The Architecture of Participation

A Panel Discussion

Web 2.0
45 minutes, 20.7mb, recorded 2004-10-07
O'Reilly, Anker, Behlendorf and Vermeulen
How do you take advantage of the new Web 2.0 landscape to build your business? How can you make your customers your evangelists -- or better yet, how can you let your customers build your business altogether? What are the roles of new communication tools like blogs, RSS, and social networks? A panel of innovators in the blogging, photography, and retail businesses point the way. The panel includes:
  • Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • Andrew Anker, Executive Vice President, Six Apart
  • Brian Behlendorf, Founder & CTO, CollabNet
  • Bob Morgan, Head of WW Business Development, Kodak Mobile Service
  • Allan Vermeulen, Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, Web Services Enginerring, Amazon

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Tim O'Reilly is founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. In addition to publishing pioneering books like Ed Krol's The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog (selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century), O'Reilly has also been a pioneer in the popularization of the Internet. O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.

O'Reilly continues to pioneer new content developments on the Web via its O'Reilly Network affiliate, which also manages sites such as Perl.com and XML.com. O'Reilly's conference arm hosts the popular Perl Conference, the Open Source Software Convention, and the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

Tim O'Reilly has been an activist for internet standards and for Open Source software. He has led successful public relations campaigns on behalf of key internet technologies, helping to block Microsoft's 1996 limits on TCP/IP in NT Workstation, organizing the " summit" of key free software leaders where the term "Open Source" was first widely agreed upon, and, most recently, organizing a series of protests against frivolous software patents. He received Infoworld's Industry Achievement Award in 1998 for his advocacy on behalf of the Open Source community.

O'Reilly has written numerous books on computer topics, most notably UNIX Text Processing (with Dale Dougherty; Howard Sams, 1987), Managing UUCP and USENET (with Grace Todino; no longer in print), The X Window System Users' Guide (with Valerie Quercia), and The X Toolkit Intrinsics Programming Manual (with Adrian Nye), UNIX Power Tools (with Jerry Peek and Mike Loukides) and Windows XP in a Nutshell (with David Karp and Troy Mott).

As an O'Reilly Media editor, he has had a major hand in the development of many of the company's other titles, including UNIX in a Nutshell, Programming Perl, sendmail, Essential System Administration, and The Cathedral and the Bazaar. O'Reilly also conceived an award-winning series of travel books, published by O'Reilly affiliate Travelers' Tales.

Andrew Anker is Executive Vice President, Corporate Development for blog platform developer Six Apart, creators of MovableType and TypePad. Prior to joining Six Apart, Anker was a General Partner for five years at August Capital, where he invested in such consumer facing internet companies as Tickle, Evite, and Listen.com.

A veteran of two start-ups prior to his venture career, Anker was the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wired Digital, Inc., a pioneering Internet news and media organization which launched the first advertising supported web site (HotWired) in 1994. Anker led Wired Digital from its founding through 1998 and built it into one of the 20 largest networks of web sites.

Anker created and still contributes to VentureBlog and has written for Wired and Business 2.0 magazines. In 1997, he was profiled in the book "Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business."

Brian Behlendorf founded CollabNet, with O'Reilly & Associates, in July 1999. The company provides tools and services based on open source methods. Before launching CollabNet, Behlendorf was co-founder and CTO of Organic Online, a Web design and engineering consultancy located in San Francisco. During his five years at Organic, Behlendorf helped create Internet strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. During that time, he co-founded and contributed heavily to the Apache Web Server Project, co-founded and supported the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) effort, and assisted several IETF working groups, particularly the HTTP standardization effort. Before starting Organic, Behlendorf was the first Chief Engineer at Wired Magazine and later HotWired, one of the first large-scale publishing Web sites.

Behlendorf is President of the Apache Software Foundation. He also serves as a Technical Advisor to Critical Path (CPTH) and Topica.

Bob Morgan develops and oversees the major business relationships between Kodak Mobile Services and mobile operators, handset manufacturers and wireless technology providers, globally. He has been integral in working with the team broadly to define a compelling service as well as craft key strategic partnerships.

Prior to Eastman Kodak Company, Morgan was Vice President, Business Development for MessageVine, a leading provider of mobile instant messaging and presence solutions. In this role, he initiated and managed relationships with major wireless communications firms and strategic planning for the company. Prior to MessageVine, Morgan served in a variety of business and channel development roles for Macromedia, Inc. and Oracle.

Allan Vermeulen is Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Web Services Engineering for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) group of Amazon Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Vermeulen oversees the building of web services that allow third-party developers to access Amazon.com's technology platform and product data.

Before joining the AWS group in 2003, Vermeulen ran the Amazon.com Platform Technologies team which is responsible for the company's technology architecture. Vermeulen was previously Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Development at Rogue Wave Software, which builds reusable software components and services for application development.

This is a presentation delivered at the Web 2.0 Conference held in San Francisco, CA, October 5-7, 2004. Our thanks go to MediaLive International and O'Reilly Media, the producers of Web 2.0, for permission to bring you this session, one of many from Web 2.0 here on IT Conversations.


This free podcast is from our Web 2.0 Conference series.