Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing

ReMIX08 MIX Las Vegas moves to Silicon Valley

MIX08 in Las Vegas was sold out to rave reviews. Over 3,000 designers and developers attended MIX08 in Las Vegas, and many more wanted to attend. Now you have another chance to attend a condensed one day version of MIX in Silicon Valley on April 17th. Here are the details and a link to register. It is FREE!

Thursday April 17, 2008 
8:00am – 5:00pm
Microsoft’s Campus in Silicon Valley
1065 La Avenida Street
Mountain View, CA 94043

For directions please click here.

Whoever said that what happens in Vegas has to stay in Vegas? Join us at ReMIX08 Silicon Valley and continue the conversation between designers, developers and business decision makers exploring the possibilities of the next web. This event will feature a keynote from Scott Guthrie who runs Microsoft's Silverlight and ASP.Net development teams, among others. The event in Vegas SOLD OUT, so get a jumpstart on registration as this event promises to sell out too!

What to expect at ReMIX08 Silicon Valley...

We chose the best sessions from MIX Las Vegas and brought them to Silicon Valley for this event.

• Building richer, more interactive Web experiences using Silverlight 2.0
• Exploring the opportunities for Silverlight on Mobile Devices
• Developing dynamic and interactive applications using Windows Live Platform
• Using cloud-based storage services featuring Microsoft SQL Server Data Services to address a number of business scenarios
• Discussing the sustainability of Web 2.0 applications
• Exploring the future possibilities of social networking sites
• Engaging in the 'open' discussion with industry leaders

I will also be moderating a panel on “The Future of Social Networking and Sustainable Business Models”

Panelists include:
Dalton Caldwell, Founder and CEO, iMeem
Dave McClure, Startup Advisor, 500 Hats
Jeff Clavier, Founder and Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect, Plaxo
Ryan McIntyre, Managing Director, Foundry Group

The day concludes with a big reception starting at 4:00PM. Come on down and join the fun. Register today, we are getting close to maximum capacity.

Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Dave McClure at MIX08

Is Web 2.0 Sustainable? What business models will work? That was the topic of our panel discussion today at MIX08. We had a diverse panel; Robert Scoble (Fast Company), Kevin Rose (founder of Digg), Dave McClure (500 Hats blogger), Ryan McIntyre (Co-founder Excite, VC at Foundry Group), and Kimbal Musk (CEO at Me.dium). 

The panel ran about 90 minutes and covered lots of topics. Some of the highlights for me were;

• Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, said it is all about the community, listening to them and providing a great service. When Jason Calacanis was at Netscape he offered to pay top Digg contributors $1K per month to submit stories at Netscape. Community was stronger than money. Nearly everyone stayed and Digg has continued to grow.
• Pownce, Kevin's new company, uses the Freemium business model. Free to use the basic service, but pay a premium for additional services. My survey of companies using the Freemium model showed an average of 3% of users will pay for premium services. Pownce is seeing the same conversion rate, and building a profitable business.
• Robert Scoble said the transition from blogging to video was easier for him because he has access to interesting people doing cool new things. Scoble sees thousands of channels focused on small topics versus just three channels when we were kids. Robert said search engines make it easy for the audience to find your video when and where they want it.
• Facebook apps can easily attract a million users. But, Dave McClure says they can easily lose them too. The best opportunity for Facebook Apps are focused on vertical markets like autos, movies, restaurants, and travel. The intersection of community and commerce is the sweet spot.
• Ryan McIntyre is a founding partner at Foundry Group, along with Brad Feld and several others. Ryan has made some great investments over the past several years. Postini (fee per user/per month), SlingMedia (hardware, no subscription), and Feedburner (free to users, but ad supported on feeds). Ryan looks for multiple revenue streams with high potential or leverage effects. They will invest from $500K to $10M, all early stage.
• Me.dium is creating a new social browsing experience, and in the process, a whole new advertising model based on real time click stream data and social patterns. The challenge is to create a great user experience while also delivering relevant advertising. If they can find the right balance it will be a huge financial success.
• Can an advertising supported business get to $25M in revenue? Jeremy Liew at Lightspeed Ventures calculated that it would take 833 million page views at $2.50 CPM to generate $25M in revenue. How many web sites generate that kind of traffic? The panel said very very few.
• How does privacy factor into this? Kevin Rose (Digg) said they try to be very open and explicit about how click stream data will be used for advertising, but totally protective of personal information. Robert Scoble said privacy is dead. There is no privacy, and the younger generation doesn't expect any.
• The consensus of the panel was that advertising is a good model if you have huge traffic that can be targeted, but all businesses should have multiple revenue streams. Freemium, subscription, pay for leads, and CPA (cost per action) are the most promising business models.

