access to a class of experts that will only be in Portland for a day.

Event Tracking with StreamGraphs

Last year, I used StreamGraphs to visually track buzz around Internet Strategy Forum 2008. This method allowed me to see which speakers had the most audience support and interest. This year, I’ll be doing the same thing, and my results will be made available two days after the conference (check back here for a complete report).

Follow the Visualization

If you want to follow my progress as I track and visualize the conference, feel free to follow me on Twitter @caseorganic, or subscribe to Hazelnut Tech Talk by RSS.

Event Details

The conference occurs on Friday, July 24th from 8:30Am - 5:00 Pm, and check-in begins at 8:15 Am. If you don’t yet have a ticket, you can get one at the Internet Strategy Forum website. The conference will be located at the Governor Hotel, which is at 614 SW 11th Ave., Portland, OR 97205.

Out of Town?

You can attend Internet Strategy Forum remotely too, and the cost is just $175.00.

Need More Information?

For more information, call 971-223-3838 or E-mail events@internetstrategyforum.org

Speaker Bio - Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang is a leading research analyst in the social computing industry and is the author of the influential Web Strategist blog. He ranks #2 on the Twitter Power 150 list.

TOPIC: The Future of the Social Web (based on new Forrester report)
Although social networks have caught the attention of brands and consumers, today’s social landscape is a primitive series of unconnected islands. Expect new technologies to emerge that connect all systems and communities together –that allow communities to spread and share from one another. This simple technology changes the web landscape as consumers rely on their peers to make decisions, any web experience can now be personalized, and social networks become as powerful as CRM systems. Marketers must be ready for the drastic changes to come as power shifts to micro-celebrities, communities, and social networks –not traditional marketing. Jeremiah’s presentation will cover these changes in detail.

Speaker Bio - Katherine Durham

Katherine Durham is the IPG-A Vice President of Marketing. In this role she is responsible for building the HP brand and driving demand for imaging and printing products with Consumer, SMB, Enterprise and Public Sector segments across the U.S., Canada and Latin America. In addition she is responsible for Environmental Leadership — compliance, sales support and marketing — across the Americas.

Since joining HP in 2000, Durham has held a number of positions in the Americas marketing organization. From 2005-2007 Durham was the Director of Business Planning, Market Insight and Operations where she re-architected the market insight team to deliver more differentiated customer insights, established TALC (technology adoption lifecycle) for the region and built a global delivery team in India. Before that Durham was the Director of Communications for IPG’s consumer and commercial business as well as the PSG’s consumer businesses, responsible for advertising, in-store execution, on-line communications, events and more. Durham also held roles as the e-marketing manager and NA brand manager for IPG-A Marketing.

Kent Lewis recently interviewed Katherine Durham about her keynote at Internet Strategy Forum.

Credits

Photo of Jeremiah Owyang courtesy of brad_crooks.

You can register for Internet Strategy Forum 2009, or learn more at the Internet Strategy Forum website.

—–

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and New Media Consultant based in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere. You can follow her on Twitter or Contact her at caseorganic at gmail dot com. She wrote her thesis on how mobile phones and their growing role in human interaction. Read The Cell Phone and Its Technosocial Sites of Engagement.

On Thursday, June 4th, 2009, members of the Portland Advertising, Tech, PR and Social Media community gathered to watch a panel event called “Who Killed Social Media?”. It was moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick @marshallk, VP of Read Write Web, and one of the most prolific and RSS-informed people in the technosocial universe. The panel was a partnership between Portland’s Nemo Design (who graciously provided beer and a nice meeting space), and Group Y Network.

Marshall started off the panel by saying that terms are strange, for instance, “social media tends to be a little bit more broadcast and marketed, vs. the social web, which is a little more a way of life”.
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Social Media Panelists

James Todd - @jwtodd

Software Engineer - Worked at Sun for over 50 years. Involved with Twine.

Lee Crane - @leecrane

Action Sports Media Veteran (Does that mean he’s wounded?), and proud blogger.

Matt Savarino - @Ridertech

K2, worked with the XGames.

