We added our popular New York show in 2008. This bicoastal expo and multi-track conference brought together people, ideas, connections, contacts, products, and companies to foster stronger Web 2.0 communities. It featured influential keynotes and speakers, detailed workshops, a Startup Showcase, an Expo show floor, and rich networking events.

And while Web 2.0 Expo continues to be a vibrant brand, the evolving market conditions surrounding the web ecosystem have led to a decision by the co-producers of Web 2.0 Expo events, UBM TechWeb and O’Reilly, to discontinue the production of the bi-annual Web 2.0 Expo SF & NY indefinitely. (The partners continue to discuss possibilities around Web 2.0 Summit in 2012, and will update you when plans have solidified.)

We’ve had a great time bringing you this amazing show year after year. And now at its close, we’d like to share with you a few of our favorite things from Web 2.0 Expo:

Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote in New York from 2008. His message of doing what you love resonated with a lot of people and is one of our most popular and frequently shared videos.

Rana Sobhany’s presentation from NY 2010 encapsulates so much of how Web 2.0 technologies and devices are changing not just business but popular culture, enabling people to be more creative, and to connect and have fun IRL too, not just digitally.

This is one of Tim O’Reilly’s most thought-provoking keynotes from the conference series and a good summary of the evolution of Web 2.0.

Carlota Perez at Web 2.0 Expo New York this year dazzled the audience with her brilliance as Fred Wilson interviewed her.

And My Personal Favorite Memory

Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 12:52 PM

To: Kaitlin Pike

Subject: W2E bag misspelling

Hi Kaitlin,

The W2E bag that we’re giving to attendees has San Francisco misspelled (San Franciso)… a little embarrassing (okay… a lot embarrassing).  Can you come up with a cute apology to tweet so we can acknowledge it ahead of time?  Please send the proposed tweet to this group first.

Thanks!!

Oh boy. That was embarrassing. We had a large team of people who supposedly reviewed the bag before it went to print, including me. And none of us caught it.

Although we only used a few of them, here are all the tweets I wrote to deal with this slight emergency:

@w2e Web 2.0 Expo – We’re big on ideas, Horrible with Spelling. (sorry, San Franciso – I mean San Francisco…)

@w2e Raise your hand if you’ve ever misspelled something important on an attendee bag. Okay, looks like I’m the only one raising my hand. #w2e

@w2e We’d like to introduce you to our copyreader for the attendee bags, but he’s currently in hiding.

@w2e So… how about them conference bags? Yea, our English teachers from high school just called to chew us out.

@w2e We like turning lemons into lemonade. Think of this year’s conference bag as the big version of those stamps with the upside down airplane. Except replace airplane w/ super embarrassing spelling error. #w2e

@w2e Web 2.0 Expo Bag Copyreaders: Rebelling against spelling norms since this conference. #w2e

@w2e I’d like to take this time to dedicate a special tweet to all 20 people who reviewed the conference bags, and didn’t see that San Francisco was misspelled. #w2e

@w2e Web 2.0 Expo: We don’t just have conferences in San Francisco; we also have them in San Franciso.

@w2e Web 2.0 Expo theme for next year announced: the Power of Spell Check

@w2e To answer your question about the attendee bag, yes, we know.

All the Tech Fit to Print

We had major announcements and news at each Web 2.0 Expo. Here’s a short collection of the buzz we received:

“The theme of the expo was “The Power of Less,” but being there, you could actually feel like the theme should have been ‘The Power of More.’ More startups. More entrepreneurs. More ideas.” –Star Ledger

“In fact, the startup veterans and would-be moguls at Web 2.0 seemed oddly energized by the economic climate, as if the lack of easy capital — or any capital, beyond personal credit cards — is a blessing. The attitude was anything but defeatist or glum.”  –Star Ledger

“I’m live at Web 2.0 Expo in New York, surrounded by digerati/I’m sitting with about a thousand people at the keynote session for the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, I’m surrounded by bloggers, tweeters and media types of all shapes. On stage is Tim O’Reilly, the coiner of term Web 2.0. He’s talking about how he is still excited about the internet.” – ecademy

