Day 2 of Mesh. I and everyone else was a bit more tired after yesterday and/or last night.
1) Richard Edelman (Head of the world’s largest independent public relations firm “Edelman”) was the mornings first key note, and gave a eloquent pitch for the role of PR. Comments that stuck with me : “PR is tell the story”;”We (PR) are sitting at the table now” i.e. not an afterthought; Mid level mangers my be the natural bloggers of a company, not the C-level’s; clearly understands that being authentic and transparent is more valuable than control.
2) The laid back Jim Buckmaster talked about Craigslist. The numbers on Craigslist are frankly stunning (a billion page views a month?), but even more so – or because? – there are 25 employees, no sales or marketing; 200 servers; talked about pages per watt; LAMP (P is Perl for them) platform; compressed html pages; no meetings; no business people (that one got hand clapping); just giving people want they want; not interested in maximization the revenues;
3) 15 minuets of Fame: the second group of 3.
Conceptshare: sharing feedback and collaborating on design (any design material) workspace. (Sudbury’s Scott Brooks showed at DemoCamp 9 last Oct, and probably look for a room/coach to rent in Toronto);
SneakerPlay a social network for sneaker enthusiasts; clearly an labour of love;
Wild Apricot – event and Web site management service for non-profits, clubs and associations. Wild Apricot has continued to make improvement and grow since they showed at Demo Camp 8.
4 ) Post Lunch we had a panel about “New Media – Teaching Old Markets New Tricks” with Jen Evans, Maggie Fox and John Jantsch. The “tricks” here were most of the social media type. What makes social media work? “Content, Vibrancy, Fit”; John Jantsch made a comment about using Podcasting Interviews as a method of knocking on doors, even as a cold call method to see potential clients.
5) “Startup Stories – I’ve Fallen and I Can Get Up” Mark Evans stepped up to talk with Scott Brooks, Mary Hodder and Leila Boujnane. Interesting comments about trying to avoid burn out even if youre not look for “life/work” balance. Hiring. (Female engineers underinflate there CV’s, males overinflate).
Unanswered question : what is different, on the business side, of “Web 2.0” from “Web 1.0”?
6) Monetizing the Long Tail – Life Beyond AdSense with Andrew Goodman, Nancy Peterson, Mike Masnick (TechDirt), Christine Herron and Ted Murphy. Miek Masnick gave us interesting background (and he has bloged about the economics of the free ) ; On confusion for me was whether we where talking about the Long Tail (or Big Head) of the media / producer; or the Long Tail / Big Head of the audience. (But that might just be me); Various comments to the effect that their is a need to think more creatively about how to Monetize and even what to Monetize (i.e. for the Music business, is the music the loss leader?)
7) Wrap-up : It was a great time with lots of interesting stuff going up. Everyone was very friendly, approachable and happy to talk, both the panel speakers and the “crowd”. I have more stuff to think about, met some very nice people, and now have more blogs to feed from. The only down sides were not able to see everything, which I hope to balance by reading other peoples blogs; and the high amount of social simulations, which over whelmed my abilities to fake being a extrovert.
Over the next several day I will add links and more micro observations.
Additional tags: Mesh07 and for link-o-rama see more