Tony Welch - @frostola

Leads the Social Media strategy at HP, does the social media strategy for the laptop division.

Dave Allen - @pampelmoose

Community Manager, Director of Insights, Nemo Design

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Who Killed Social Media? - The Panel Begins

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Just like when you open a fortune cookie and add “in bed” to the end, we add the “how will it make money”, “how will we market it” to the end of each social media question.

First question was for Tony,

Tony Welch: The alpha geeks validate our technologies. There is someone you go to when you want to know about computers. They validate what HP is doing. From there, hopefully you can use that relationship to bridge down to the rest of the mass audience.

James Todd told everyone go to Twine.com, and said this name multiple times throughout the panel. But by the end, it was apparent that he truly believed in twine and how it is a true filter for information streams, be it social or not.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Twine is like a social bookmarking tool that automatically grabs material from the content of web pages and places in a tagged, semantically linked structure. Last month, Twine surpassed Delicious for number of unique visitors. Some people love Twine, but there’s also ample people who follow them around and criticize them.
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The Semantic Web

James Todd: Semantics have been around for many ears. It’s pretty easy to screenscrape and provide APIs to that data, which Twitter does really well (it’s API). Down the road, consumers actualy have the ability to be in the driver’s seat.

The semantic space has really been driven by academics. While it is easy to talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk. Providing a list of distributed databases to provide access and crosslinking to those databases allows you to be able to know your customers much more.

The bar was set high; as Marshall said, he lives 5 years in the future and sometimes comes back to visit us. We hadn’t quite delivered some of the API features that we wanted to. Some of those future features. We use a lot of Open Source. A lot of it which only works on White Boards.

Let me just be really candid here — there’s been a lot of sidebar discussions. If you have a social application, you really have to have engagement. The promise has not really been delivered yet, but it is on the way. We’ve been a little bit burned by the alpha users in our experiences. We syndicate with Twitter now, and we’re getting a lot of people to use that. Really, we just want to average person to use it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick:
So, realizing that some of your critics have financial interests, realizing your shortcomings and working them out. But what James really wanted to talk about is the future and what’s coming down the night.

Not sure how many of you have heard of the new product Google Wave, but James has been following that particularly close, and if that’s one of the visions of the far-out future and how it can work…then.
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Social Collaboration

James Todd: I have a problem with formal names, such as the Social Web. To me, I think the social web is just allowing people to communicate — bidirectional- back and forth. I think that what the Wave is going to allow collaboration. Allowing the average person to casually use applications. Google Wave allows people to do things on top of those applications naturally. It’s built on XMPP Jabber, which is the technology that instant messaging is built on. I think the consumer will be in the driver’s seat on which services will be allowed to integrate with each other.

I envision a point where pople will be able to choose which services to interoperate.

I used to work on a JUXTA project at SUN (where he worked for about 15 years), which we put XMPP on top of. This stuff can be small group oriented, which I really like better than large group orientated. I think that communication/collaboration is going to be the next bit thing.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So the future will be a bunch if little groups talking with robots coming in giving updates on the snow conditions on the slop that the small group is going to go snowboarding on later.

So lets talk with Lee on the transition that we’re going to be going through in the transition from analog to digital media. He’s been in the television industry, but he’s also a blogger as well, so I think he has an understanding of this space really well.

The Transition from Traditional Media to Social Media

Lee Crane: When the cotton gin came, it actually made people’s jobs a lot easier. But now people want to be able to communicate 24 hours a day, so the marketer has to be available at all times. Traditionally, a marketer would make segments and send out some marketing, and set back and say “cool”. Now people know when they’d not doing a good job because no one is responding to it.

The difference is today that it is no longer the marketers that are doing the communicating — It’s the customers that are doing the communicating, and they’re doing it would your consent.

The difference being that it is…more difficult.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Is it fair to say, lets not do push marketing media type stuff and instead communicate with our users, or…

Lee Crane: The media landscape is so fragmented now that people are being so bombarded with little bits of information that our job becomes bombarding them with lots of relevant information. The game becomes and instantaneous battle of having relevant information every minute of the day.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: While maintaining authenticity.

Dave Allen: Yes.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So lets say someone was crazy enough to want to get into that, what do you think a good way to get into that would be?

Lee Crane: Well, it’s that if people are saying you have to Twitter, you HAVE to Twitter. When they say you have to Blog, you have to Blog. And the problem is that to understand it, you have to blog for a while.

There was a conference — and Ev was asked, “why is it that 50% of Twitter users don’t don’t Twitter after signup”.

When I first signed up, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so there was no real point in updating.

That’s kind of what is happening, “there’s this Twitter thing going o, so we should have to Twitter. So can someone just say something that just happened in the Office?”.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Let’s talk to Matt Savarino next. He has a lot of experience with Extreme sports, has long been interested in geolocation, and has a substantial Facebook presence.

The big question I have for you is, are all these freaky things you’ve been interested in finally picking up speed with the general market?

Matt Savarino: Basically, the question of who you know and where you’re at is becoming commonplace. I bet most brands here don’t have a mobile website, and they should. In the future, I think it is important that sites have one to prove that they are not subpar.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We discussed youth marketing in general. Do you think that’s important now for people under the age of 25?

Youth Marketing

Matt Savarino: In my experience, kids don’t have the iPhone. They generally have ht free flip-phone, ect. Parents generally don’t invest in something that, if dropped once, will be broken (I don’t agree with this. I’ve seen 13 year olds with iPhones, the middle class market, definitely). But when I look at middle school kids now getting out from school, all of them have their heads down, texting.

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Social Media Decision-making in a Multi-Channeled World

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We’re making decisions like that- do we do a mobile site, do we do a web app? It is difficult to have the conversations without first discussing ROI.

Matt Savarino: There is a large problem with having g the data be tracked, ROI tracked. The people who know and see and use these things, and the people who don’t. Justifying to them that if 30 people Tweet the post to their friends, that that has value, even if they didn’t buy a ticket. And with apps, I have to prove to them that I am giving them engagement, when they want me to give them traffic. But the problem is that these brands have traffic already, they just don’t have the engagement.

You can choose NOT to do it, but your competitor will. Burton snowboards doesn’t capitalize on Twitter, which is a tremendous opportunity for us to prove that we have something they don’t. Because they’re one of the biggest brands out there, and they’re not doing something important.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would you like to share your insurance analogy?
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Social Media Insurance and the Case of Emusic.com

Dave Allen: It is difficult to convince executives to pay someone $55,000 a year to scrape the web. So I tell them, put that $55K into insurance. Because if your brand doesn’t own the message, the message owns the brand.

A company that did not share in this idea was Emusic, who was smashed this week.

833 people on Emusic’s blog said “Goodbye”, and Emusic did not respond.

One of the people who should’ve responded said, “I’m going to go on vacation for 2 weeks”, and, as you know, 2 weeks in Internet time is infinity.

What they ought to have done is completely pool their subscription base, 400,000 people, and say “hey, we’re thinking of acquiring the Sony music collection - are you interested?”. And I be you that 98% of those subscribers would’ve said, “no thank you”, and then set up a tiered system so that the 2% that is interested would pay for this additional music collection so that the rest of the subscriber base could’ve been grandfathered in and still had access to the independent music that they’d been so supportive of for the past 10 years.

They need to get the CEO onto Youtube to say, “I’m sorry, we blew it, really, really badly — and then apologize profusely to the subscriber base”.

Now that we have access 24/7 to spread our thoughts across the web, then

If you’re the manager of a brand, you have the ability to control the message - to jump in and interact with it, help shape it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: (Sarcastic) Are you sure it wouldn’t just be a good idea to just be really nice, and just tell everyone about your products?

Dave Allen: Why should we do that?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Because that’s what’s made money for the majority of people in this industry since the industry began.

Dave Allen: Well, that’s not how I make my living.

So, is Social Media Dead?

Rod Pitman (audience): Well, I have a question. Is social media dead? Isn’t that the name of this panel? And if not, why? I think that, if you don’t have a story, you’re dead.

