Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin is the place to learn, network, and engage in the European Web 2.0 community

I was lucky enough to attend the San Francisco edition of this same conference in April. 11K participants, an incredible number of startups, sponsors and demos. A funny, energizing and useful experience for sure. In a few day, the Web 2.0 Expo will visit Europe for the first time. A great opportunity to listen and meet gurus, experts and entrepreneurs that are making the story of the web 2.0 outside the Silicon Valley.

Would you like to attend the Web 2.0 Expo Berlin, the full event, workshops included without paying an euro (registration only for a value of 1100-1300 euro)?

As you may probably know, I’ve recently launched The Social Enterprise, a new blog in italian about Enterprise 2.0 adoption, tools, vendors and trends. Enterprise 2.0 is my current area of interest and study and I would like to facilitate the emergence of new actors in this arena. If you have a good italian blog about Enterprise 2.0, leave a comment below. The free seat could be for you.

I’m glad to see an ongoing discussion about the way web 2.0 is impacting not only the web but also a number of near domains like marketing and telecomunications. Telco operators (especially italian ones) seems to be quite confused and worried about the strong evolution of IP communication technologies and the large adoption they are getting (Skype being the best, but not the only, example).

Having spent a few years working in Accenture on the wireless/mvno market, I deeply believe that mobile web 2.0 is the next big thing or better it could be if telco operators will start to open up their walled gardens leveraging social networks, mobile video/photo sharing, geolocalization, etc and providing innovative services that bring these technologies where users live: on the street, on the train, into an airport keeping in mind the different context and requirements that differentiates pc from mobile devices. Similar thoughts can be applied to media companies with the new challenges and (both business and development) models that the web 2.0 impose to survive on the market.

These are the some of the reasons why I’ll attend the TELCO & MEDIA: CONVERGENCE IN THE WEB 2.0 ERA that will be held in Milan, September 28th at the Circolo della Stampa - Palazzo Serbelloni in Corso Venezia, 16.

These is the noteworthy list of speakers put together by Reply and Business International:

• Alan Friedman, Journalist and Economics Specialist,
• Sergio Antocicco, Presidente, International Telecommunications Users Group (INTUG)
• Antonio Campo Dall’Orto, CEO, Telecom Italia Media & VP, Managing Director MTV South Europe
• Yves Confalonieri, Director RTI Interactive New Media, Mediaset
• Federico Grosso, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Blinkx
• Denise Kalos, Managing Partner, Hinchcliffe & CO
• Eric Laiger, Director Business Development, Hardware and Mobile, Skype
• Umberto Luciani, Marketing & Content Director, MySpace Italia
• Eric Lumer, CEO, Rawflow
• Mario Rizzante, Chairman, Reply
• Tatiana Rizzante, Managing Director, Reply
• Pietro Scott Jovane, Country Manager, Microsoft Online Services Group
• Giorgio Stock, Managing Director & Senior VP, Walt Disney Television Italy

Among the themes that will be discussed I would like to list the changes in business models and organizational processes and architectures of participations.

Disclosure: I’ll attend the event thanks to Linda Basilico of Barabino & Partners

The link: Telco & Media: Convergence in the Web 2.0 Era

I’m honored to remark how after many months of work, calls and online collaboration the organization for this year Italian Information Architecture Summit is quite complete.

After my first attempt in 2005, a group of friends, every one of them with a specific expertise and professional interest in IA, have joined me to replicate and improve the experience, helping our country to do a step toward a better awareness and comprehension of the large benefits that a holistic, user centric, structured design can bring for every web initiative.

Andrea, Luca, Alberto, Dario and the people at CRC Trentino have put together a wonderful event with international speakers (soon to be announced), Italian researchers, consultants and practitioners and a lot of room for networking and meeting peers.

While a number of high quality submissions (both from Italy and outside) have been submitted, the call for papers is extended until September, 23th and we hope to receive other paper and panel proposals.

The Italian IA Summit is completely free and will be held November 16th and 7th in Trento. If you have an interest (usability, accessibility, design, information architecture, communication) or you are waiting for the job of your life on the web, don’t hesitate to join us. Your knowledge will benefit from it and you could meet wonderful companies searching for talents.

I’m really excited and surprised of finding my blog inside the Top 25 Enterprise 2.0 weblogs as ranked by Technorati.

Thanks to Todd Stephens and my friend Luis Suarez for twittering it.

I suspect the reason to be the description that explicitly cites Enteprise 2.0, but really appreciated especially now that I’m launching a second blog completely focused on Enterprise 2.0. My goal is spreading the word on it in Italy as well and that’s why I’m thinking about writing it in italian. Here the entire enterprise 2.0 topic is quite unknown (leaving out Web2oltre.it, the first conference inviting experts on the stage to discuss it). Of course this also means a large opportunity to be taken.

I’m receiving more and more calls… More details soon.

After the initial Web Trend Maps, Oliver Reichenstein from the japanese agency Information Architects recently posted another overview of the most successful web sites worldwide linking them through a number of dimensions such as type of service (line color), web2ness (Web 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5), potential (the weather forecast), reputation (the area).

The map is loosely based on the Tokyo Metro Map and it includes english/american, japanese, german and chinese sites.

Curiously enough, each service location is located in a place depending on its reputation (for example “Yahoo is in Ueno, a nice place but nothing going on there” while “Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out”).

More versions of the map are provided and discussed here.