At Chirp, Twitter’s Trends Emerge

By James Zipadelli

The best football players go to the Super Bowl. The best celebrities, journalists and politicians come to the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Up until this year, the best developers did not have a venue to come together. Chirp, Twitter’s first ever conference in San Francisco, was held last month.  Where else can you find Twitter’s founders, like-minded developers, and a contest that kept some of those developers up for 30 hours?

For a first-person account of Chirp, freelance developer Ed Borasky’s posts are very helpful. Representatives from Twitter did not respond to repeated emails or Tweets for comment.

In that two-day conference, Twitter discussed its financial future and new apps that would be helpful to users, according to developers present at the conference. One of the new apps is called @anywhere, which went live April 14. For an overview, click here.

“@anywhere is essentially a re-packaging of existing Twitter API services in a more turnkey solution that can be easily be embedded into existing websites without lots of custom coding,” says Eric Chang, founder of the app TweetSwell, which conducts surveys on Twitter.  “You can “embed” Twitter functionality into your web page using JavaScript, including:

• embedded tweet box - just copy-and-paste some JavaScript into your web page
• auto-linking of Twitter accounts - this is similar to how the iPhone auto-links phone numbers
• auto-hovercards - same idea, but instead of linking to Twitter, pop up the Twitter hovercard

Evan Bailyn, founder of firstpagesage.com, says Twitter has “done a nice job” with @anywhere but still prefers Facebook because of features such as the “Like” button.

“I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near what Facebook’s social graph is,” Bailyn says. “I think it’s going to be for people that Tweet the most. I don’t know that it’s going to bring tons of new people… most of the people that use @anywhere a lot will already tweet a lot and it will just make their tweeting easier.”

“The Like concept is very natural to online browsing and socializing. It’s a lot easier than typing something,” Bailyn adds. “Personalized stories are an idea that might have been good for Twitter to employ.  Points of Interest, a new Twitter function, makes it easier to associate your location with whatever you’re tweeting. You can tweet about a location you’re at, and find a restaurant.  This could provide a lot of personalized information about travel, nightlife, restaurants. @anywhere isn’t as exciting as Points of Interest.”

Peoplebrowsr CEO Jodee Rich says the key to Twitter’s success is that their stream is open and available to third parties developers. A cloud has already been developed that has enough space to support 20 terabytes of data, Rich says. For those that are interested, here is Rich’s slideshow on the metadata cloud.

“Developers have taken the stream and put it up in the cloud,” Rich says. “What we’re really doing is extending the half life of the tweet. You can look in the cloud and find data from six months ago or more. Twitter data is open, third parties developers can store it for a long time - it then becomes a cloud that extends metadata coming from third parties developers, adding to Twitter profiles information about gender, influence, fields of expertise and more. Both Private and public data can be added to Twitter profiles and posts.

“Now Facebook is allowing people to store the stream for an unlimited amount of time; another reaction to Twitter,” Rich says.

Some developers were worried about Twitter’s recent acquisition of Atebits to acquire the iPhone client Tweetie. Borasky says, “Twitter made a business decision. Using phrases like ’stabbed in the back’ or sexual references, despite the way one might feel about it, isn’t either appropriate or particularly relevant or useful.”

“I’m on the StatusNet developers’ list,” Borasky adds. “In some ways, it’s complementary to Twitter rather than direct competition. But I’m guessing that those who truly intend to

compete with Twitter via StatusNet are still working at it. I was never formally invited to join the ‘rebels’ and didn’t see much point in doing so anyhow.” Andrew Stone, who developed the iPhone app Twittelator, says the worry is “way overblown.”

“My twitter client, Twittelator, shows that 3rd party developers run circles around Twitter with new interesting features,” Stone says. “I got up at Chirp and said, “Thank you for buying Tweetie! I now have one less competitor. Don’t worry, just do some cool stuff and you can compete with Twitter and Tweetie.”

Borasky says the future for Twitter is very promising if they partner with other media organizations.

“They’ve got Oxygen, MSNBC, the NY Times and Huffington Post already,” Borasky says. “I’d expect to see some name movie studios join that list for the summer blockbuster season.”