Dave Allen: I agree. A story is necessary. But there is the name of the panel, which I am responsible for, and the question behind that is what is behind social media, and to also start a discussion.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would anyone else like to speak about push marketing pushed over social media tools, vs. the opposite, which is engagement?

Matt Saravino: Social media is by no means dead. I think that over time, your intent becomes obvious. So if your intent is that you’re going to constantly tell me that your products are 20% off, I’m going to realize that. To be genuine, and to realize that people can see right through you.

If you’re trying to broadcast deals, then call your Twitter account “BrandDeals” or something, so then people at least know what to expect.

Lee Crane: Social Media is not dead, it’s actually the other way around. The Social is killing the “media.”

Watch What You Predict

Tony Welch: How many of you do SEO or SEM? SEO and SEM will be dead as you know it within 6 months. Google is going to take into account now much more about what’s happening. Now, when people talk in your name, people will see social conversations about your company showing up in Google results, from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. It’s now about brand management vs. SEO.

Dave Allen: Great, so you can take all that money you put into SEO and SEM and put it into community management. And you should not retain your assets but spread them as far and as wide as possible.

If we are moving away from SEO/SEM and into community and reputation, then it is of tremendous importance to protect and monitor communities and reputations.

Tony Welch: Anyone know what the second largest search engine is? Facebook. Twitter is coming next. People are spending a lot more on relationship analysis.

Self-Censoring and Social Media

Marcus Miller (audience): I guess that Dave has no self censoring problems. Tony you speak to - the idea that when you do any Twittering, then it is you. What degree do you find yourself self-censoring?

Tony Welch: There are some things I would love to Tweet about, but as I do work at HP, there are some constraints: for instance, I can’t just post anything because I’m also representing part of HP, and what I say can reflect on the brand.

Lee Crane: I use pseudonyms. I use fictional constructs, which also blog for me.

Dave Allen: Do you pay them well?

Lee Crane: I do. Very well.

Dave Allen: I’m not as wide-open as you think. I have a 30 second rule, and if it still reads well after that, I post it. I also don’t do anything online after 11 O’clock. Because I drink a glass a glass of wine. That’s a new rule I’ve decided to follow.

Technological Adoption and Social Class

Carri Bugbee (audience): brings up a questions about kids having flip phones, but per danah boyd’s research, social class plays a bit role in having iPhones or not. The man from New York who sent this question says, “all my kids have iPhones”.

Matt Savarino: That sounds like a very nice family to be in. But the majority of kids don’t have these technologies.

(break)

Lee Crane:Right now, it seems like there’s so much volume of information out there that we can ignore everything.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Some people who tweet as many as 5 times a day feel like they’re flooding the world with too much information. I prefer to get RSS feeds from people and companies so I can keep track of all the the updates in an organized manner.

Community Management - Tracking the Social Web. Monitoring, then Participating

Tony Welch: We use a social media tracking program called Radian6 to track what’s happening on the social web. I’m not actually participating in conversations but am watching them happen.

Dave Allen: That’s classic community manager. Monitoring the network is the first step to maintaining reputation. You should not start right away by saying ‘We’re such-and-such a shoe brand”, or we have to jump in and get a Twitter or Facebook page, ect. If you don’t have a plan for that, it’s going got be a bit of a nightmare. There’s always this expectation or practice built around it. I wish there were such a way that I could get across to these companies about the need or them to have an insurance policy.

Tony Welch: One time, when I was looking at what people were saying about the community, and this one guy said, “I hate HP so much that it hurts when I pee”.

(Laughter)

Tony Welch: And so I think, what am I supposed to do what that? Do I engage? How do I engage?

Lee Crane: Well, he’s probably not using the product correctly.

(More laughter)

Nicole (audience): It’s not going to be who killed social media, but who killed the companies, because they didn’t participate? How, if you’re in one of these companies and have them understand the insurance principle, or the stupidity of companies?

Tony Welch: You pull up Google and pull up their name, you go to Twitter and pull up their name, you go to Facebook and pull up their name — and you say, “look at all of these people having conversations about your brand without you participating.

