Topic: Social Networks and Networking

The internet has opened up previously unimagined space for innovation, but unintended consequences befuddle our ability to assess risks on the technological frontier. Denise Caruso and Clay Shirky launch Supernova with a lively rethinking of risk, serendipity, and the power of love in a socially networked world.

Since his early attraction to the new Internet industry in the early 1990's Jake McKee has slowly moved to the center of the growing debate over the use of social media within businesses. Factors impacting this debate include the organizational changes required to embrace social media, the need to acquire social media technology, and dealing with management resistance. In this interview, McKee shares his experiences with helping organizations brainstorm, detail, and implement strategies for engaging with and learning from their customers.

LAMP applications have a firm foothold in e-commerce and social networking, and the value of information stored in those systems is surging. At the 2007 MySQL Conference, Chander Kant of Zmanda, talks about how his company is taking advantage of this growing economy.

Social networking can transform communication and build powerful connections, but getting it right in the enterprise takes a special touch. David Bankston shares his experience as a technologist and entrepreneur in this lively discussion of ways in which software-as-service and social media can help businesses manage customer feedback and build brands and communities on line.

The many software development communities that have surfaced over the years have started to see an increasing relevance of social issues around them. They are not just engineering activities but full-fledged social communities. In this talk, Bdale Garbee, the Linux CTO at HP, draws a parallel between real world social communities and open source software development communities revealing similarities in the evolution of both, the issues they're concerned with, from financial viability to gender issues, and the roles and responsibilities of their participants.

With the rise of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, although the Web landscape has stepped up socially, telephony still lags behind. Though telephony is constantly evolving from a pair-wise audio stream to a multi-modal stream exchange, there's an enormous opportunity in this market to socially match relevant strangers with common interests. Lee S. Dryburgh, a network protocol engineer at University College, London (UCL) sketches a niche for such an opportunity in this talk.

On June 29, 2006, FreeAdvice.com filed a lawsuit against an unknown user of their site because of rude and offensive behavior. Robert F. Knox is the lead attorney on the lawsuit and joins Denise to discuss the litigation. He reviews the background of the case, including how the individual was identified, as well as other issues. Given the explosion of online forums, the discussion is both informative and important for future similar situations.

Telephone networks have been social networks from the start but as the needs of social networks become more sophisticated, so do the demands on the structure of the telephone infrastructure. Ndiata Kalonji's presentation focuses solely on the voice aspects of telephony and envisions a future role for the telephone at the heart of an increasingly sophisticated and always-on social network. He describes the changes necessary to bring about the integration of our social, business, and family lives within a new network of connections and virtual numbers.

Collectively we hold a vast repository of knowledge about how to do all sorts of things on the web: order products, conduct searches, interact in social networks. But when we try to share that knowledge with others, our options are limited. We can write down sequences of actions, and maybe illustrate them with screenshots or even screencasts, but it would be great if we could transfer our experiential knowledge more directly. Jon Udell interviews Tessa Lau who's working with colleagues on a project that aims to make that direct transfer possible.

Will social media kill intellectual property? Denise Howell speaks with Mark Sigal, CEO of vSocial, Inc., a social networking for video platform. He states that media is in a never ending evolutionary state and the ability of users to use copyrighted content. Sigal talks about vSocial's business strategy and how the company deals with problematic content as well as the nature of the law.