“The Promoted Tweets and analytics capabilities are still evolving,” Borasky adds. The kinds of questions their developers were asking me indicate that they’re looking to hire experts in this area. That’s a fiercely competitive arena, and their only real advantage is their huge raw data collection and real-time acquisition. The analytics, visualization, and natural language processing technologies are well-developed elsewhere.”

Stone calls Twitter “a beautiful meeting of media and personality.”

“It’s not a walled garden, like Facebook,” Stone says. “The degrees of separation between people on Twitter are very small. You can get some serious resonance with an interesting tweet. It’s fun to come up with content that’s small, easy and tight. It’s just this totally new experience.”

“We’re writing cool code that’s changing the world,” Stone adds. “Chirp was fundamentally about the team building and for that, it was truly successful.”

Peoplebrowsr’s Rich, like other developers DigitalMediaBuzz.com interviewed for this story, says he enjoyed the “openness and authenticity” of the Chirp conference.

“We truly felt like we were part of the Twitter family,” Rich says. “I’ve never been to a conference where they exposed the non-executive board members as openly as they did. I’ve never seen a management team go up on stage and explain how they are running their business. It’s very exciting to be part of that.”

Building A Brand Across Multiple Channels For Premium Ad Experience

By Ron Callari

From broadcasting to broader-casting, the NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead the industry. From conception through distribution, the NAB Show proudly serves as the incubator for excellence - helping to breathe life into content everywhere. More than 85,000 audio, video and film content professionals from 157 countries will convene at the Las Vegas Convention Center April 10-15.

Celebrities will include Emmy nominated actor Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory” and Emmy winning actor, author Michael J. Fox will be honored with the NAB Distinguished Service Award for his significant and lasting contribution to the broadcasting industry.

Ivan Askwith is Director of Strategy at Big Spaceship, an award-winning creative agency based in Brooklyn, N.Y. As the head of the strategic practice, Askwith works to help clients navigate the digital landscape and understand emerging behaviors

He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on digital strategy, transmedia engagement and online communities at both academic and business conferences, and an occasional contributor to magazines like Slate and Salon.

Ivan Askwith will be sitting on the “Unboxing Advertising and Entertainment: Building a Transmedia Experience,” which will drill down on how top advertising and entertainment creatives design media worlds across multiple mediums over time. I had an opportunity to interview Askwith in advance of the conference to discuss his perspective on advertising and entertainment in this immersive, convergent and interactive age.

Push vs. Pull Marketing has changed over the years, as Web 2.0 has become an accepted means of engaging with the customer. How do you see pull marketing today versus five years ago?
To some extent, I think this depends on your marketing goals. If you’re trying to launch in the market and have no awareness, there’s still a clear value in push marketing and advertising: no one is likely to engage with your product or service until they know that it’s available.  But in a best-case scenario, push marketing functions like a spark or lighter — it gets things going.

The “pull” approach, on the other hand, is a lot more sustainable for brands that hope to grow, maintain and deepen relationships with both active and potential customers.  Moving forward, at least online and in interactive channels, it seems to me that Web 2.0 isn’t just an accepted means of engaging with customers — but one of the only viable means for engaging with customers and consumers.

There’s just too much value available on the Internet — content, social connection, utility, all the usual suspects — for us to assume that consumers will continue tolerating interruptive “push” messaging, except when it occurs in very specific (and useful) contexts.  There’s really a third concept in play: if push refers to brands trying to capture attention, and pull refers to brands being available when consumers choose to engage with them, the third option is closer to “magnetic” marketing — where the consumer and brand are drawn together, at the right time, without either side needing to take an aggressive action.

That’s where we see the importance of context.  Whether that means a Google ad that gives you a link just when you need it, but before you ask for it, or a location-aware ad that gives you a reason to grab lunch in the diner you’re just about to walk past.  You didn’t pull it, and it didn’t exactly push itself on you — the consumer and the brand just get drawn together at the right time, and everyone benefits.

