Sarah Milstein
Happily between gigs right now, Sarah Milstein was until recently UBM TechWeb's GM & Co-chair for Web 2.0 Expo. She's also co-author, with Tim O'Reilly, of The Twitter Book and a frequent speaker on social media for business. Previously, she was on the senior editorial staff at O'Reilly Media, where she founded Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) and led development of the Missing Manuals. Before joining O'Reilly in 2003, Sarah was a freelance writer and editor, and a regular contributor to The New York Times. She was also the CSA program founder for Just Food, a local-food-and-farms non-profit, and co-founder of Two Tomatoes Records, a label that distributes and promotes the work of children's musician Laurie Berkner. She holds a B.A. from Rutgers University and an M.B.A. from U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Bonus fact: she was the 21st user of Twitter.
Announcing Web2Open 2008
Great news: On April 23 and 24, Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco will host Web2Open, an unconference that anyone can participate in. To promote connections among attendees and complement the Expo sessions, this year's Open emphasizes discussion sessions over presentations. That means your participation is really key, whether you share your successes, your challenges or your questions. In addition…
Web2Summit: Could Google Hit a $1T Market Cap?
This afternoon's panel of four Google Alumni ended with an audience question: Was it insane to consider that Google might reach a $1 trillion market cap? (It's now at about $150 $200 billion.) Or might that actually happen? I thought, "Ridiculous!" Several of the panelists, however, had a different take. While none said it was imminent or even likely, their…
Web2Summit: Make Life More Like Games
Game designer Jane McGonigal's session this morning had a thought-provoking twist: instead of thinking about how to make virtual reality more like real life, think about making real life more like games. Why? Because games, networked games specifically, work better than real life. McGonigal gave three reasons: 1) Games come with better instructions; you have a clear goal, and…
Web2Summit: The Future of Printing
Yesterday, we talked about HP’s new Web services for printing. Today, Vyomesh Joshi, the company’s Executive Vice President for Imaging and Printing, gave a tantalizing follow-up with his predictions for the future of printing. Photo printing, he said, provides a lesson: when you get the cost and quality of home printing on par with commercial printing, and you bring the…
Web2Summit: The New Web, Gaining Quietly
Google’s Jeff Huber gave a 10-minute talk today on widgets—apparently referred to as “gadgets” in Mountain View. His presentation, following Niall Kennedy’s on the same theme, wasn’t flashy, and even if you were in the room, you might have missed the fact that widgets represent a potentially game-changing trend. Because widgets are most often embedded seamlessly on Websites, you might…
Web2Summit: eBay Services We'd Like to See
Tim’s earlier post covered a lot of the highlights from his on- and off-stage conversations with eBay CEO Meg Whitman. But he didn’t touch on one of the most interesting themes of their interview: whether eBay/PayPal’s powerful knowledge about who you are—which they use to prevent fraud—could also be the basis for authenticating social network relationships. Over and over, Summit…
Web2Summit: Google Health–Groundwork Needed?
This afternoon, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President for Search Products & User Experience, gave a brief, unsubstantial presentation on health information, which—no surprise—Google wants to help you find. They’re also interested in helping you store and access your own health records. While giving people more control over their own data is an important idea, not to mention a trend we…
Web2Summit: Booking Charter Flights from Your Browser
Just when you thought you’d seen every last marketplace people could cook up to exploit the Web, along comes Virgin Charter. It doesn’t launch until February, but CEO Scott Duffy gave a brief, intriguing presentation this morning. Here’s the bullet point that made me take notice: while commercial aviation involves easy booking and lousy flight experiences, private aviation is just…
Web2Summit: Better Printing from the Web (Way Better)
Surprising factoid of the morning: Web pages comprise 48% of printouts on home printers; word processing documents run a distant second–the reverse of just a few years ago. HP shared this revelation during an unusually good sponsored session at the Summit today. (Bonus info: HP derives usage stats from a panel of Internet-connected printers that it mines for output data…
Reducing Email Volume
It's unfashionable to admit these days, but 14 years after getting my first account, I still like email. Of course, the volume is crushing, and so lately, I've been experimenting with email reduction. I'm getting good results with two key concepts that hardly anyone talks about and that focus on your sending habits rather than your inbox management. First, send…