Steve Ballmer is well known for stealing the show - and he did.

Steve was probably the one I was looking most forward to when visiting Web2.0 Summit. Don’t really know why … It’s not because of his visionary thinking (or lack of?). Not because I particularly admire the company he represents (not that I don’t!). Maybe it’s just because he’s among the top5 most powerful and charismatic business leaders out there … it might just be as simple as that.

Ahyhoo. Steve didn’t bring that much new stuff to the table - still he overshadowed everyone else:

MS still want be big in Mobile OS and Advertsing. They want to aggressively expand their position in the Enterprise Software business and keep their leader position within Office Tools. He’s very happy with his partnership with Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

He got very exited when talking how MS one day will rise above the big boys and slam duck in the advertising industry … more or less his exact words.
Imagine this: Sitting front rove with Steve shouting like a lunatic to the crowds that one day this new kid (Live Search) will SLAAAAAAAAAAAM DUUUUUUNK!!! (explosively red in the face!). That was pretty cool.

The most interesting part was probably Steve talking about how aggressively MS will be in acquiring start-up companies in the years to come - especially within the advertising industry. It seemed like he was pretty serious about this: “If you have a company to sell me [between $50m and $500m] my email is steveb@microsoft.com”. That’s nice to know …

———

Yo Steve,

I’m the founder of a beautiful marketing software company called TraceWorks.

[……………………………………………]

Stay cool.

See you, Morten E. Wulff
Chief Visionary, TraceWorks

———

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Timing is everything.
About 10 hours after my post on “John Ziitrain and broken platforms” e.g. iTunes and the iPhone from Apple this press release is delivered to my inbox:

WWDC 2007, SAN FRANCISCO—June 11, 2007—Apple® today announced that its revolutionary iPhone™ will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards when it begins shipping on June 29. Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.

“Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great these applications look and work on iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable.”

Web 2.0-based applications are being embraced by leading developers because they are far more interactive and responsive than traditional web applications, and can be easily distributed over the Internet and painlessly updated by simply changing the code on the developers’ own servers. The modern web standards also provide secure data access and transactions, like those used with Amazon.com or online banking.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.

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This was a little strange: People paying like DKK20.000 to come to this conference were acting like teenagers at a pussycat dolls concert pushing to get front row seats to this conversation between John Batelle and Mark Zuckerberg. I got a great center spot on the fourth row :). Yes I’m an idiot - I know.

Was it interesting then? Sure. It’s always funny to see history repeating itself like this. I mean this youngster is a 99,9% copy of Bill Gates 25 years back! Besides that Mark is not a big speaker. Not a charismatic superstar … but he’s professional like hell! If it was me today (or at 24) I would be trying so HARD to impress. Not this young guy. Instead he chose to wear beach sandals and generally a very relaxed attitude.

To all you Facebook developers out there according to Mark a lot of new stuff will be added to the “Platform” soon - together with an advertising platform competing with Google/Yahoo/MSN. The last part he didn’t say explicitly, but he hinted that something big - advertising-wise - will happen in 3 months from now. That must be it!?

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Wow! This guy was interesting … and funny (and he’s a Law Professor!).

Jonathan Zittrain is a Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, at Oxford Internet Institute.

I hope everybody get’s a chance to listen to his presentation on the Internet. His core argument is that web2.0 (the web as a platform) is in many ways “sterile”, meaning NOT OPEN, and very much legally regulated by the platform providers (e.g. Facebook) … much much more than other existing/previous platforms like e.g.”PCs” and “The Internet”.

He also attacked Apple for a being sterile and closed circuit - which is completely true (Iphone + Itunes). I really hate them for that. They’re cool - but broken.

If Martin is listening: This guy is interesting! You know him?

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Sitting in my hotel room (1am) and watching a great tv-show: 10 lesbians and 10 heterosexual men fighting over a bi-sexual woman. Simply can’t wait to see who wins. Crazy people.

Anyhoo. Need to sleep. Looking forward to the Web2.0 Summit starting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 8am.

By the way, Chicago was great. The DMA07 Conference was only “average”.

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The list today is shorter since I overslept a little. I chose not to rush: Picked up the newspaper outside the door of my hotel room - which seems to be complimentary at Sanderson. Read it. Checked my email. Took a shower using both shampoo as well as conditioner (Silvia would proud!). Got dressed. Packed my suitcase … and away I was (well, after a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a sandwich at Pret).

It’s important not to stress - right?