Since Skittles was one of the first CPG brands to transform its home page into an online portal for Twitter (March 2, 2009), what were some of the positive and negative results of that initiative? Do you recommend this approach for brands in 2010?
I cannot comment on the campaign from last March.  However, in response to the second part of your question, I’m not sure there’s a single, reliable approach that I’d recommend for “brands in 2010″ for two reasons:

First, because in many ways 2010 is not so different from 2009, and I think we often find ourselves trying to always do something new, rather than figuring out what people want — which may well be something they’ve wanted for years — and just trying to get it right.

Second, and more important, because brands benefit the most from figuring out what works in their unique situation, with their unique value proposition and identity, and for the people that it’s most important they connect with.  For some CPG brands, it may be valuable to find a deep and aggressive use of Twitter, while for others it may be a waste of time and effort.

Here’s what I will say: if you’re going to turn your own home page into an online portal for Twitter, or any other community platform, it’s probably valuable to go farther than just appropriating a popular service (whether that’s Twitter, Foursquare or next year’s emerging buzz platform) and putting it on your site.  Again, it comes down to basic social skills: if you want people to value you, you have to give them something of value, rather than simply appropriating something they already value.  So can Twitter be valuable on a brand’s site?  Absolutely, so long as you can find a way to make Twitter better, more valuable, more interesting or more useful than it was to begin with.  An easy example is Best Buy’s Twelpforce, which lets consumers seek tech-support from the chain’s entire retail floor workforce — a brilliant way of integrating Twitter.

2010 has been earmarked as the year for Location-Based Social Networking and Augmented Reality. How can these two services be harnessed together to produce a higher degree of engagement with customers? Can you provide an example?
A quick distinction: augmented reality (AR) is often used to describe two distinct trends.  The first involves using webcams and visual triggers, so that people sitting at their computers can see themselves on screen, along with things that aren’t there — e.g. a dancing unicorn, a robot head on their own shoulders, etc).  In almost all cases, this version of AR has been used as a novelty gimmick, without creating much tangible value.  The second (and, I’d argue, more important) involves using cameras, usually on mobile devices, to augment the world with layers of information.  This version of AR, I think, has incredible implications for just about everything, including customer engagement.  So that’s the version of AR I’m referring to here.

For both location-based social networking and location-based AR, there’s a simple, powerful value proposition: these tools actually help change our experience as we move through the world.  And in both cases, they come back to the concept I mentioned earlier: rather than push or pull marketing, these location-based services are “magnetic,” and focused on connecting people with information at the right time, and in the right place, for it to be useful and actionable.  In essence, location-based services are the ultimate form of contextual marketing: capable of reaching people at the right time to influence (and assist) their behaviors and decisions.

Some of the best examples are also the best known: take Foursquare.  Even before their current slate of big-brand partnership “experiments” (e.g. Bravo, Zagat), the Foursquare team was striking deals with local businesses.  If I’m trying to decide where to grab a drink, and Foursquare can tell me (a) that my friends just arrived at a bar a few blocks away, or (b) that the bar across the street is offering a special deal to Foursquare users, those aren’t just advertisements: they’re useful offers.  And while AR hasn’t yet infiltrated the physical world in a massively useful (and branded) way, it’s not hard to imagine the opportunities: take a grocery store, where you can find deals, compare local prices, and get recipe suggestions for any product, just by pointing your phone at it… that, in and of itself, becomes a more compelling reason to consider shopping there.

You will be contributing to a panel at the upcoming NABSHOW (National Association of Broadcaster), April 12-15 titled, “Unboxing Advertising and Entertainment: Building a Transmedia Experience.” How do you define a ‘Transmedia Experience’ and why is it important to incorporate this approach in an advertising campaign in 2010?
For a full answer to that question, your best bet is to attend the NABSHOW panel on April 13, where we’ll be digging into the details. But the quick answer is that transmedia experiences are ones that take brands, entertainment properties or stories, and roll them out across multiple media platforms.  It’s still a pretty vague definition, so examples tend to be more effective.

