Topic: The Internet and the World Wide Web
David Messenger, EVP at American Express, discusses the drivers, or central forces, behind the changing technological world. He names four that he considers to be the most important, as follows: cell phones, rapid wireless data speeds, social networks, and new technology in general, both hardware and software. Presenting these changes with a business perspective, Messenger also discusses changes such as digital cash, security, and unlimited communication.
Visual data is far easier to understand and analyze than the same information in written format. Using a variety of examples that range from maps and charts to the effects of gravity on the Earth and comparisons of carbon dioxide output by country, David Holoboff gives a quick presentation about the benefits of visual data in all sectors of modern and future life.
Not all data is useful, and not all presentations of even the useful data are good. John Rauser shows how to best utilize monitoring software to personalize the data gathered about customers, to highlight problems in a website, and to effectively troubleshoot. Using real world examples of unsatisfying data presentations to demonstrate the usefulness of relevant data collection, he talks about time, latency, and how to interpret your data.
Rachel Chalmers of The 451 Group winds back the tape to present a folk history of internet infrastructure, beginning with the first inkling of Java, and eventually leading to a re-negotiation of the developer/operations contract. Seeing where the Internet came from helps show where it's going and what the next 'zero-to-a-billion-dollar' company will come from.
Andreessen Horowitz's Ben Horowitz discusses trends and possible future investments, beginning with an overview of past paradigm shifts in the world of technology. Although Horowitz cautions that the possibilities in the future are hard to guess beyond broad categories and general trends in the market and computer usage, he gives several examples of profound shifts in technologies, businesses, and overall trends.
Dr. Moira Gunn learns about opportunities for non-profits from author and Senior Vice President for Edelman Digital, Brian Reich from his new book, Shift and Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues in a Connected Society.
Imagine improving your main coding product then being threatened with a lawsuit for hinting you may publish it. This by the company partnering on it with you. This happened to Brian Aker when he mentioned bringing MySQL improvements to O'Reilly's OSCON a few years ago. Some within Sun Microsystems, which bought MySQL, were offended but later that day, Aker's upgrades were publicly praised by Sun Micro senior brass. Aker talks past, present, and future importance of Drizzle and open source, to the database environs commonly called the cloud.
Vik Chaudhary, VP of Product Management & Corporate Development at Keynote Systems, Inc., talks about the increasing popularity of apps on a variety of smartphones and the corresponding importance of testing those apps for optimal efficiency. Presenting both the challenges and goals of testing mobile apps, as well as demonstrating remote testing of apps, Chaudhary emphasizes testing and data collection as key to mobile app creation.
During the dot com bubble of the 1990s European bankers went to telecom company CEOs and said you can be as sexy as the American dot coms. This is the basis of what went wrong for the telecom industry according to James Enck. He observes that this panel discussion has a wide range of speakers and backgrounds but there are commonalities he guides the panel to discuss with the 2008 financial meltdown in hindsight.
Dr. Moira Gunn gets a fresh perspective on the how how digital technology is changing the nature of human self-expression from Jeff Jarvis, author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live.
