 O'Reilly's TOC Conference
Posted at 4:23 PM ET
I'm sitting at O'Reilly's "Tools of Change for Publishing" Conference in New York City. Our CEO, Barry Libert, is one of the speakers at the event and he's up in 37 minutes. His presentation will focus on our We Are Smarter Than Me book -- a project that we collaborated on with publishing giant, Pearson Publishing, UPenn Wharton, MIT and over 4,300 bloggers, podcasters and other social media enthusiasts.
This evening, I'm doing a more informal set of demos this evening using the wearesmarter.org site. All in all, the We Are Smarter project is a perfect fit for this event because we've taken the old world of publishing, turned it on its head by allowing the "crowd" to write a book, all the while using one of the newest possible Web 2.0 tools, all the wa wiki, to accomplish this goal.
What's impressive about this event is the fact that nearly every major publisher in the world is in attendance. We're told that the total number of attendees is north of 800 in spite of this being an inaugural event. Guess that means there's a little pent up demand in the publishing industry to learn some new tricks.
More to come shortly...
Updated at 4:58
Tim O'Reilly, the man himself, just walked into the auditorium and sat down in the front row. I know he's just a guy but it's amazing how much influence he's come by over the last few years. Here's a guy that talks regularly with the likes of Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates.
SIDE NOTE 1: The current speaker, James Gray from Ingram Digital Group, just clarified that this is actually the second TOC Conference. The first was aparently in San Jose late last year.
SIDE NOTE 2: I have a funny cross-channel story that I just have to mention. A woman that I follow on Twitter, Barbara Gavin (who actually used to work with Barry and some of my Shared Insights' colleagues,) is here at the conference. I didn't know this earlier but our publisher, Tim Moore from Pearson, also knows Barbara. Earlier today, Tim emailed Barry and me and told us that Barbara was here and that we should meet up with her. Two minutes later, I saw Barbara pop up on Twitter (live from the event) and 30 minutes later we connected face to face.
Next up, Barry. More to come...
Posted at 5:23 PM ET
 Barry takes the stage and kicks things off with some warm up excercises (much needed to combat the mid-afternoon doldrums). Then we roll with one of the best commercials of all times, Monster.com's "When I Grow Up, I Want to File All Day Long..." Now the stats:
- 36% of American adults use Wikipedia
- There are 112 million blogs
- 250 million pieces of tagged social media
- and 35 million Facebookers
Barry tells a few jokes and the crowd laughs. This is a good sign. It never ceases to amaze me how Barry can command the crowd. Next up, case studies:
- We start with Dell's Ideastorm and their concept of using their "crowd" to provide new product innovation
- He talks about eBay and how they've revolutionized the marketplace for peer-to-peer selling
- Barry touches on Prosper.com and how they've changed the face of lending
- Next, Barry brings up companies that are closer to home like lulu.com and 80/20 publishing
- A deep dive into Proctor & Gamble's "Dawn Direct Foam" product and how they innovated by using a "crowd" of 500K housewives to test, market and sell their products
Finally, we cover the "5 Rules for Your We Success":
- Find a Process
- Locate a Crowd e.g. publishers, writers, editors, etc.
- Give them Tools and Support e.g. blogs, forums, wikis
- Accept their Wisdom
- Meausure Everyone's Contribution
Barry wraps with Doritos' most recent Super Bowl ad. Other than some minor technical glitches that we're Barry's fault - a solid "A" performance.
Posted at 5:35 PM ET
Now it really gets good. As Barry is walking off the stage, he walks by Tim O'Reilly. Tim makes a concerted effort to Shake Barry's hand and after exchanging a few brief words, Tim and Barry go back stage. I can't resist getting a photo (below). And even better, I overhear Tim telling Barry what a great job he did. I think he just offered to get him into some other O'Reilly events (maybe Web 2.0).
Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly publishing and Barry Libert, co-CEO of Mzinga an co-author of We Are Smarter
Posted at 5:40 PM ET
Barry is a hard act to follow but next speaker, Sara (no "h" at the end) Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly does a pretty nice job. She kicks things off by telling us that she's a luddite (one of my favorite words of all time) in comparison to some of the other speakers. Her first topic is the fact that nobody reads books anymore - or at least that's what a reader told her recently.
Not so she claims. How they read books has changed but there's a big difference between not reading and reading alternative formats. The Kindle as an example (she recently lost hers) is one of the first e-readers that's gaining traction in the marketplace. It doesn't hurt that it's"
- light
- works wirelessly
- and is backed by Amazon
Sara's next topic is iPublish.com and the fact that it was a failure. Her point is not that it can't be successful but rather that it may have been too early. Now people are catching on. Some have dipped their baby toe by advertising on MySpace. More innovative publishers are creating pages for characters from certain books on MySpace and Facebook. Others have put up portions of books online and then asked their "crowds" for what should happen next (sounds a lot like the books I used to read when I was younger where you chose different paths as you went along and as a result the story changed.)
Next topic is the fact that publishers are a snobby group and don't consider some of these "alternative" approaches as more fluff than substance. Sara doesn't agree with that sentiment.
What I like most about Sara's presentation is that she just stands at the podium and talks. This approach doesn't work for a lot of presenters but given her pedigree and standing in the publishing industry (Publishers Weekly is the "influencer of the influencers" in the publishing space.) In fact, Judith Rosen of PW wrote one of the first articles about our We Are Smarter project over a year ago, an article that certainly helped us get the project launched on the right foot.
SIDE NOTE: I've officially had two cups of coffee, three cups of water, a yogurt and two small cookies to eat today. I'm hanging in there but I am ready for something substansial. Hopefully the 6:00 cocktail hour will have some good apps.
Mon, Feb 11 2008 |