Panel Conclusions

The battery on my laptop died just before the end of the panel, but Ed Borasky (@znmeb) came up to the mike and asked a very potent question.

“Some people got in on the ground floor of Twitter,” said Ed, “but it’s too late to do that now. My question is what is the next service to get in on the ground floor of. For instance, there’s no way to be Scoble, or Oprah, now that it’s been done”.

I’m not sure who it was that responded, but a number of the panelists did, and the response was along the lines of personal branding. “There’s always opportunity to develop a brand. And there’s never been a chance to be Oprah,” they said.

Nate DiNiro (@unclenate“) also asked if social media was going to backlash, because now “aren’t we all just looking at screens?”. He wondered if there was a point when we wouldn’t be able to take the inflow of information anymore - when we would just ’snap’.

Dave Allen: I don’t think so. I’ve had a greater ability to meet people through Tweetups and get to know them in real life more than if I didn’t have the technology. In many ways, looking at a screen has made me more social.

The panel ended on a high note, with Dave Allen saying something really awesome, and the networking continued into the night, moving from Nemo to various bars and pubs. Thanks to everyone who helped up the event on, including Nemo Design, GroupY, and the panelists, and special thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick, who did an excellent job of moderating.

Who Killed Social Media Recorded Livestream

If you missed the event, or want to make fun of the lousy job I did of trying to type way too quickly during it, then you can watch the saved livestream of Who Killed Social Media at USTREAM.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and social media consultant living and working in Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic. She has a background in qualitative and quantitative analysis and is available for short-term projects involving new media, online presence, digital branding, data aggregation and event coverage. If you’re not on Twitter, reach her at caseorganic [at] gmail [dot] com.

Let me preface this blog post with this simple phrase - “We had to do this”.

Hence, the following sound byte.

 

 Grmfwklsnaxp [0:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (214)

History

Grmfwklsnaxp is a concept that is becoming increasingly important. Since its first incarnation only a week ago, it has increasingly grown in the field of AWESOME.

As Grmfwklsnaxp reaches a plateau of importance, it may begin to enter the vocabulary of everyone around you.

Grmfwklsnaxp is VERY Important

In this case, it would be best not to look ignorant.

This is why It is important to understand how to pronounce the word Grmfwklsnaxp. But we need your help. Well, specifically, we need @mettadore’s help. But since he’s not here right now, we’re left to our own defences.

Thanks for listening.

Today was a conference called Business Leader NW. It occurred at the Portland Convention Center. One of the highlights of the day was a keynote by Urban Anthropologist Jennifer James.

 

 Jennifer James - Business Leader NW - Urban Cultural Anthropology [61:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (126)

It is always exciting to meet other anthropologists, and I was introduced to her before her speech. We exchanged a rapid amount of words back and forth. Of all the things spoken, I am able to report that she was very calm before her speech. Evidenced by a lot of practice speaking around the world.

In fact, her speech was pretty memorable. She talked about all of culture being a mythology. It’s a pretty epic look at the reality. I attempted to record the speech, the results of which are below. Apologizes for the clicking noises. I tried to type quietly.

About Jennifer

Jennifer James is an urban cultural anthropologist who was for 12 years a full time faculty member of the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department at the University of Washington. She left the University in 1982 to follow her interest in international business and community service.  She now lectures to audiences around the world.

Speech Highlights

“Why are all the newspapers failing? It’s because they don’t print the news. They’re not challenging anyone”.

“Let’s not teach evolution in schools — because it is only a theory. They’re right - but so is gravity. I invite someone to the roof of this convention center with me right now to prove me wrong”.

“What is adaptability? The ability to use your critical thinking skills”.

“We’re in the technological age and we still want to use mythology”.

“We’re choosing clients and consultants because we think we’re like them. Because we’ll get along with them. It’s often what we need is the opposite”.

“You must know your myths and the myths of the people you’re dealing with”.

“It’s amazing how much time we waste because we’ve ‘always done it that way’ - that’s what the comic strip Dilbert is about”.

“You have to consider what people need. It’s not just money that motivates, but a work/life balance”.

“In times of great stress/change leadership is no longer complete mastery”.

“You have to match tasks in an organization with those with the strength to do those tasks”.

“The best way to lead through times of great change is through influence — which is by telling a compelling story”.

A compelling story consists of the following things:
• A set of ideas that fit the future.
• Those ideas have to resonate to deeply held values
• The person telling the story has to be believable.

“Now you can go to Costco and buy a gallon jug of Mayonnaise that you’ll have to leave in your will — because you won’t use it”.

“Why do rich people buy seven houses? Because they can’t get over security”.

Your customers — they need a product that makes them feel that they’re moving up Maslow’s hierarchy while still feeling secure.

On the Concentration of Energy by Technology

“The minute you replace a steam engine with a microchip you have concentrated energy”.

“Economics is nothing more than the efficient use of the energy available”.

“Those who have a high amount of productivity in the workplace are those who are most trusted: it relaxes them. They can do more work. They can do better work”.

“We change the definition of intelligence — now you have intelligence retrieval”.

On the Census

“Why are polar bears white? So they can go to better schools? It is absurdity — these census categories. We can handle the economics or we’re going out of business. We understand that diversity opens our business and opens our minds. The last part is opening our systems”.

“If you offer people a business that gives them meaning — people are hungry for lives that have values — they will work harder and take less money”.

Three Parts to Civilization

• Increasing access to information
• Increasing inclusivity - the more we’re wiling to see leadership where it is, the more likely we’ll accept it
• Increasing non-violent alternatives to violence - learning to debate — learning to use soft power

The audience at this conference contained no laptops. Except for the blogging pavilion, I was the only technosocially connected one in the audience. This is one of the reasons I love business conferences. The people to talk to are not the ones that understand who you are and what you do — they’re those who are different. This situation maximizes the potential exchange of ideas between people.

More About Business Leader NW

There was a lot more to do and see than just this one speech. Want to know more about Business Leader NW? Check out the Business Leader NW conference site, or the BLNW blog. Tweets associated with #blnw are available as well. Thanks to Alex H. Williams - @podcasthotel for organizing the Blogger Pavillion which serviced people new to social media with advice on blogging, Twittering and digital marketing. Also check out the website of Jennifer James.

I am excited to announce that I will be speaking at Portland’s WebVisions Conference 2009. After missing the event last year to a scheduling conflict, I am honored to be able to not only attend, but present as well. I have quite a bit of time to present, so I am already writing my speech. If it is not a 100% completely useful speech, then at the very least it will contain some interesting images.

An Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology in One Hour and Fifteen Minutes

I’ll be presenting An Introduction to Cyborg Anthropology on Friday, May 22 2009 - 1:15 pm to 2:30 pm

How we interact with machines and technology in many ways defines who we are. Cyborg Anthropology is a lens with which to understand what’s happening to us in a world mediated by dynamic objects, processes, and change.

An entire set of new social roles have developed around the use of technology. Erving Goffman’s “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” relates directly to this. In this world, the concepts of physics are even more prevalent. The shape of space makes people move, and flow of people shapes space. A profile is another extension of connection and etiquette that can be optimized or used poorly.

The speech will cover the effects of space/time compression on the co-creation of value in online systems. Information architecture and interface design will be discussed.

Webvision Speakers

I’m extremely honored to be a part of the Webvisions lineup, which includes the following incredible people and speakers.

Keynote Speakers

Mark Frauenfelder – Boingboing.net

Mark Frauenfelder is the editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the Boingboing.net, what Technorati calls the world’s most popular blog. A former editor at Wired, Mark has written for numerous publications and is the author of four books, including The Computer, an illustrated history of computers and Rule the Web, a guide to online tricks and tips. His next book, The World in Your Hands, will be published in 2009.  more

Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering

If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. What you probably don’t know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering (UIE) into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.   more

Peat Bakke

Peat Bakke is a web developer and world traveller with a keen interest in how the Internet is shaping the global economy. He presented at Ignite Portland II on finding beauty in abandoned places.  more

Leah Buley – Adaptive Path

Leah Buley is an Experience Designer for Adaptive Path. She speaks and writes about methods for making user experience design more successful inside of business organizations.  more

