The Web 2.0 Expo is our annual West Coast gathering of web technologists. As always there a lot of ways to participate — many of which will not cost you a dime, all of them can be quite valuable to you.
Launchpad: We are giving 5 companies 5 minutes on stage at the Expo Launchpad this year. While the definition of a launch has gotten cloudy in this age of public betas, we’re looking for new companies or products that make us take notice. And while venture capital has been the focus in past years, the reality of the market is that companies must gain the attention of customers. So our judging panel and criteria this year focus more on what is essential and transformational in today’s market than on ability to get funded. The judges this year are Matt Marshall (VentureBeat), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), myself and our sponsor Microsoft Bizspark’s Anand Iyer.
We are extending the Launchpad’s submission deadline to 2/19. Put your hat in the ring!
Developer Discount: We’re offering a special discount to the full conference for developers. If you’re a developer you still need to learn from each other and share your stories. More than ever you’ll need to learn how to communicate with marketing. You’ll want to learn how to write faster code, be secure and, of course, be greener. You’ll want to find out how to get value from data, how to process that data on less servers than before, and how to respect your users by giving them control of their data.
To get 20% off admission to the Web 2.0 Expo use websf09dev at checkout. This offer is open until 2/20.
Ignite: On March 31st we are going to hold our annual Ignite Expo at the DNA Lounge. Each speaker gets 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. We’ll have ~16 speakers. The best Ignite talks are ideas, hacks, lessons, or war stories. Submissions are due by 3/9. If you’re not familiar with Ignite our community site has videos from previous events.
This year’s Web 2.0 Expo is strong. Our keynotes will feature Padmasree Warrior (Cisco), Will Wright (Maxis), and Vic Gundotra (Google). Our Developer, Marketing, Design, Mobile, Ops, Enterprise and Security tracks are packed with great speakers. I hope to see you there.
Photo Courtesy Duncan Davidson
Updated with Anand Iyer’s name.