“Web 2.0 Expo opened in New York’s Javits Center this morning. It runs through Thursday November 19 and though the theme of the conference is “the power of less,” there’s already a more-remarkable-than-ever outpouring of online media associated with the Expo: a fast-flowing tweet-stream, official webcasts (registration required), and a super-abundance of ways you can network, comment, connect, and pile on, even if you’re nowhere near New York.”  –Web Owner Tools

“At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City this week, executives from big sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pandora all spoke about industry trends. But the showcase of 27 startup tech companies stole the show.” –CNNMoney

“Then we went into a room full of entrepreneurs with laptops pitching their wares. It was like a trade show or expo except instead of pitching for customers, they were pitching for investors. And everyone got to be a VC along with me and Tim.  It was a great format. I loved it and judging from the amount of enthusiasm in the room, so did everyone else who was there.” –Business Insider

“Amid buzzwords like social media, location, real time, and search, the Web 2.0 Expo, taking place here this week, seeks to find out where the Web is going, and how it will get there.” -CNET

“Web 2.0 Expo was at full speed on Wednesday in San Francisco. The Internet-focused conference’s early morning keynotes covered a lot of ground, and one of the most memorable presentations was Parrot’s live demonstration of an iPhone-controlled helicopter.” -VentureBeat

“The Web 2.0 Expo is in full swing in San Francisco, CA. One of the more interesting panels to take place earlier today was called What to Expect from Browsers in the Next Five Years. The panel’s roster included some of the biggest names in the browser industry, with representatives from Palm, Yahoo, Mozilla, Opera, Google, and Microsoft.” -TechCrunch

“This week it’s the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, where we’ve been listening to a wide selection of presentations and meeting a bunch of interesting people and companies old and new.” -ZDNet

A Long Thanks to All of You

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all who made Web 2.0 Expo what it was. Including…

Gina Blaber

Brady Forrest

Sarah Milstein

Suzanne Axtell

Kathy Yu

Gloria Lombardo

Cindy McMillan

Jessica Newhall

Marco Pardi

Ally Parker

Susan Young

Sophia DeMartini

Scott Dominguez

Lauren Kilcullen

Patrick Dirden

Donna Ortiz

Lora Pereira

Jackie Hadley

Maureen Jennings

Natalia Wodecki

Joy Tanner

Alex Dunne

Mark Levitt

Craig Palmer

Matthew Balthazor

Jennifer Pahlka

Meghan Reilly

Janetti Chon

Stacy O’Connell

Allison Gillespie

Justin Jarvis

Jaimey Walking Bear

…And all the ghosts of Web 2.0 Expos past.

Thank you to our wonderful sponsors and partners, as well as to our inspiring, forward-thinking, world-changing speakers.

And finally, an extra special thank you to our attendees. We hope the knowledge and connections we brought to you helped you and your companies grow and thrive.

So long and thanks for all the tweets,

Kaitlin Pike

Web 2.0 Expo Marketing & Community Manager, 2009-2011

If you were one of the 800 audience member’s at Ignite @ Web 2.0 Expo yesterday evening, you got to see this in action from 18 speakers. (Full list and description.) If you weren’t, don’t cry: We have it here for you! We’ll also stream our keynotes this week on w2tv.co.

Check out the videos now!

Attorney Christina Gagnier will answer these questions Thursday at her Web 2.0 Expo session Law and Data. Christina has been active in the field of intellectual property since 2002, and she regularly consults for technology firms on policy issues, including those about user data.

“Big data isn’t going away,” she said. “There’s a lot of money to be made on it.” Unfortunately, there’s not much direction from the law on how to handle user data, and who owns it. For instance, one iteration of Dropbox’s terms of service this year claimed they owned content you uploaded – something users railed against. But a lack of a terms of service can do just as much damage to your company.

“Ninety percent of the time people had something happen to them and they want a response,” Christina said. “That ten percent  is out to get you… You have to have procedures on your website to take consumer complaints.”

The law surrounding user data moves too slowly for the fast pace of startups, Christina said. Lawyers aren’t necessarily the most technologically advanced professionals, and many judges are not abreast of the latest technology and user data issues. This is also true for many in government. Christina said Congressional committee members  who hold hearings on such topics as Facebook’s privacy policies aren’t technologists. Because of this, companies dealing with data and those making laws about data have frequent miscommunications.

Currently, no federal laws deal with social networking or geolocation data, although Senators Kerry and McCain have introduced a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights. It addresses what same privacy advocates argue is the problem with permission: many consumers don’t know what’s being collected. Due to the lack of clear language from government, companies who turn to their lawyers for advice on user data usually get finite answers. Instead, lawyers offer case studies and best practices.

To learn more, check out Christina’s session at Web 2.0 Expo New York this week. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

“You forget that someone is on the other end reading,” Jen, a Web 2.0 Expo New York speaker and designer, said. “It’s communication… You’re communicating something through your words.”

If writing is telepathy, Jen said, we should consider design a haunting. “I think a lot about not getting to the point in the design where you’re looking at the statistics of the page and no one is clicking the orange button. You’re as good as a ghost in a room. You’re yelling at them to click the button, but they can’t hear you obviously… Your design has to be strong enough to hold that time lapse and that distance.”

She’ll discuss this more in-depth at her Web 2.0 Expo session, UX Designers: Ghosts in the Room, on Wednesday.

At some point a designer gets locked out and must let the user figure it out on her own. You can prevent the frustration of confused users with some serious pre-production work.

Jen recommends you first consider your approach to solving the problem. At this point, it’s about the conceptual issues, not aesthetic concerns like color or typography. A wireframe or white boarding is a great starting place. One of her team’s first conversations during a project focuses on the target audience’s demographics and what they want or expect. You need to understand how a non-technical person looks at your UX compared to a web savvy user.

She recommended dailymile, Groupon (depending on the page), Jetsetter, Mint, and Zipcar as examples of web designs she admires for their UX. “Mint is great because it’s boring content, but they make it really clear and fun to look at,” she said. “Every single other bank site… is so horrific and you have no idea how much money you have.”

“Don’t assume that because a company is successful means they have a good UX.”

Things start to go wrong in the design process when the edge cases suffocate the room, she said. Everyone on a team may agree on the main reason for a site, but they can come up with ridiculous ideas for what would happen in random use cases. It could also be an issue of competing interests. An airline website might want to promote their credit card or rewards program on the main page, when really 99.9% of people only care about travel dates and prices. “So much is going on that it detracts from the main purpose. As a designer, you have to say it’s possible to do that, but you can’t compromise.”

She used Google.com as an example of simplicity at its best – the main focus is the search function, and everything else is white space or at the very top.

Learn more about being a good design ghost this week at Jen’s session. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

As Web 2.0 Expo New York speaker Denise Jacobs says, CSS3 is set to display your sites in multiple devices right now.  Her session, CSS3: Ripe and Ready to Respond, covers the gamut of CSS3 properties from colors, web fonts, and visual effects, to transitions, animations and media queries.

“CSS3 is the best thing since sliced bread for web design and development,” Jacobs, a designer and much more, said. “If you’re not doing it now it doesn’t take that much to get up to speed.”

Front end developers previously needed to bend over backwards to achieve certain affects: rounded corners, text shadows, gradients, animations, transitions, etc. CSS3 changes all that.

“It’s exciting if you’ve been in the web for any period of time over the last 5 years – you’ve seen kind of a progress and growth of what you’re able to do in terms of web design and now there’s all these sophisticated designs that are much nicer experiences.”

One important feature of CSS3 is media queries, the ability to tailor design presentations to different outputs – desktop vs. mobile for instance – in separate stylesheets. (Jacobs recommended reading Ethan Marcotte’s essay Responsive Web Design for more information.)