The oldest fall-back example is The Matrix, which consisted of three movies, but also used comic books, two console video games, short animated videos, websites and a MMOG, with each of those elements contributing unique details, plot points and characters to the larger fictional world where all of these stories were set.  In the second film, Jada Pinkett-Smith’s character, Niobe, walks off-screen to pursue her own mission, and doesn’t re-appear onscreen until the third movie.  In the case of The Matrix, anyone interested in what happened during that period of time was able to follow her entire mission — because it was the plot of a high-profile video game released alongside the film.  Characters appeared in the second and third movies that audiences knew nothing about — unless they had already met those characters in one of the Matrix comic books, where they were introduced.  Transmedia experiences are ones where there are many different ways to access and engage with the stories, and some form of meaningful connection exists between all of them.  And, because transmedia experiences and stories are so much bigger than any individual film, game, television show or advertisement, they leave a lot more room for the audience — and fans, in particular — to participate.  They don’t answer all of the questions, or suggest that there’s a single “correct” way to engage; instead, they offer a huge range of official and unofficial opportunities for interaction.

As for advertising campaigns in 2010: the truth is that whether we design advertising campaigns to be “transmedia experiences” or not, they often are.  Audiences and consumers are used to engaging with the brands, stories or topics that interest them across the full range of channels that exist, and you could argue that brands that advertise in print, television, digital, OOH and so on are already transmedia experiences — they’re just not good experiences, because they don’t always put a lot of thought into how all of the components that make up a brand, or a franchise, work together.

Often, these things are still separate line items in budgets, and that fools us (as marketers and brand representatives) into thinking that they are different things.  We come up with our basic brand platform, we assign that out to all of the different teams involved in our brand marketing, and then leave it up to those teams to decide how their individual projects turn out.  A smarter approach to transmedia would be to look at each of those components, and ask how it contributes back inward to create the central meaning of a brand.  Because from a consumer perspective, that’s how it works: consumers don’t understand, or care enough to think about, the varying messages that a brand might present in each channel.  In our own lives, brands are brands, and stories are stories, and whatever pieces of brand messaging we encounter as we go about our lives become part of our overall experience of the brand.  So the result, in many cases, is that consumers experience brands as disjointed, inconsistent and self-contradicting. In some ways, it’s important to incorporate transmedia strategy into advertising campaigns now because consumers are way out ahead of us.  Not thinking about our work in transmedia terms just means we’re not concerning ourselves with the overall user experience of our brands.

Google Search Seeks Speed

Amit Singhal discusses the future of search at the SABEW conference./Chris Prentice

By Matt Robinson

Google is synonymous with search, but could be onto to something greater: inference. Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and tweaker of Google’s search algorithm since 2001, says search is beyond key words and at the door step of understanding language. Singhal, speaking at the annual Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference in Phoenix held in late March, used some examples. If you google “GM cars,” you get General Motors, but if you google “GM food,” you get genetically-modified. “Search is about matching meaning to what users want,” he says.

Another example, if you google “panasonic lock TV,” you get hits about “parental control.” Singhal says marketers probably didn’t like the word “lock” and went with the nicer “control.” But Google infers the difference. Other points made at the conference include:

• Information wants to be free he says, but that doesn’t mean websites shouldn’t impose a pay wall, citing that good content costs money. But differentiating that good content from “McContent” - quick, cheap generated content - is difficult since the language between the two is often similar.

• Web content is suppose to be free. And citizens with information are better ones. Singhal sees China inhibiting its best interest by restricting search.

• The future of Web search is still based on the what made google popular: speed. “We are crazy about speed,” Singhal says. He noted that if a user’s is slowed down by 200 milliseconds, the site will end up losing traffic. Relevant algorithms are now more important than ever, he says. “As the amount of information has exploded, the importance of relevance has gone through the roof,” he says.

• The kind of information that people seek on phones is much different than what people search for on their computer. Singhal sees a future in location-based advertising.

(Images from home page are courtesy of the Tuscon Citizen.)

Cross Media: Cyber Elite Exchange Ideas

By Sheila Shayon

The first annual CROSS MEDIA NYC conference, March 10, was a sold-out event. Held in the digitally equipped Scholastic Theater, the evening was a fast-paced juggernaut of the digerati and cyber-elite.