Speakers I listened to Day no. 2 at FOWA:

Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design. I was looking forward to this. I’ve been following the work of Stamen Design for quite some time now. The work they do is simply awesome taking data visualization to the very next level. Stamen is a huge inspiration to me and the rest of the R&D team at TraceWorks. Eric’s presentation was the best I saw at FOWA.

Eric speaks extremely fast, he’s very articulate making no mistakes - showing example after example of beautiful data visualizations. It was very cool. Great presentation. The only time he was a little of “balance” was when someone from the audience asked something sounding like this: “Do you do any visualization for blind people?”. Eric was silent while considering he’s response for about 30 seconds. Then answered “no”.

Some examples of Stamen’s visualizations could be digg labs, cabspotting.org, and twitter blocks.

—-

Joe Walker of DWR. I didn’t get much of it. Pretty technical stuff. I think “DRW” and “Comet” were the keywords in his presentation :-).

—-

Tom Coates of Yahoo! (Brickhouse). Great stuff. Tom’s presentation was about Fire Eagle - a yet to be alfa-launched service from Yahoo:

“Fire Eagle is a new way to share your location with friends or with other websites and services! It’s built on open APIs so that developers can build all kinds of applications that respond to your location…”

Very inspiring since I’m involved in a few different projects in which location sharing could be part of the value proposition … Dan, are you listening? Check it out!

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Speakers I listened to Day no. 1 at FOWA:

Robert Kalin, the founder of Etsy.com. His presentation was sadly a near-catastrophe - unfortunately. He’s a very charming and witty guy and he has some abstract and very interesting ideas - but in today’s presentation he didn’t really pull ‘em off. I’m pretty sure he could do so if he hadn’t been as unlucky (lot’s of technical problems) and perhaps he could have prepared a little better? Skipping the chewing gum while presenting would have helped - but what the hell … Robert and Etsy.com has some amazing ideas on UI and IA e.g. browse by color.

Greate quote though: “Innovation can capture market share”. That’s great. It’s true. And I simply love it.

——

Daniel Waterhouse of big VC firm 3i. Not much new under the sun. Basic stuff about the process of luring Venture Capitalists in the net. I’ve been there and I’ve done that (twice), so it wasn’t that interesting for me I guess - besides from some case studies telling the story of insanely huge investment in the $300m range.

——

Ted Rheingold of Dogster. Impossible for me to relate to this product: a kitsch-like dog lovers community. I did like Ted though - he did a great job. Here’s a few quotes that pretty much sums up his style and core message:

“Fuck-up fast” = making mistakes is OK - but undo them fast.
“Make you business a business” = know exactly how to make $$$.
“I used the wisdom of my-crowds” = learn from family and friends.

——

John Resig of the Mozilla Corporation. Since I’m not a developer I didn’t understand half of what he was talking about. But it’s always enjoyable to listen to a well-prepared, truly passionate, and very intelligent young guy presenting. Not surprisingly he’s working for the Mozilla Corp. Guess, Martin, our genius Front-End Developer at TraceWorks would have enjoyed this guy.

——

Kevin Rose, founder and chief architect at Digg / Pownce / Revision3. Sympathetic and relaxed guy who’s doing what he does best; knitting together some fun, simple and useful web applications - often with some sort of inherited social twist. One can only respect him. His presentation though was unfortunately not all that interesting: going through some rather basic things: Hire a DBA to ensure scalability, features that work for us, watch you burn rate, and stuff like that. The best part was the anecdotes from the actual start-up days.

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I just had the pleasure of a 3 hour long chat with Martin von Haller Groenbaek who’s a partner at Copenhagen-based Bender von Haller Dragsted - a leading Scandinavian IT-law boutique. Martin specializes in legal issues related to emerging technology and business models based on openness. Need advice on e.g. issues like Creative Commons? Give the man a call.

It certainly was a great chance for me to dig a little deeper into the whole aspect of open business models as well as open source technology - something that seems to play an increasingly important role in many of my companies and in some of the projects currently in the pipeline.

Why is openness important to an ordinary small tech start-up? What exactly does “openness” mean?

I still don’t have all the answers clearly defined and I guess that’s partly why I’m talking to Martin, reading Chesbrough’s Open Business Models, booked a meeting up with the successful Danish open source entrepreneur Niels Hartvig, following SaaS vendor sugarCRM so closely, asking silly questions on Linkedin, flicking through the pages of Wikinomics, and going to listen to Jimmy Wales in Chicago a few weeks from now.

Hopefully it all helps me understand the concept of openness a lot better… Because right now I’m a little lost.

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