Tim O'Reilly speaks at Web 2.0 Expo 2009
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--The floor of the exposition hall at this year's Web 2.0 Expo has been a little bit lethargic, to say the least. "It's a lot emptier than last year," said one representative from a social gaming company that had set up a booth. "I think the 'Web 2.0' thing has become a bit of a stigma."
Indeed, these days the term goes hand-in-hand with broken business models and overblown expectations, as much as it does with innovation. With the economy in shambles, attendance at the semiannual conference is down. The show floor is sparser and the speaker lineup less impressive than in years past, and attendees have had to hunt a little harder to find parties after hours.
But conference czar Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media (which co-organized the conference along with TechWeb), said that "Web 2.0" is more relevant than ever.
"Web 2.0 was never intended to be a version number," O'Reilly said in his keynote address on Wednesday afternoon. "It was really a reflection of what happened after the dot-com bust."
Now, he said, the Web is maturing and getting smarter. "The baby that we built with technology is growing up and starting to go to work," he said, mentioning examples like energy metering aggregator AMEE, the Google search application that predicted where the flu would hit next, and iPhone apps that derive search results from voice recognition.
At last spring's Web 2.0 Expo, the market crash was still months off, but the early signs were starting to creep in: venture funding was harder to come by, company launches were growing less frequent, and it was starting to become evident that some of the most-buzzed names in Silicon Valley hadn't produced solid business models yet. Then, O'Reilly's address exhorted the audience to push beyond the Web's trendiest hype machines and start thinking about how to change the world. But now that the rest of the world is searching for answers, he explained, it's time to put that thought to work.
"We thought because of the downturn, because all of us are faced with the idea that maybe those ideas of perpetual increase were going to be a problem, that we might have to do more with less," O'Reilly said. "Maybe there's actually power in less, and that's one of the lessons of the Web...In technology we have this wonderful power of less where we get more for the same amount, and I think we need to start thinking about how we apply Moore's Law to the world's problems."
This year, the power of technological innovation to reach far beyond the Web has already been justified in the election of Barack Obama, which used consumer-grade Web technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as powerful communication and organization tools: "The way that he used technology to transform politics, the way that he harnessed his audience to do something that was profoundly world-shaping," O'Reilly said on Wednesday. "History's on a different course because of somebody understanding how to apply technology more effectively in a new realm."
The most important part, he concluded, is that it's crucial to keep up that Silicon Valley attitude of positive change for the greater good as it brings its business principles to the rest of the world. Getting too self-serving was what ultimately caused the market collapse this fall, he said. The tech industry has its egos, too, and that's what got us all into trouble the last time around.
"There were a whole lot of people (in the finance industry) who said, 'Wow, I can get a lot for myself here, and the financial system is really a tale of how collective intelligence can go awry. Because, of course, our financial system is also networked collective intelligence and yet it was somehow hijacked by the spammers, the Ponzi schemers, and the people who thought, 'I want to get something for me.'"
"We know what happened," O'Reilly said, showing a slide of the now-famous Twitter outage graphic of a flock of birds attempting to lift a whale above water. "That's the fail whale."
SAN FRANCISCO--The wild days of Web 2.0 may have thrown their last sheep. Here's how you can tell that things have gotten serious: at O'Reilly Media and Techweb's Web 2.0 Summit this week, people actually showed up for breakfast.
That's because they probably weren't out as late. The party scene at tech conferences tends to be a bacchanalia--take South by Southwest Interactive, with enough events to make any little black book burst at the seams, or TechCrunch50 a few months ago, where rumor has it that a high-profile dot-commer got so drunk at an afterparty that conference organizers politely asked him to delete some intoxicated Twitter posts.
The buttoned-up Web 2.0 Summit had only one legitimate blowout: the launch party for News Corp.'s MySpace Music. The venue was the city's stately Old Mint, a landmarked Greek Revival building dating back to the 1870s that, true to its name, used to house the manufacturing of money--a harsh irony in these post-boom days.
To be sure, the annual Web 2.0 Summit is intended to be a more highbrow affair in comparison to its more sprawling Web 2.0 Expo sibling. Under the glass chandeliers and marble pillars of the downtown Palace Hotel, an ornate vestige of a bygone San Francisco, the attitude was all business. But with the economy in the tank, and dot-com dreams getting shattered by the day with each layoff announcement, it was probably a little bit more businesslike than usual.
At a Web 2.0 Summit start-up mock-pitch event called Launchpad, organizer John Battelle says the companies onstage would not be fly-by-night start-ups, but rather emerging companies with solid business models and the potential to have a big social impact.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)With a "Web meets world" theme, the speakers weren't trendy dot-com entrepreneurs, but rather industry leaders like former Vice President Al Gore and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, as well as celebrities such as cyclist Lance Armstrong and The Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan. For a start-up mock-pitch event called "Launchpad," conference organizer John Battelle reminded the audience that the companies onstage would not be fly-by-night start-ups, but rather emerging companies with solid business models and the potential to have a big social impact.
But this sort of discussion can get ahead of itself. A conference about changing the world, though its intentions may be wholly pragmatic, can devolve into starry-eyed futurism when the present needs so much attention. This was something that began to rear its head when venture capital veteran John Doerr called the recession "the greatest economic opportunity of our lifetimes" and when Intel CEO Paul Otellini, despite having just said some somber words about the recession and having urged solidarity as we "get through this thing," paraded out a shiny new "smart camera" prototype that elicited plenty of oohs and ahhs upon demonstrating that it could translate Chinese into English.