Gavin McGarry, CROSS MEDIA NYC Founder, set the agenda: “Our goal is to bridge the gap between the different media sectors in order share information and find new opportunities. We want the gaming people to meet the TV people, the publishing people to meet the web video people, and everyone to meet the advertising people but let’s be honest, in the end, it’s all about the money.”

The evening was a lively combination of executives from five branches of the digital media industry, and the first panel set the tone: “Melting the Silos: The Reality of Cross Media Integration.”

Moderator Jeremy Caplan, Time Magazine contributor, opened with a humorous story of a 4-year-old observing the delivery and installation of a large flat-screen television, and asking in great confusion, “But where’s the mouse?”

The panelists set a brisk pace bringing their particular vertical’s experience to bear. Although the promise was to discuss ways of monetizing cross media opportunities, it was not really delivered on - but rather the panel spoke about the changes digital and cross media are bringing to industry silos.

Roger Keating, senior vice president, Hearst Television, spoke to the tectonic shift from analog to digital, with appointment viewing, particularly in news, replaced by a through-the-day reveal of unfolding events and updates. Reporters, now armed with iPhones and Flip cameras work 24/7. Keating spoke of the advent of video-optimized devices like the iPad as boding well for the broadcast industry. At last, the visually rich domain of television, somewhat sabotaged by early text-based iterations of the Web, will return to it rightful place. The underutilized bandwidth of broadcast formerly used to transmit data signals, is now being mined for mobile, and hand-held devices will become small TVs. The iPad being emblematic of this conversion. As for competition, Keating says that it’s all the major portals: Yahoo, Google, AOL, as well as cnn.com, msnbc.com, drudgereport.com and huffingtonpost.com for news; and vertical category killers such as ESPN or weather.com.

Bonnie Fuller, president and editor-in-chief of HollywoodLife.com, began her comments by noting that women had waited thousands of years for the kind of service provided by the Internet. Women want to be in-the-know, they want the latest information, obsess over details and need to share it all with others. That said, few websites understood the opportunity to create an emotional relationship with women users — or the means. Women are visual, love celebrities — and view them as role models and mirrors. They want information updated frequently, parsed in verticals such as all about the Oscars, or a “HollyLove” special on Valentine’s Day. HollywoodLife is warm, friendly, conversational - like talking to your best girlfriends.

Alistair C. Mitchell, vice president, Multimedia Integration, Research In Motion Limited, believes the most significant change has been in the means of production. UGC and premium content have had a “whack deck” effect on storytelling. As for the ongoing development of the BlackBerry media experience, Mitchell commented that the service of the BlackBerry, always on, always connected, is more important than the device. The sale of handsets is secondary. Adding photos, video, music, drives the value proposition and creates a community experience rather than an a la carte menu of unrelated or individual activities. Location as a factor, driving contextually aware content makes 3D an enormous opportunity.

Ashley J. Swartz, senior vice president of Digitas, spoke of new ideas not being incubated in traditional media. Au courant is crowd sourcing those new ideas and then letting the brands pay for development. Swartz commented on the ‘virality’ of digital as sexy, and a catalyst rather than a disruptive role. Digital is a ’social gesture,’ requiring continuous improvement, and she faulted executives for their hubris in not paying greater attention to and learning from previous media models already built. The real-time, conversational nature of digital supports global brand expression.

Mathieu Ferland, senior producer, Cross Media Group, Ubisoft, has been in the gaming business for more than a decade. As social gaming increases, Ferland sees game designers as story-tellers. He cited Ubisoft’s blockbuster franchise, Assassin’s Creed, as an example of expanding a video game franchise into non-gaming products like comic books, novels, and films — with different story lines for each media platform — but using the same actors. Leveraging gaming IP’s into new entertainment media is cross media

in action. As for monetization, Ferland comments, “Who would have thought, a few years ago, that people would pay real money for virtual goods?”

Sidebar:

Two case studies were delivered.

