Mike Butcher

Here's a run-down of the 'tech 2.0' style events happening over the rest of the year in the UK and nearby. Email editor at bites media dot com to have your event considered for inclusion. Paid-for enhanced listings are available – please email sales at bitesmedia dot com

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Computer Gaming & Virtual Worlds Public Policy Workshop
Ren Reynolds will lead a discussion about the public policy issues bought about by computer games and virtual worlds.

Friday, May 25, 2007
The Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet
The RSA is looking to explore the political culture and norms that the internet has been instrumental in fostering, both in relation to centralised democratic politics, and more diffuse social and civic networks, including blogging.

Friday, May 25, 2007
Better Blogger Relations
How PR can engage with social media? A half-day workshop about the opportunities and threats associated with the latest developments in 'social media'"

[More events after the jump]

Friday, May 25, 2007
London Drupal Drop-In
Presentations will range from a complete introduction through to expert tips, and there will also be a number of Drupal experts available to answer your questions.

Friday, May 25, 2007
MiniBar6
For those who don't have time to attend a full BarCamp, some of us have come up with MiniBar, a chance to snaffle some free beer while discussing p2p, Creative Commons, web applications, social networking and general Web 2.0 mayhem & fandango.

Saturday, May 26, 2007 – Sunday, May 27, 2007
BarCamp Sheffield
BarCamp Sheffield is an open forum for all ages with an interest in all things Internet related.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Plotting the Brighton Digital Festival
We're holding a drop-in session to plot what events might go into the programme: next Tuesday 29 May, 5-8pm, upstairs at The Victory, 6 Duke St, BN1 1AH.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Brighton New Media Social
Long overdue BNM social. Same format as before – no speakers, nothing heavy, just a chance to meet other subscribers over a beer.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Geek Dinner with Becky Hogge from the Open rights group

Thursday, May 31, 2007 – Friday, June 1, 2007
Mobile Lifestyle Experience (MLX) 07
A combined annual exhibition and conference for the mobile
and media sectors.

Thursday, May 31, 2007
New Statesman New Media Awards
The New Statesman is once again looking for entries for its New Media Awards. Running annually since 1998, the awards celebrate the positive impact that digital media can have on society, democracy, politics and culture.

Jun 1, 2007
PSFK Conference London
PSFK presents a series of presentations and discussions by leading innovators over the course of a day speak to an audience from the creative, media and marketing communities.

June 5, 2007
Delivering the New PR 2.0
Social media is revolutionising the way we communicate. Speakers include social media PR expert, Neville Hobson – http://www.nevillehobson.com.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007
London Wiki Wednesday at Conchango
London Wiki Wednesdays are held once every two months on the first Wednesday of each month.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Sussex Geek Dinner
Geek dinner for programmers, web developers, bloggers, and anyone else into computers and gadgets.

Monday, June 11, 2007
Energy 2.0
Energy 2.0 is a new series of events in the UK bringing together the industry innovators, smart investors, forward looking NGOs, strong government leaders and media organisations who are playing in role in shaping the next era of energy generation, management and efficiency. Registration will be open very soon please email tony[@]mashupevent.com if you'd like to pre-register.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Geek Dinner with Jyri Engeström of Jaiku

Wednesday, June 13, 2007
NMK Forum 07
NMK's annual get-together to discuss the business and digital issues of the day, the year, the age! NMK Forum 07 will act as a melting pot of the essential strategies for commercial success in a digital age.

Saturday, June 16, 2007 – Sunday, June 17, 2007
Yahoo! BBC Hackday 2007
http://hackday.org has all the details – the wording is a bit 'official' but that's what happens when lawyers attack.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Chinwag Live: The Dark Side Of Social Media
Identity theft, scurrilous abuse, libel, stalking, scams and even violence… Social media, once hailed as the great new "Naked Conversation" where the planet would talk to itself in a spirit of open debate and companies would 'crowd source' fantastic new products, is starting to turn sour.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Mashup – On Location
Within this theme of location we will be exploring where and what the value of location is. 

Tuesday, June 26, 2007 – Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Online Marketing Show
From search to online ads, mobile to analytics, the show tackles all the challenges and issues surrounding online marketing, and shows you how to make interactive marketing and advertising campaigns work for their money. Brought to you by NMA and Marketing Week

Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Essential Web 2007
Essential Web 2007 is a unique one-day showcase of the most dynamic and disruptive web ventures today, with an exceptional mix of pioneering internet innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity that will change our world tomorrow.

Saturday, June 30, 2007
BarCampBelfast
BarCamp comes to Belfast. Come along and tech out..

Saturday, June 30, 2007
DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper (DDD) 5
There will be NO Microsoft speakers presenting, just speakers from the UK .NE

T developer community; although we will have some of the Microsoft UK Developer Team on hand to help out and chat to attendees.