"I like coming here," Otellini said to the audience. "It's a respite from, sort of, watching the stock market crash every day, and think about what the future is going to hold from us."
He's right; talking about the future, and listening to industry luminaries do so, is important. On the other hand, it can happen at the expense of the present. Trendy "health 2.0" companies are exciting, but the more pressing problem in the United States is that millions of Americans can't afford health care coverage, let alone a 23andMe spit test.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hails Barack Obama's campaign mastery of social media.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)In a panel about how the Web is changing politics, digerati icon Arianna Huffington and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom hailed Barack Obama's campaign's mastery of social media and acknowledged that the new president-elect needs to keep using these powerful tools when he inherits a national mess in January. They were less descriptive, though, regarding how.
Elon Musk, the PayPal co-founder now at the helm of troubled electric-car start-up Tesla Motors, took the stage on Friday afternoon and spoke candidly about his company's issues. After the economic meltdown, Tesla nixed a plan to raise about $100 million because it would've involved "very difficult terms" with investors. (The company raised $40 million instead.) He used a military analogy to describe the carmaker's subsequent layoffs: "(It's the) difference between sort of special forces and regular Army, and if you're going to get through a really tough environment...you need to have a really high level of dedication and talent."
But when Battelle, interviewing Musk onstage, asked if the beleaguered Tesla would actually make money, the serial investor replied, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely!" and said he still believes in Tesla's strategy: release a six-figure sports car, the Roadster, first, then eventually move on to more affordable electric vehicles. "It's important to emphasize that the point of Tesla, the reason I funded it and put so much time into it, is to get to mass-market electric cars," Musk said. "To get there, you need to start with something."
The digital futurism didn't make its way to MySpace's party on Thursday night, with performances by Lionel Richie and paparazzi staple DJ AM. It was a big success: the Old Mint was packed to its gilded walls with Valley notables from VC legend Ron Conway to actor-turned-entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher. But the atmosphere was tinged with an acknowledgment that the Web 2.0 Summit and the MySpace afterparty, dual doses of Old San Francisco and dot-com glory, could be the last such revelry for quite some time.
Layoffs were just the tip of the iceberg. In the tech industry's meet-and-greet culture, the conference and event circuit is the next to get hit hard by the economic slowdown, partygoers predicted. O'Reilly's own Web 2.0 Expo in Tokyo had already been canceled earlier this fall, with an employee citing lack of sponsor interest. John Battelle announced to the audience that next year's Web 2.0 Summit would be held not at the Palace but at a less glitzy Westin hotel down the street.
Some small conferences, particularly those held outside the United States that rely on Valley types to jet across an ocean or two for attendance, were also gossiped about as big question marks. Individuals were remarkably candid about their companies' own chances: "I give myself four, six months," one entrepreneur told me.
Maybe, once the constant talk of saving the world had subsided, the Internet's thinkers were finally willing to focus on what's happening now. Or maybe they're just more honest after a few drinks.
A correction was made at 2:11 p.m. PT: O'Reilly Media co-produces the Web 2.0 Summit with Techweb.
NEW YORK--Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, is known as a futurist, but his keynote address on Thursday morning at the Web 2.0 Expo was heavy on the realism in the wake of sobering news from Wall Street.
Web 2.0 evangelist Tim O'Reilly addresses the crowd at the last Web 2.0 Expo, in April.
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News)"(These are) pretty depressing times in a lot of ways," O'Reilly said in an address that first had looked like it would simply be a starry-eyed discussion of enterprise opportunities for Web 2.0. "And you have to conclude, if you look at the focus of a lot of what you call 'Web 2.0,' the relentless focus on advertising-based consumer models, lightweight applications, we may be living in somewhat of a bubble, and I'm not talking about an investment bubble. (It's) a reality bubble."
Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. "And what are the best and the brightest working on?" O'Reilly asked, displaying a slide of the popular Facebook application SuperPoke, which invites you to, among other things, "throw sheep" at your friends.
"Do you see a problem here?" he posed, showing another slide of the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint. "You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?"
He brought up examples like Google.org, the Omidyar Network, and even small companies that have decided to take on social and political challenges rather than the trendy social-network craze of the week. "Business is the engine of innovation," O'Reilly said. "I really believe in markets, and I believe in the power we all have to build great companies that change things."
As for the financial-services industry, O'Reilly implied that in a big sense, firms had it coming. "If you look at what went wrong on Wall Street, this is an industry that, in its heart, parades a lot of value," he said. "Liquidity in markets is critical. But if you look at the last decade...these Wall Street firms captured a lot more value than they were creating."
There's an inherent irony in what O'Reilly said, given the fact that massive conferences like the Web 2.0 Expo are packed with the trendspeak and hype that birthed SuperPoke-like entertainment, and certainly aren't helping the environment by distributing tons of press kits and swag--not to mention flying in hundreds of attendees in a massive spurt of carbon emissions.
To be fair, O'Reilly Media has been printing fewer event programs and encouraging conference goers to recycle, and it has used carpeting made of post-consumer material.
There is clearly a lot that needs to change, and perhaps the tech industry trend of large-scale conferences is part of it. We'll see whether Silicon Valley's leaders and moguls are willing to do what they think is right, rather than what they think is profitable.
But O'Reilly encouraged the audience to start small, and he offered them their first challenge: register to vote.
- prev
- 1
- next