#1. Jeff Gomez, CEO, Starlight River Entertainment, showcased Coca Cola’s Happiness Factory, illustrating transmedia storytelling across multiple platforms. He outlined transmedia as a philosophy of communication and brand extension, a two-way interaction in which the consumer is celebrated and validated. The aspirational Coke commercial designed by Wieden and Kennedy, Amsterdam, for the Happiness Factory, was the most successful ever. It invited rather than interrupted, with a timeless storyline. The brand archetype for Coke is innocence. The global campaign will last for seven years, have localized versions, and epitomizes wrapping a product with story and creating a dialogue. As a result, Coke sales were up 4% - which for this brand is a significant and lucrative change. Transmedia is a sub-element of crossmedia.

#2. Dr. Adam Klein, Media Leader LLC, gave a presentation on the music industry titled:”Adapt or Die.”

Klein chronicled the travails of a business where the product was consumed almost entirely for free, transforming to a pay structure. How do we pay artist/creators fairly as opposed to protecting outmoded organizational structures? Napster arrived on the scene in 1999, as a response to consumer demand for choice: “I don’t want 12 tracks, I want the one I want.” The industry response was to fight back with raising prices. The resistance of the industry eventually put Napster out of business - and the rest is history. 2001 brought the iPod, and 2003 iTunes. 10 billion songs were sold by iTunes last week.

In the final act of the evening, four technology companies were given five minutes each for cross media product demonstrations.

Demo #1:  David Kruis, president and CEO of  Metranome demonstrated a mobile media calendar integrating the first ever animated Dilbert and New Yorker Magazine “Cartoon a Day” aimed at driving habitual behavior. It allows for personalized daily content, but you can’t skip to tomorrow - only one day at a time. There’s a  one-time $10.00 download fee for this Blackberry app.

Demo #2: Petri Martikainen CEO of MultiTouch demonstrated its proprietary advanced technology that includes cells and boxes which can be used in a variety of markets such as museums and exhibitions, retail businesses, and advertising. Display will grow to a 3.4 billion dollar business and move into wall effects.

Demo #3: Sam Cox, CEO of Milabra demonstrated a proprietary technology for online image analysis from MIT labs in the pattern recognition field. They are designing solutions for advertising transactions online. Cox commented on the media dialogue shifting from transmitter to receiver.

Demo #4: Michael Scissons CEO of  Syncapse demonstrated SocialTALK, a tool for measuring social media and maximizing for companies and brands the efficiency of creating, publishing, and measuring the metrics of their content strategies.

Conference video is available at: http://www.crossmedianyc.com/videos/ and http://www.crossmedianyc.com/slides-2/

The next two conferences are already in the works:

• Cross Media To - Toronto, July 21
• Cross Media UK - London, November 2010.

2010 API Developers’ Conferences Round-Up

By Ron Callari

This year API developers’ conferences are flourishing as Web and Mobile Platforms are expanding the playing field. From well-attended repeat events like MacWorld and Apple’s WWDC to first-time events like Twitter’s Chirp event, official conferences for third-party developers will cover mobile devices, OAuth, geolocation, enterprise applications and much more.

In layman’s terms, to understand Application Program Interfaces (API) in its simplest form - it’s analogous to relying on others to perform functions that you may not be able or permitted to do by yourself, such as opening a bank safety deposit box. Similarly, virtually all software has to request other software to perform some functions to extend its usage potential.

The practice of publishing APIs has allowed web communities to create an open architecture for sharing of content and data between communities and applications. In this way, content that is created in one place can be dynamically posted and/or updated in multiple locations on the Web.

This year’s round-up of developers’ conferences is listed here chronologically.

360|iDev
April 11-14
San Jose Convention Center
San Jose, Calif.

360|iDev started in San Jose, March of 2009, and will be back in April of 2010. The Silicon Valley is exploding with iPhone development companies and iPhone related startups. After the initial success of their first 360|iDev, 360|iDev San Jose plans to build and expand on that momentum this year. The intent of the conference is to bring the best and brightest minds in the development community together for 3 days of intensive sessions, social interaction, best practices and innovative new ideas.

TWITTER Chirp
April 14-15
Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, Calif.

Twitter’s first official conference for developers, Chirp was just scheduled for April 14-15 and will cost developers $469. It’s a two-day event with a conference covering OAuth, geolocation and streaming, among other topics, and then a 24-hour hack day for first-time developers to work with seasoned pros. There are only 800 seats available, so developers who have not signed up yet, are encouraged to do so at the earliest.

