My Experience at the WWW2010 Conference

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the WWW2010 (pronounced Dub-Dub-Dub-Twenty-Ten) Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was exposed to a great deal and would like to share some of my notable experiences including hearing keynote speakers Google Vice President Vint Cerf and Microsoft social media researcher Danah Boyd.

Vint Cerf’s keynote talk on Wednesday about Bandwidth, Clouds and Things, Oh My! really made me think about this 37 year old thing called the internet that keeps us all connected. As Americans we take the network’s connectivity for granted, while the internet has only reached 20% of Asia. Cerf also spoke about the many challenges that we face today through growing access methods. For many people, a mobile device is the first and/or only way to access the web and web-based applications because of the flexibility to stay connected. According to Cerf, we are a community of information producers and information consumers due to mobile devices. He discussed other challenges, like the importance of privacy and security, cloud collaboration and digital compatibility and preserving our “rotten bits.”

Wednesday’s keynote panel featured Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. This group discussed the ways society relies on data. Governments need accurate data to achieve meaningful results. Stand out participant Andrew McLaughlin, who is the deputy U.S. chief technology office in the Executive Office of the U.S. President, called for a digital revolution to increase accessibility and make it faster, higher, further and stronger.

Dana Boyd really knows her stuff. Her entire presentation (including PowerPoint slides) was one of the most on-point and dynamic presentations that I have seen in a long time. It was a pleasure to hear her speak on such high level research topics. She was able to bring in-depth research down to a more relatable, conversational level, even giving a shoutout to LambdaMOO. She discussed the importance of considering context in great lengths. Content with out context just shouldn’t exist. She used several examples of privacy on the web, most notably referencing Facebook’s blatant failure to effectively communicate its privacy policy to its users, as well as Facebook’s nonchalant sharing of its users’ personal data. A well-versed researcher, Boyd offered insight into how and why people are using social networks, pointing out that the strength and the importance of social network connections are more meaningful than the frequency of interaction between users. Her work concentrates on teen use of social media which allows us to track the usage trends as the group gets older.

The FutureWeb forum was held in conjunction with WWW2010. Here are the highlights:

• Americans have fewer close friends as compared to in 1985, largely as a consequence of social networks.
• Mobile is coming into its own and along with web apps. As more and more people access the internet via mobile devices, a greater emphasis will be placed on the mobile marketplace.
• Digital business strategies should focus on customer engagement.
• Web analysts are stewards of data, and as such they should provide context.
• Use analytic data for business decisions, not accounting purposes. These campaign measurements allow you to make course corrections in real time.
• Bloggers are journalists. Some journalists are bloggers, and some bloggers prefer not to be journalists. If you write in a journal, you are a journalist. Now, how many members of the press still write in journals?

Hope you enjoyed a peak into the conference that was WWW2010. I’m sorry if you missed some of our local folks on panels with some Facebook and Google execs. If you would like to see more, read the recaps from some in-the-know people at Elon University  had to say OR search for #www2010 or #fw2010 on Twitter.

Cheers,

G