Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Mark Pesce – Closing keynote: This, that, and the other thing

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 4.05pm.

Mark Pesce PortraitThis is what it feels like to be hyperconnected: a new kind of community – pervasive, continuous, yet strangely tense and tenuous, like a balloon inflated to the point of bursting. The limits of the neocortex meeting the amplifier of the Human Network. That creates unique opportunities: we can come together at a word, self-organize around or against a blog post, a live-streamed video, an automated reply from a faceless, rent-seeking organization. Nothing can stop us. We can’t even stop ourselves. But what do we want? And the other thing? You’ll need to be at Web Directions South, for the closing keynote, if you want to find out.

Laurel Papworth – The business of being social

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 10.45am.

Laurel Paprworth PortraitIt’s not true that there are no proven monetisation models for online communities; in fact, there are distinct revenue streams that have been successful over many years. This session looks at the soft returns on investment for engaging with user generated content, communication and collaboration with the consumer and then moves into how social networks earn money for their investors and developers.
The aim of this session is to limit the slapping of banner ads on every niche community online – you might be surprised to learn that the least profitable revenue model is… Advertising! Come, spend an hour on the Dark Side, and find out which social networks are making money, how much and by what means and learn about the business models in this growth industry.

Sebastian Chan – Social media and Government 2.0

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Sebastian Chan PortraitMore than ever before there is an enormous amount of publicly held data about our community, our culture, and citizens. How can government respond to the opportunities of Web 2.0? How can government websites and databases become more citizen-centric, and more responsive by leveraging social media? In 2006 the Powerhouse Musuem, a NSW State Government institiution, opened its core information asset – its collection and research database – to public tagging, and dynamic user-driven recommendations. In the same year the Museum launched a range of public-facing blogs, inviting comment from visitors and audiences. Sebastian Chan will discuss why the museum has made these very successful forays into social media, and how a small in-house web development unit was able to push through and launch a project which is counted among Australia’s top web 2.0 applications. If you work in a large organisation and have dreams of social media, do not miss this session.

Rashmi Sinha – The perils of popularity

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Rashmi Sinha PortraitCan web-based social systems with their wide reach, user-generated and user-filtered content harness the wisdom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent experiments reveal how popularity based web social systems can throw up fickle, random trends that are essentially unreplicable, and only tangentially related to quality. However, popularity as a way to filter information continues to rise in popularity – replacing hierarchical menus, overtaking tags, and even used in lieu of relevance. Rashmi will link decades of psychology research on group decision making and social influence to what is happening on the web today. She will discuss different models of popularity based filtering such as Digg and YouTube. What are ways to avoid the Watts dilemma – including Google’s model of sociality, tag-based social systems, and object-based social networks. She will present some principles for the design of web social systems and how there were used in the design of SlideShare and discuss how SlideShare as an evolving social system handles popularity.

Laurel Papworth – The business of online communities

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 29 2006.

Laurel Papworth Portrait

It seems that everyone is talking about user generated content and online communities these days. But how will citizen journalism, user-generated content, the Blogosphere, tagging, ranking, and Wiki knowledge reshape branding and your business? How do you manage and scale this community and then hand control to your users (and how do you explain to the boss what you’ve just done?). Gain an understanding that dialogue is the new content and learn how to maximise the benefits (and minimise the pitfalls) of creating online communities in this presentation.

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Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development

Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney