We're Coming to NYC! Web 2.0 Expo CFP is Open

We started the Web 2.0 Expo to meet the demand that we saw in our conferences. The inaugural Web 2.0 Expo in 2007 was a huge success (and one that we are hoping to repeat in late April). It's a conference for people building websites, marketing them, and making money from them. It's also a conference with West Coast roots and as we have taken the conference around the world (Berlin and Tokyo) it's been modified for the region.

This September we are bringing the conference to New York. It will be just as big and just as long (September 16-19th at Javits Center). We are working with our passionate program committee: Clay Shirky, Dennis Crowley, Anil Dash (Six Apart), Oliver Hurst-Hiller (DonorsChoose), Michael Galpert (Aviary), Tristan Louis (tnl.net), Christopher Fahey (Behavior Design), Rick Webb, (Barbarian Group), Liza Daly (Interactive Factory), Karin Klein (Softbank Capital), Kenyatta Cheese (Rocketboom), Stephen Wellman (TechWeb), and Stefanie Syman (Lime.com). With their help we have come up with a new set of tracks: Landscape & Strategy, Media & Marketing, Design & UX, Tools & Technology, 2.0 at Work (how new technologies are affecting the workplace), Finance (inspired in part by our Money: Tech conference), and Policy & Compliance.

If you have something to say in these areas then submit a talk to our Call For Participation. The CFP is open until March 31st. If you intend to submit a talk you should clearly explain what the attendees will gain from your session and how they can use it when they go back to work. The full track descriptions are after the jump.

Landscape & Strategy
This track covers the fundamentals of Web 2.0 and explores how they drive strategy, business models, and revenue. We’ll look at how Web 2.0 is affecting finance, advertising, media, fashion, and real estate, and explain how the building blocks of Web 2.0—user-generated content, rich internet applications, collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, software as a service, lightweight development models, and mashups—are changing the landscape of media, software, and the economy. See how companies are using Web 2.0 to discover new business opportunities, enter new markets, develop new products, and make real money.

Media & Marketing
Marketing and advertising are in a process of profound evolutionary change, and the agencies, brands, and individuals who can harness the power of 2.0 media and marketing will emerge as the leaders. We’re still chasing the state of the art in SEO and SEM (search engine marketing and search engine optimization), and now we need to understand SMO (social media optimization). Online marketing promises greater accountability and measurability, but metrics get complicated by syndication, widget marketing, audience fragmentation, and a dozen other factors. Conversational marketing asks us to bring transparency, engagement, and a human voice to our campaigns, but what media enable this and how does that work in the context of large, established brands? Do we have to give up control to play in the 2.0 world? And do the trends of next generation of media and marketing scale? We’ll look at best practices, real world examples, and horror stories.

Design & UX
It’s often said that in Web 2.0, the design IS the product. But what we mean by the practice of design is evolving, and the skill sets of web designers have evolved with them. This track looks at the technical concepts, process innovations, design patterns, and frameworks that inform today’s web applications, from the perspective of user experience and interaction design.

Tools & Technology
The Web has shown us a new way of building and releasing software. Lightweight frameworks with support for standards and interactivity are the chosen weapons of the day. Ajax and Flash provide the interactivity. The frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, Django, .NET, and Dojo, ease development. Web services (and users) provide (and share) the data. This track is for experienced programmers looking to improve their understanding of the technical ecosystem—what’s baked now and what’s lurking below the radar.

2.0 at Work
This track looks not at building and leveraging Web 2.0 applications and businesses, but at using Web 2.0 in your company to drive communication, collaboration, productivity and cost savings. Lightweight hosted applications and software as a service can give you a significant operating advantage. Blogs and wikis aren’t just fun consumer toys, but can instead be used internally to keep your teams in sync and your projects on time. Come learn how real companies are using real products and services to do business quicker, cheaper, and more effectively.

Finance
Payment technology and the financial space have been revolutionized by Web 2.0. This track looks at the forces driving these changes and web 2.0 trends as they affect finance. We’ll discuss the impact of the growth of micro-payment systems, UGC and finance, new forms of currency (including virtual currencies), the promises and pitfalls of wikis, blogs, and other participatory technologies and communities, and the regulatory issues associated with Web 2.0 in financial institutions.

Policy & Compliance
Regulatory compliance and security concerns are two of the biggest obstacles to employing and deploying Web 2.0. But as the models mature and use cases are tested, this story is developing, and the challenges are worth tackling. This track looks at the emerging landscape of tools, services and innovative practices that will unlock the benefits without exposing the vulnerabilities.