FACEBOOK f8 2010
April 21-22
San Francisco, Calif.

According to their fan page, on May 24, 2007, Facebook launched their Facebook Platform alongside 800 developers and entrepreneurs at their first f8 conference in San Francisco. Many developers built the innovative applications which paved the way for future development. Today, there are over 500,000 applications on Facebook.com, and over 300 of those have more than one million users each.

This year will be Facebook’s third f8, to be held in San Francisco on April 21-22, 2010.

Become a fan of their f8 Page on Facebook to get updates and information (including how to register) as they make these announcements. Check out the videos and photos from prior f8 conferences and developers can also share their stories and experiences from the past.

GOOGLE I/O
May 19-20
Moscone West
San Francisco, Calif.

Google I/O brings together thousands of developers for two days of deep technical content, focused on building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open web technologies such as Android, Google Chrome, Google APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine, and more.

I/O will feature over 80 sessions ranging from introductory talks to deep dives on the nuts and bolts of a particular technology or product. Fireside chats will also return this year, where you can ask questions to Google engineers in an informal, intimate setting.

The Developer Sandbox, first introduced at I/O 2009, returns this year. The Sandbox will feature over 100 developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at I/O. These developers will be on hand to demo their apps, talk about how they built them, answer questions, and exchange ideas.

WEBAPPS ‘10
USENIX Conference on Web Application Development
June 23-25
Boston, Mass.

Since 1975, the USENIX Association has brought together a community of engineers, system administrators, scientists, and technicians working on the cutting edge of the computing world.

Join them for the first USENIX Conference on Web Application Development. WebApps ‘10 is a new technical conference designed to bring together experts in all aspects of developing and deploying Web applications. Web-based applications are revolutionizing both the features that can be delivered and the technologies for developing and deploying applications.  The full program will be available at their Web site some time in March 2010. Check out their Web site for announcement details.

APPLE
World Wide Developers Conference 2010
Moscone Center, San Francisco
June 28-July 2

According to a Wikipedia listing, the WWDC 2010 venue is unknown at the present time, but the conference will, in most likelihood, be held in California as an Apple “corporate event” has been scheduled at the normal WWDC venue, the Moscone Center, for June 28 through July 2.  Information on last year’s event can be found at their 2009 event website.

MICROSOFT
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference
(No venue or date scheduled at the time of this posting)

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is a conference for Windows developers.

It covers new and upcoming technology from Microsoft, and so only occurs in the years when there is something new to talk about. The conference is typically hosted by the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, Calif.

The Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is Microsoft’s premier gathering of leading-edge developers and architects. Attendees come from around the world to learn about the future of Microsoft’s developer platform, exchange ideas with Microsoft technology experts, and network with fellow professionals. This is the conference you need to attend if you want to stay ahead of the curve, and get a head start on planning your company’s products and technology investments.

Microsoft’s PR department has indicated that interested parties can learn more about the future conference dates, industry-leading speakers and registration info by visiting their website.

BLACKBERRY Developer Conference
September 27-30
Marriott Marquis
San Francisco, Calif.

Stay up-to-date on what’s coming up at the 2010 BlackBerry Developer Conference. The conference is a dedicated forum for the developer community to immerse itself in all aspect of creating consumer and business applications for the BlackBerry platform.

What you’ll take home is some of the following:

• The inside scoop on developing for the BlackBerry platform and the very latest in software, hardware and tools from RIM and its partners
• Invaluable information directly from RIM experts who will personally share their expertise
• First-hand experiences from developers who have successfully created, integrated and managed wireless applications
• Best practices from industry leaders to shortcut development cycles and drive new applications to market

For readers who have been involved with any of these conferences, feel free to provide us with your feedback. And if there are any Developer Conferences not listed here that you feel are significant, please comment on that as well.

