NMK Content2.0

2006-06-08T16:14:00.000Z

I went to the NMK conference on Tuesday - overall theme was talking about the role of content in a web2.0 world. My aims were to find out more about the scene in London, as well as learn some interesting stuff.

Audience was quite "Media" - lot of content owners/publishers. And a suprisingly large number of presenters had come over from the West Coast (even if several of them had British accents). I'd been hoping to hear more start-ups but the day itself was still very interesting.

Standout moments included Marc Canter talking of his plans for using open standards to mesh together all the personal information we leave across the web. In fact, the theme of who owns the social capital data we put out on the web and what they can use it for ran through much of the day. Also, the debate on using social networks as a marketing media got me thinking about the organizational barriers to change and opportunities there (this may be the subject of a post in itself). I also greatly enjoyed Brad Horowitz's discussion of Yahoo!'s plans, including a lot of stuff on Flickr - though less thankful for his introduction of the ESP game - it's as addictive as he warned. And learning about Lastfm, a radio station that filters your playlist according to what you like and what people like you like has already changed my music world, though this confession may also illustrate how backwards I am...

It's quite hard to synthesize the day succinctly, but I came away with the following thoughts...
1. There's a lot of data out there, and it's getting added to every day...
2. As individuals, we are revealing more and more about who we are, what we like and how we believe - but if this is siloed we lost loads of utility... We all also need to think about how we manage our digital personas...
3. Using this stuff has to be easy, or else we lose interest and stick with the tried and tested brands. Brad characterized Delicious as being right at the top of the pyramid for user sophistication - most people just won't "get it" unless it's made easy for them and compelling.

I might do separate posts exploring the ideas from some of the sessions in more depth at a later stage, so watch out for those (or don't, depending on interest).

Web 2.0 in London

2006-06-05T13:01:00.000Z

A month back from travelling, and trying to get into the work mode again. Pursuing a couple of interesting consulting opportunities, but also trying to explore the London Web2.0 scene. To which end, going to go to the NMK Content 2.0 conference tomorrow - hope it will be a similar event to the recent Mesh conference run in Toronto by my friend Stuart MacDonald, which unfortunately I couldn't make. On the other hand could all be a bit too media rather than commerce - we'll see.

Brave New World?

NMK Content2.0

Web 2.0 in London