Not convinced it’s worthwhile? See Media Queries for great examples of this in action. Based on this new ability, Jacobs said you should consider building for mobile first, as Luke Wroblewski argues.

CSS3 also means we’ll also see more animations literally built in the browser, she said. Additionally, we’re likely to witness more print-style designs online so far as use of space, imagery, and typography go. We’ll certainly move even further away from animated gifs and Flash only websites. Jacobs said this will result in us getting back to true design ethos – and designs that truly attract users.

“You’ve experienced it yourself where you saw something and you kind of fell in love with it,” Jacobs said. “It appealed to your senses.”

Great design can cause people to actually have relationships with websites, products, and objects (think Apple). Consider how many times you’ve said you “loved” a product or site. Design can appeal to your sense of affinity.

Jacobs said the little things can cause this love affair. For instance, nice typography or drop shadow on text can make it more legible, rounded corners that the user likes on some subliminal level, or a form element where the color box pulses when you move the mouse over it, waiting for you to click.

These changes may not be quantifiable per se – maybe through A/B testing – but these subtle differences can make a big impact, especially if your competition doesn’t have it.

Learn more about CSS3 from Jacobs tomorrow at Web 2.0 Expo New York. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

“If I am stuck at the airport and the Delta agent is being a jerk to me… there is no way in the world I would be able to get any help or redress 10 years ago. When you got home you could write an angry letter,” Consultant Dorie Clark said. However, our ability to instantly post complaints online changes everything. “Now consumers have been empowered. Now you can do something about it.”

“Because companies want to control their reputation they are going to be on it.”

Clark’s Web 2.0 Expo New York session, How to (Mostly) Control Your Reputation Online, covers how you can prevent – or repair – these online communication disasters with a full response plan. She’ll also cover how you can marshal your fans and followers before an incident occurs.

She pointed to Taco Bell as a way to do this correctly. Not long ago, a rumor spread online questioning whether the fast food chain used real beef in its products. “You don’t want people to even be questioning if you’re using beef in your tacos.”

Unlike some companies that might ignore such a rumor, Taco Bell aggressively squashed it before it could gain steam. The chain’s president immediately went to YouTube with his response. They also contacted their over 7 million fans on Facebook and ~150k Twitter followers. As Dorie said, they already had an army of people who were favorably inclined toward Taco Bell. “They were able to quickly reach them and dispel rumors.”

“Now you have to be your own megaphone,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what other people think about you. You can talk directly to the people who care and believe in you.”

An essential part of reaching out to your fans is making sure you’ve built up enough good will before a storm hits. Make sure you are easily able to reach out to your ambassadors. When negative rumors or a situation hits, they’ll be able to help defend you or pro-actively evangelize on your behalf.

Along with monitoring Facebook and Twitter, companies should also consider using Google Alerts or any social media monitoring system. They should also pay attention to online review sites. “Yelp reviews can literally make or break a company,” she said. If you’re a larger company, it is worthwhile to have dedicated social media staffers integrated into the operations of the company.

Want to learn more? Come see Dorie speak next week at Web 2.0 Expo New York. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

Note to readers: I debated publishing this article entirely in lolcat speak, but ultimately fought the urge. If you’d prefer to get meta, however, have at it.

Internet memes are like the Force: It’s created by all living things (dogs, cats, socially awkward ducks, Scumbag Steves). It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy of web-based humor together. But while we casually laugh at their absurdity and lingo or obsessively iterate new jokes built on their base, Patrick Davidson of MemeFactory studies and documents this Internet phenomena as part of his PhD program (yes, really), and along with two colleagues is writing a meme textbook.

Patrick will keynote at Web 2.0 Expo New York this week on The Online Animal Economy: Examining the Cute Kitty Video, a title inspired by a chapter he’s writing for the book, which is being funded as a Kickstarter project. During his talk, he’ll discuss memes and examine the ways in which people have historically observed animals… and which of their behaviors tend to be the funniest.