CROSS MEDIA NYC CONFERENCE LAUNCHES WITH MAJOR MEDIA INDUSTRY SUPPORT

Media Mogul Bonnier Fuller, Ubisoft’s Mathieu Ferland, Digitas’ Ashley Swartz & RIM BlackBerry’s Alistair Mitchell confirmed speakers for inaugural media event

New York, NY February 9, 2010—The first annual CROSS MEDIA NYC (www.crossmedianyc.com) conference was announced today and has confirmed a heavyweight list of media industry executives to headline the event taking place on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, at the Scholastic Theater in New York from 6pm to 9:30pm. The line up for the event includes magazine innovator and President of HollywoodLife.com Bonnie Fuller, Ubisoft’s Cross Media Group Senior Producer Mathieu Ferland, RIM/Blackberry Vice President of Multimedia Integration Alistair Mitchell and global interactive agency Digitas’ Senior Vice President Ashley J. Swartz. The event’s organizers have partnered with the Government of Canada and NATPE (National Association of Television Programming Executives), and will bring together executives from the worlds of media, entertainment and publishing to examine and explore the current state of the media business in a cross media world.

Founded by veteran digital media executive Gavin McGarry and event producer Jennifer Harkness, CROSS MEDIA NYC, will provide a forum to discuss perspectives on how the industry will be produced, distributed and consumed in a cross media environment, specifically looking at ways to incorporate cross media into business models. CROSS MEDIA NYC has a strict agenda that will focus on providing attendees with real tangibles on how to monetize cross media opportunities in the various sectors.

In addition to the super panel, other scheduled events at CROSS MEDIA NYC include two industry focused case studies and four demonstrations of emerging cross media technologies, all designed to give attendees a more direct and personal understanding of how cross media can be implemented successfully.

Presenting one of the case studies is transmedia storytelling expert and CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment Jeff Gomez, who works on some of the biggest entertainment franchises including Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Hasbro’s Transformers and Coca Cola. Gomez will present a special transmedia case study on Coca Cola’s Happiness Factory, demonstrating how an entertainment IP can successfully be distributed and monetized across multiple platforms.

David Kruis President and CEO of Metranome, a leading mobile applications production company, who recently launched the first ever animated Dilbert and New Yorker Magazine “Cartoon a Day” integrated calendar applications for BlackBerry phones, will also join the conference to conduct a special demonstration of the company’s unique technologies, applications and services for the mobile media market.

Founder of CROSS MEDIA NYC Gavin McGarry said: “We are excited to kick off the first annual CROSS MEDIA NYC conference with support from these top media executives, each offering insightful perspectives on the state of the business from their own industries. Our goal is to host an annual event where thought leaders from all media can come together, share ideas and learn how to monetize their business through cross media.

CROSS MEDIA NYC 2010 will feature participation from senior executives in such industries as Video (web video, TV, Film, DVD), Internet (websites, podcasts, social media, marketing, music, email), Gaming (Social Gaming, Virtual Worlds, Console), Publishing (magazine, books), Mobile (apps), Advertising and Merchandise. CROSS MEDIA NYC 2010 takes place Wednesday, March 10, 2010 from 6:00pm 9:30pm at the Scholastic Theater: 557 Broadway, Prince Street.

CROSS MEDIA NYC 2010 has also aligned a number of prominent sponsors for the event including the Government of Canada, NATPE, Mashable, C21 Media and the New York Television Festival. CROSS MEDIA NYC’s board includes a roster of industry heavyweights including:  Vidar Brekke ,  Emerging Media Strategist, DefinedLogic; Nicholas Butterworth , CEO, Diversion Media/HD Cloud; Bill Chamness, Account Director, Hanft Raboy + Partners; Anna Gecan , VP Original Programming, HGTV; Chris Pfaff, CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC; Ava Seave, Principal, Quantum Media; Yaron Samid, Founder, NYVideo.org; Tania Yuki, Director, Product Management, comScore.

Conference founder Gavin McGarry is a veteran digital media executive. He was part of the global content team at web video start up JOOST and former head of Cross Platform Business Development for ENDEMOL. Currently McGarry runs Jumpwire Media, a cross media agency that helps companies profit from the emerging digital platforms.

For tickets, sponsorship or to submit speakers, please contact Jennifer Harkness 917-209-9797, info@jumpwiremedia.com.

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