Topic: Business

After Mark Cuban made a billion or so selling his company to Yahoo! during the height of the Web 1.0 craze, he decided to buy a basketball team. Fortunately, he bought the Mavericks, a team whose name suits his style: brash, out there, and unconventional. Now he's back in the media business with HDNet. Cuban is a stitch onstage, a straight-talking no-punches-pulled Wildman whose irreverent one liners will have you snorting wine out your nose. This conversation with Mark Cuban is moderated by John Heilemann, a special correspondent for Wired and a former staff writer for The New Yorker and The Economist. (IT Conversations audio from the Web 2.0 Conference)

John Doerr is one of the most prolific venture capitalists in the world, and one whose investments have been at the heart of the emerging Internet industry. His most recent -- and most spectacular -- success is Google, which Doerr backed in 1999 despite significant skepticism among other VCs. Asked at the time why he would back a search company with no proven business model, Doerr responded: "With this kind of traffic, we'll figure it out." Seems they did. In conversation with journalist and author John Heilemann, who has been jousting onstage with Doerr for nearly a decade now. A not to be missed discussion. (IT Conversations audio from the Web 2.0 Conference)

"Achieving Enterprise Agility" presented by Shai Agassi, executive board member, SAP. SAP customers process roughly 50% of the world's GDP through its systems annually. Flexibility, interconnectivity, analytics and usability are key capabilities that companies need to succeed in today's competitive marketplace. Mr. Agassi illustrates SAP's strategy for enabling the "in-time enterprise" which can rapidly adapt to market demands and increase the velocity of events throughout business networks. [Audio recording from Accelerating Change 2004 on IT Conversations]

Dr. Moira Gunn interviews environmental entrepreneur Eckart Wintzen, who tells us how companies might change and how the interactions between people might evolve with the new technology. (Tech Nation podcast on IT Conversations)

(The Gillmor Gang on IT Conversations - audio) The Gang looks back on 2004 and forecasts the year to come. Guest Mitch Kertzman gives us his latest focus as a venture capitalist: the software-development process and software as a service and pay-for-use models. The Gillmor Gang looks at the recent flurry of BigCo M&A activity, the commoditization of computing at various levels in the hardware/software stack, tech CEOs as bloggers, collaboration, and software reusability. And yes, there's a year-end look at podcasting.

Is open source ready for prime time? Can you bet your business on it? Open Source software is becoming a major issue in the evaluation of high tech and other companies. The questions about Open Source are moving past "What is it?" to "How do we take it seriously in normal, long-term, business processes?" In this panel discussion, an investment banker, a Red Hat executive, an intellectual property lawyer, and a software developer address the issue. [An audio presentation from IT Conversations.]

(IT Conversations audio from the Web 2.0 Conference) John Batelle and Tim O'Reilly's opening welcome. How big is the Internet today, and how does it compare to the late 1990s? What are the major trends in business innovation, commerce, technical infrastructure, finance? In this opening session your conference hosts walk you through reams of data to give an overview of the state of the Internet industry, circa late 2004.

The re-election of President George W. Bush raises questions about how technology workers will fare in face of the increasing popularity of offshore outsourcing. How do we treat technology workers whose jobs are going overseas? Alex Williams, managing director of events at Corante, talks with his guests about offshore outsourcing and its impacts on technology workers around the world in the face of rapidly evolving digital technologies, the continued corporate search for lower labor costs and the need to protect national interests in science and engineering. (Part 1 of 2)

The Gillmor Gang on IT Conversations: The Gang's guest this week is eBay technology evangelist, Jeff McManus. The company's web-services APIs process one billion requests per month. (That's an average of nearly 2,500 per second!) Hear how 11,000 developers are helping 430,000 people in the U.S. alone make a full- or part-time living via eBay, why the eBay trust system works, and how they're starting to use RSS.

Frans de Waal tries to convince us that we're all apes and that there's little difference between us except that we walk on two legs. At first you think he's joking. Perhaps not. He thinks that if we ignore the importance of power struggles in the study of human nature, we're making a big mistake. In his talk, he draws constant parallels between primate and human behavior and uses politicians as examples, including visuals of where aggression can also be used for reconciliation and how it plays a positive role, not just in politics, but in business and our social lives.

Frans de Waal, a comparative primatologist, is best known for his work on the social intelligence of primates, which he uses to explain human interactions. In this presentation, he considers the sociology of reconciliation, reciprocity and fairness including examples from American presidential politics and campaigns. [Renee Blodgett] Audio from Pop!Tech 2004 by IT Conversations.