Putting together a conference such as Widgety Goodness is an exhausting process - mainly because we decided at the start that we were going to do it very quickly and in realtime. That is, we knew things were moving fast in the widgetsphere and we wanted to be able to reflect that as we put together the program. Time is now moving on and, although we haven’t quite nailed it all down, we can see the shape of the event and most of the speakers. We are selling tickets fast and we have a great bunch of sponsors who are involved in the conversation. The event social network is now up and running with it’s own moderator and all participants are being added to it. We have a great range of speakers, with local, european and US speakers coming to take part. The day will be topped off with a reception co-hosted with TechcrunchUK and opened up to the Brighton developer community. I’ll be focussing in more detail on all speakers over the next few weeks and introducing the final few participants. Whether you are in media or marketing or advertising or communications, or you are a developer or an entrepreneur with an interest or a need to know about widgets, gadgets and platforms, Widgety Goodness will be great value for money. Tickets are still available for this unique event.
We hope to have a few more surprises, but this is the gist of the event:
Chris Cunningham of Freewebs, widget dynamo and founder of WIMA (Widget Interactive Marketing Association) will keynote the morning session and lay out the commercial issues we are all looking at plus the steps Freewebs are taking in the US and the UK to promote widgets as a key marketing vehicle.
Following on, to introduce the agency side of the equation, we have Russell Davies from the OpenIntelligenceAgency. Russell, recently voted the third most influential person in the UK agency world (New Media Age), planner extraordinaire, blogger par excellence (eggsbaconchipsandbeans) and Campaign columnist among many other things, is the sort of person who will open our eyes and tell it as it is. He even has his own conference, interesting2007.
I’m really pleased to be able to follow up Russell with Colm O’Connor from Joost, bringing us his view of other widget platforms and how Joost is working with commercial partners to develop widgets on their platform.
From a really big agency we have Simon Andrews, Chief Strategy Officer, Mindshare Interaction, on the role of the agency in widget development and branded utility.
To round off the first morning session we have Steve Bowbrick, an Internet guru in his own right, co-founder of one of the original web agencies, Webmedia, ex-chair of Internet World conference, currently head of digital at KMI, and Jon Baines, one of the most creative digital agency guys in the UK, currently celebrating ten years of his agency, Lateral.
Following the morning coffee and networking break, we get even more widgety with Alex Bard from yourminis, kicking off a theme of widget distribution: where do they all end up, widgets in the wider world and then Emmanuel Prat of Widget Avenue, bringing us a European perspective on building a widget platform - what they want to offer and what the users want.
The morning is rounded off with another speaker that I’m really pleased
to have with us, Ankur Shah from Techlightenment, the Facebook
developers who brought us the legendary Bob Dylan Facebook app and a lot of other f8
wizardry. Techlightenment will be moving fast into the OpenSocial space
and Ankur will be bringing us his views on working with this and how it
relates to the Facebook platform.
After lunch we kick off with a big hello from Susan Mernit, Widgety Goddess and the inventor of the term Widgety Goodness. After Susan we have Rooly Eliezerov from Gigya, outriders of the widget distribution revolution, on where widgets can and can’t go and, most importantly, how we get them there. Will McInnes of Brighton social agency Nixon McInnes, will look at Being Social, what it is to be a social agency and how they are getting to be one. After that, Ori Soen from Musestorm will give us a key case study of a major media widget development project.
Following the afternoon coffee and networking break, we have Khris Loux from js-kit to kick off what I think may turn out to be a key subject: the Care and Control of widgets. Our final roster of speakers will all look at tracking, metrics, analysis, control and SEO in widgets. Khris will set the scene, followed by Anil Batra, SEO specialist and blogger, and finally Nilhan Jayasinghe, Head of Natural Search at Spannerworks.
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