A video recording of the session will be available on the Mix08 web site. ITWorld wrote a story about this panel, and this blogger covered it well too.

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The Olympics on NBC powered by Silverlight

Microsoft announced  Silverlight V2, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the Web.

NBC will show 2,200 hours of video from the Summer Olympics on five different channels on NBC Olympics.com. The NBC video service will have;

• 2,200 hours of live event video coverage, with more than 20 simultaneous live video streams at peak times
• More than 3,000 hours of on-demand video content including full-event replays, highlights, features, interviews and encore packages.
• An "enhanced playback mode" powered by Silverlight that gives users the choice of a high-quality full screen viewing experience that is as good or better than anything on the Internet today
• Unique metadata overlays    powered by Silverlight that enable fans to have access not only to high quality video, but also to the wealth of related content including results, statistics, comprehensive bios, rules and expert analysis from NBC's Olympic digital media team in Beijing
• Live video alerts so fans can stay connected to the events and teams they care most about
• Social networking features that enable fans to share aspects of their Olympic experience with friends

Duncan Riley at TechCrunch called the NBC Olympics demo "kick-ass". The audience certainly agreed. Lots of applause with ooh's and aahhs.

Silverlight has some big supporters;

Nokia announced they will support Silverlight technology on their S60 phone, as well as the Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

Of course Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS will also support Silverlight.

The NBA (National Basketball Association) had previously announced they will employ Silverlight technology.

Major League Baseball (MLB) announced last year that they will support Silverlight.

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Microsoft MIX08 - IE8 features revealed. Me.dium announces support

Dean Hachamovitch, GM of the IE group, unveiled IE8 for the first time today at MIX08. There are lots of new features, but two really jumped out at me; Activities and WebSlices.

Activities lets a user highlight text on a Web page and click a button to use the highlighted words in various online services, like maps, product searches, weather, or other related web services.

WebSlices allow IE8 beta users to easily subscribe to portions of a page that update dynamically, allowing users to receive updates from that page as content changes.

For example, you could hover over a feed on a Facebook page, then a small WebSlices icon will appear. You click on the icon to subscribe to the feed.

Me.dium, a Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program company, released a special version to support the first public demonstration of IE8 today at MIX08.

“In less than a week developing on IE8, Me.dium has delivered some incredibly sticky and fun ways to stay connected with our users, while emphasizing new functionality delivered in IE8,” commented Kimbal Musk, Me.dium’s CEO. “We are excited and humbled with the trust that Microsoft has shown around IE8 development and look forward to providing even more functionality for IE users
moving forward.”

The new Me.dium features were specifically designed to highlight the new functionality introduced in IE8, including Webslices and Activities.

Me.dium now helps surfers discover and view WebSlices directly from the sidebar. The Me.dium sidebar alerts users to the presence of WebSlices on any page – and even allows users to read each WebSlice, without leaving the Sidebar. In addition, Me.dium makes real-time recommendations for other WebSlices on other relevant web pages and provides direct links to them based on the real time activity of other
Me.dium users.

IE8 will also feature Web compatibility mode, or what is called Standards Mode.

The demos were awesome, as usual. You can see a web cast of the keynotes and demos here.

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