“I think there’s a lot of confusion over the usage of the word ‘meme,’” he said. “What does ‘meme’ mean in that instance? Individual image or category of images or videos? Hard to define… When you say the word ‘meme’ you have to remember that you’re not saying anything about the object… The parts of it I care about is how it’s copied and how it’s changed… Its spread and adaptation are more important to me.”

Patrick said few people give memes deliberate thought, although some research is being done by communication academics. “This type of ‘vulgar media’ is often disregarded as being low brow,” he said. “Youtube comments might not have personal value… but I still think that this is undeniably a big deal.”

Patrick focuses much of his work on Advice Animal memes and compares it to poetic forms such as Haiku, as the origins of both have striking similarities.

Back when Haiku was first developing, the poems could be divided into categories of “mindful and mindless,” he said. “You can find all of these silly puns about breasts and farts.”

“We like to think the things that stand the test of times are beautiful florid descriptions of true love. But fart jokes are a pretty longstanding human tradition.”

The sheer number of people engaging with Internet culture through memes should interest any academic studying historical communication. “If you have an entire country of racists you wouldn’t celebrate that they were racists, but you’d seek to understand why they are racist,” Patrick offered as an analogy. “Millions of people are doing it, wouldn’t you be slightly curious as to why?”

“Computers and the Internet are here to stay… better to start paying attention to it sooner rather than later.”

Memes can also be looked at artistically as an example of collaborative creativity. But what drives people to propagate and create memes? Although it’s not a piece of art someone would pay for (…yet), the online community praise and recognition – or being Internet Famous – seems to be enough.

“People know that Michael Bay made the Transformer movie… that doesn’t exist for most Internet memes,” he said. “A lot just disappear… that doesn’t keep them from having localized attributions or localized credit. If there are 10 people who interact with it every day even anonymized… those people are still going to see you post that… they’re going to know that that person made that thing… for those people that matter, they’re going to know it was you.”

Despite the appeal of Internet Fame, and his research, Patrick said he doesn’t contribute to meme creation. “I think it takes a special kind of person and while I appreciate what they do, it’d be irresponsible for me to claim to be one of them.”

But his favorite meme?  “I used to say advice dog really quickly. There are definitely some advice dog variants that hit close to home… but now, maybe Bachelor Frog.”

Come see Patrick chat about lolcats, Advice Animals, and more on the keynote stage next week at Web 2.0 Expo New York. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

Elisa will speak at Web 2.0 Expo New York on Non-Traditional Hiring: Mining Your Customer Community as a Rich Hiring Pool. Citing examples from her own hiring experiences at BlogHer, Elisa’s session will highlight the methods your company can use to find brand evangelists, and define strategies that can help you uncover their relevant expertise and skills, and convert them into quality employees.

Working with evangelists is admittedly not a new concept, Elisa said, but many think of this from a marketing angle, not a hiring perspective.

“I’m advocating for the idea of looking beyond the surface and finding the people who bring with them something you can’t manufacture, which is brand loyalty and enthusiasm,” she said. “You know [your evangelists] in that thin slice of their life through Twitter and Facebook… but they actually have full rich lives with employment history and skills.”

BlogHer has hired a number of employees that were connected to their popular online community. For instance, they hired their first full-time events manager after receiving emails from her showing her enthusiasm for the brand, and their first full-time sales person was a blogger in the network. “They get us and love what we do, and coming to work for them feels like a mission.”

Reaching out to your community of brand loyalists can be much more effective than waiting for qualified candidates to find the job description and apply. At previous companies, Elisa also tried to hire by reaching out to her professional network, which depending on the job might work, or might be completely off the mark. “We had ourselves in a lot of boxes and our connections were very segmented and compartmentalized… Today we have so much more of a blending of the personal and professional.”

She recommends finding talent by engaging on platforms that encourage “in the moment” conversations such as Twitter or Google+. You should also check a possible candidate’s blog to see what they care about. By reading someone’s blog, “you get a real sense of how agile someone’s mind is,” she said. Additionally, you can meet in person at community meetup events or conferences (such as Web 2.0 Expo, hint – author’s input).