DL Byron – Textura Design

An author, entrepreneur, inventor, and a designer, Byron consults with Textura Design’s clients about blogging and social media. He publishes Bike Hugger, a blog about bike culture and will ride his bike all over Portland while in town.
more

Amber Case – Hazelnut Tech Talk

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who studies new media and the relationship between humans and computers.  more

Dawn Foster

Dawn provides consulting services for building online communities through social media technologies including forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and more. She is the author of the Fast Wonder Blog and is working on a book about community.  more

Vanessa Fox – Nine by Blue.com

Vanessa Fox, called a “cyberspace visionary” by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search.    more

Justin Garrity – WebTrends

Justin is the new User Experience director at WebTrends. His mandate is to focus on user centered design, refined data visualization, and narrative context driven workflow.  more

Jason Grigsby – Cloud Four

Jason Grigsby was one of the project leads on the Obama iPhone Application and helped design the user inferface for the Wall Street Journal’s Blackberry application. He founded and organizes Mobile Portland, a local mobile development user group.    more

Molly Holzschlag – Molly.com

Molly works to define and create effective organizational standards and best practices for thousands of developers and designers working the Web via 35 books, countless articles, conference workshops, sessions and keynotes and a consulting practice.  more

Kevin Hoyt – Adobe, Inc.

Kevin Hoyt is a platform evangelist with Adobe Systems, Inc. Passionate about engaging user experiences as he is, you’ll most often find him meeting with customers, speaking at conferences, or just enjoying the chance to share ideas and brainstorm.  more

John Keith – Cloud Four

John Keith is Co-Founder and President of Cloud Four. He has been a professional software developer for 25 years, fully half of which have been spent developing web-based software and services.  more

Raymond King – About Us

Ray has worked at four startups and enjoys the technical and business challenges that go along with birthing totally new ideas.   more

Eric T. Peterson – Web Analytics Demystified

Eric has worked in web analytics since the late 1990’s in a variety of roles including practitioner, consultant, and analyst for several market-leading companies. He is the author of three best-selling books on the subject, Web Analytics Demystified, Web Site Measurement Hacks, and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators, as well as one of the most popular web analytics bloggers at www.webanalyticsdemystified.com.   more

David Recordon

David Recordon is Open Platforms Tech Lead for Six Apart, the largest independent blogging company in the world. Recordon has played a pivotal role in the development and popularization of key social media technologies such as OpenID.  more

Christopher Schmitt – Heat Visions

An award-winning Web designer who has been working with the Web since 1993, Christopher is the founder of Heat Vision, a new media publishing and design firm.  more

Bill Scott – Netflix

Bill is the Director of User Interface Engineering at Netflix where he guides the UI Engineering team’s efforts to continue Netflix’s excellence in user experience, improve client performance and refactor the presentation tier to use the latest best practices for both the DHTML layer as well as the Java tier layer.  more

Tyler Sticka

Tyler Sticka is a designer, artist, speaker and educator specializing in identity-driven new media. His clients include small businesses, marketing agencies, open source developers and larger names such as Nike, Synnex and Providence Health.  more

Armin Vit – UnderConsideration

Born and raised in Mexico City, Armin is a graphic designer and writer now living in Brooklyn, New York. He has written for AIGA’s VOICE, Emigre, Eye, Creative Review, HOW, and STEP magazines, among others.  more

Dave Yewman – Elevator Speech.com

A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Dave has conducted media and presentation training sessions for thousands of executives at numerous companies, including Adidas, Craigslist, Digg, eHarmony, K-Swiss, Microsoft, Avenue A Razorfish, Reebok, and Vignette.  more

About Amber Case

Amber Case explores data visualization, search engine optimization, and how marketing works in the online ecosystem. She’s spoken at various conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment, Inverge, Ignite Portland, and Ignite Boulder. She graduated from Lewis & Clark College in May 2008 with a degree in Sociology/Anthropology and wrote her thesis on cell phones and the effect of technology on cultural constructions of space and privacy. She writes for Discovery Channel’s Nerdabout.com. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.