New Context Conference

Was invited to attend the New Context Conference which was held for two days last week.
The conference is a web2.0 gathering of major players in the internet. Folks from Wikipedia, Paypal, Bit Torrent, Google, Six Apart, Sony etc were speaking on two topics - "the users web" and "web visionaries."

If you are not interested in the internet field then this article will bore you to death in which case you can have a gander at my news items - the Maid Cafe item may interest you in particular.

This is internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales who founded what has now become a part of our lives - Wikipedia.

Jimmy believes that its wrong for any one company/organization (Google) to keep search result algorithms secret.
Who knows, SEO may be a thing of the past where people go back to using directories - only this time being user generated?

Wikipedia is built on open source technologies. By using open source, Wikipedia was able to get off the ground with 500 USD instead of 5 - 10 million USD.
Flickr, Amazon, Mixi, Yahoo also run on open source.

Wikia is one of Jimmy's relatively new projects similar to Wikipedia.

The four key items for Wikipedia/Wikia.

Ashwin Navin - co founder and president of Bit Torrent Inc.
Ashwin talks about how he worked with the film studios to monetize from the fact that millions of movies were being downloaded illegally on the net.

His company also provides B2B (Business to Business) services for clients who require distribution of large files across the network.

Brock Purpura CEO of Etology.com (advertising) and Kazusuke Obi CEO of CGM Marketing both talk about the Long Tail and how important it is in advertising. I need to discuss this topic more but going Long Tail rather than the Pareto Principle costs more in my experience.
If you dont know what the Pareto 80/20 rule is - you would do good reading up on it as it will help you prioritize your time and serve as a tool to measure what you need to be focusing on in your life.

Joi Ito is Mr Internet. Chairman of the board of Creative Commons, Chairman of Six Apart Japan, Board of Technorati and Digital Garage. If you know Joi, then you know everybody in the Internet.

Internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman - founder of Linkedin. My linked in profile is here.

Reid's talk was entitled "How does a successful start-up run in Silicon Valley" - the main points on the slide here (click to enlarge.)

Internet Entrepreneur Chris Alden on the panel with Reid and Joi talking in the "Global trends in social media and our strategies" session.

Chris had an opinion a different to Reid where he says that going after venture capital/angel investment should be the last step - first get the prototype out and go for the cash only when you need it - this is the model that I have chosen to take with my company Mirai Inc.
While I can easily raise money, I don't need to add pressure of investors breathing down my neck.

One of the reasons why I started Mirai Inc was so that I can live the rest of my short life doing what I want to do - rather than have people telling me how I should live my life. Its all about Destinations ^^

Joi coordinated the conference as he did with last years one.

DJ Towa Tei (정동화) and film director Hiroyuki Nakano talk about music and video on the web. Cant give you the takeaway as I had to leave for a meeting halfway through.

Joi talks about the Creative Commons.
Took me a while to understand what it was but its basically a system that enables people to understand what their rights are when it comes down to using your material. I don't want to have people contact me each time they want to use a photo of mine so I label my work with a license.
The person who wants to use my photo then understands that they can go ahead and use my work as long as they credit me.
The license is tailored to work with the law in each of the countries that the Creative Commons is effective in - meaning that you can use the license to go ahead and sue people for misuse of your work.

Labeling your work CC means more publicity for you - the Creative Commons also issue some code which you stick in the footer of your site so that your work will appear in CC search results.

Timo Vuorensola talks about his movie Star Wreck which was the first to be distributed with a Creative Commons license.

Honma-san from Sony showed us how one can download music directly into your ipod from their eyevio service which was interesting - no drag and drop, no third party application - just the browser.

Failed to attend last years conference but glad I made it this year - met a ton of folk in the industry.

The guy on the screen is Jun Murai who some call the father of Internet (in Japan) as he played a big part in setting up the infrastructure to form what the Japanese now know as the Internet.

A quick look behind to catch a few people sleeping.

Takahiro Norihiko talks about advertising with YouTube and Google.
If you want to start advertising your services, Adwords maybe a good place to start.

Norihiko shows us the first flyer in Japan which was made of cloth. Interesting how we are still using cloth to advertise.

When TV first broadcasted in Japan thousands of people would gather in a public area to watch it on a small set.

After the conference is networking with the speakers/attendees and food time.

Digital Garage was the host of the event - they certainly treat their employees well with the food.

The event was held at the Westin Tokyo at Ebisu where they serve lovely grub.

Plate full of scallops n meat.

Many speakers spoke about how networking is crucial in the internet business - it really is about who you know. The more people you know, the more chances you will have of generating a partnership or collaboration.

Sharing ideas with internet peers is important too as they will be able to give you advice and help.

If you are stuck for ideas or stuck in a rut, try to network with others who share the same interests and ideas.

The Westin hotel is located in Ebisu Garden Place - west exit at Ebisu station.

Here you will find many restaurants and expensive department stores - you may want to visit if you are in town.

If any of this interested you then you may want to have a peek at my blogging tips.