Once a brand evangelist joins your company, keep them excited about the brand by making sure they know their voice matters. “No one from your staff accountant to your HR manager wants to feel like a function… We don’t always say ‘yes’ because we can’t always do everything because people want opposing things…  A lot of times all people really care about is to know they were heard and considered.”

To learn more about hiring from your customer community pool, check out Elisa’s session next week. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

If you haven’t, you may want to check out Nick Disabato’s talk at Web 2.0 Expo New York next week, Deceptive UX: How to Trick People and What to Do About It. Nick, author of interaction design book Cadence & Slang, said many companies still don’t understand that a site’s UX can negatively affect people’s opinions about their business practices.

He gave the example of buying an airline ticket: The airline wants you to pay additional money for checking more bags and insurance, and to get this, they check the boxes for these extra fees as default. Some customers may not notice until after they complete the purchase. “They may be angry and upset that they spent ten dollars when they didn’t want to.”

“It’s difficult for me [or the other customers] to tell if they do this deliberatively to try to sell… or if they’re just careless with the way they’re designing things,” he said. “You need to see your product from the user’s standpoint.”

Nick quoted J. Porter Clark to describe the problem a company could get itself into by being ignorant of proper UX: Sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice. And if your company intentionally uses manipulative design patterns, consider this: While you may make money in the short run, you will burn through customers’ good will very quickly.

“Customers are increasingly empowered to take to the streets and rail against your organization,” he said. “Zappos does as much as humanely possible to make people happy and they’ve done just gangbuster sales as a result.”

So what UX design patterns should you avoid?

Nick suggested checking out the Dark Patterns wiki for a good list and examples. Here’s one from the site concerning Bait and Switch tactics:

“When Scribd.com originally launched, it was pitched as a ‘YouTube for documents’. The ‘Free’ end of its original Freemium business model allowed users to upload and view documents in an unlimited capacity, making money from display advertising. All of a sudden, in September 2010, Scribd.com put a substantial chunk of user uploads behind a paywall… After a sizable negative public reaction, Scribd posted an apology, and changed its UI design slightly, to provide what they claim as “Clear opt-out” and “Proactive messaging”.  In other words, they now provide users with a way to circumvent the paywall, if they have the patience and the ability to navigate through the site.”

On the flip side (and to end this post on a happier note), if you’re looking for a site that uses persuasive UX for good, Nick recommends ReadyForZero.com, a free financial program that helps people get out of debt.

Interested in learning more? Come to Nick’s session next week at Web 2.0 Expo New York. Register with code BLG20 to save 20%.

We’re also streaming Ignite, our popular annual after dark event featuring lighting talks crafted to inspire, educate, and entertain.

Here’s a quick FAQ about the videos:

Where can I watch the videos live?

On our home page, you’ll see a schedule of the videos. You can also go to w2tv.co.

What won’t be recorded?

Breakout sessions and additional evening events will *not* be recorded.

Where will video be available?

On the live streaming page, at http://web2expo.blip.tv, and in a playlist on the O’Reilly YouTube account; links to the Blip and YouTube video will be posted on the home page as soon as footage is available.

When will it be available?

The live streaming player will start to loop as soon as the block of presentations has ended. For the other channels, footage from Tuesday afternoon will start to go up Wednesday morning, Wednesday footage on Wednesday evening, etc., barring any technical or transportation glitches. All footage should be up within a week unless the speaker has requested that it not be posted publicly.

How can users embed the videos on another site?

Use the embed code on our player or from Blip.tv or YouTube.

Our embed code:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”340″ src=”http://cdn.livestream.com/embed/web20tv?layout=4&amp;autoplay=false” style=”border:0;outline:0″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>

Can anyone shoot video during sessions?

If someone would like to record a break-out session, they must secure permission from the speaker in advance. Shooting in the general conference area is fine. In all cases, filming cannot be disruptive to other attendees or interfere with our official recording.

If you have any other questions, post them here or talk to us @w2e.