Tuesday, July 12, 2007
Mashup – TV 2.0
Exploring the next phase of TV. 

Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Mobile Marketing
A full day workshop introducing you to the world of mobile marketing and how to apply it in the real world.

Sunday, November 4, 2007 – Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Flash on the Beach 2007
The Flash on the Beach 2007 conference will be the second time that over 40 of the world's most talented Flash designers, developers and artists will have been brought together to present the most creative, technical, inspirational awe-inspiring, educational and entertaining sessions across a wide range of subjects.

OpenBusiness has interviewed Robert Cook, one of the co-founders of Freebase, a startup which aims to become the “Wikipedia for data”. Revenues will come through charging thrid party firms to access the API and leverage its data. Uses this coudld be put to include working out how many dentists are in one mile vicinity, if they are next to tube stop and are specialists in teeth whitening. Web 2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly already likes the idea.

Key quotes:

“As a database, it lets people ask complex and extemporaneous questions like… “Find me all of the Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley who share a board membership and went to college together.â€? Up until a few years ago it was almost impossible to build a database like this. After several years of work, we’re now past the main technical hurdles to making such as system function at a worldwide scale.”

“We’re getting data from many places. Currently we have a team combining data about geography, government, school, business, restaurants, and products, as well as Wikipedia itself, which has data in a semi-structured form.”

“Freebase uses the very open “Creative Commons Attribution Licenseâ€? that allows anybody to use the data for any purpose, as long as they give attribution to the contributor. This license is more radically open than the more common “Creative Commons Noncommercial Licenseâ€? which is used by licensors wishing to provide their data only to academic researchers or hobbyists.”

Mobile handsets capable of displaying TV will hit 244 million by 2011, according to the Multimedia Research Group in the US. That’s double the number previously forecast for the uptake rate expected in 55 countries. Big leaps are expected in 2009 when 53 million broadcast TV enabled handsets are expected to ship. The bulk of the 80 mobile TV trials all over the world will become genuine services. Most will be good enough to watch for 30 minutes at a time. According to the report, service revenues from the global mobile TV market will exceed $24bn annually by 2011, with Western Europe likely to lead in revenue terms at over $10bn, followed by the USA and Canada at $7.7bn, and China and the Far East at $5bn. The question is, are technology start-ups positioned for this new media platform or are they still thinking in terms of the Web only?

Sony is going to allow PlayStation Portable (PSP) owners make VoIP and video calls using a camera and microphone which will hit the shops on 25 May. Gamers will be able to call other PSP owners and some BT phones. BT is developing the software, which was originally intended for the Nintendo handheld. The BBC reports the service will initially only be available in the UK and will only work on home or BT wireless hotspots, of which there are 2,000 so far. There are 24 million PSPs sold globally, eight million in the UK. Interestingly, this will be one of the first applications of BT’s 21 Century Network (21CN).

It’s not clear as yet, but it sounds like you will only be able to make calls if you are a BT customer already, meaning you’ll have to log-in with a customer ID to the network. We wait to be enlightened…

Watch out TIOTI.com? As Mashable reports, Denmark-based Tribler (note the .org domain) has created a BitTorrent client which works like Last.fm to find new media based on your downloading history. The non-profit group, a joint research project from Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam, already has $8 million in government funding. It's also about to be tested with video on-demand services for the Netherlands Public Broadcasting organisation:

Tribler is looking to be the ultimate aggregator that leverages the community as well as the wealth of content available on the net. That includes YouTube videos, and more content from other sources will be incorporated into Tribler’s service in the future. Tribler can be used for generic Torrent downloads and users P2P to discover other clients for exchanging metadata about downloaded files.

Suddenly it’s all about trying to be nice to bloggers and get them on your side. Do I smell the whiff of fear amongst media and brands? Trailing in the wake on an event I ran recently are two further events on the subject. A seminar on “Blogger Relations” to help PR types to understand engagement with the blogosphere better is being run this Friday, May 25th. There is more detail here and the booking form is here. Meanwhile BIMA is running an event this week on Online PR and social media. If your business is marketing, PR or involves any kind of engagement with opinion formers then I suggest you go to these events which are both pretty affordable and run by people I consider to be experts on the subject.

Plusnet is sponsoring a Web App mashup competition at BarCampSheffield later this month. There’s going to be a web app showcase (Plusnet is hosting) and a £1000 cash prize to the winner. Not bad. More info is online here and on Upcoming.

Technology World 07 is an unusual event in the UK as it brings 80 hand-picked foreign ICT buyers (big fish such as LG, Samsung, Nokia – as well as medium sized companies) to the UK for one-to-one meetings with UK ICT companies. It is an annual event and this year’s focus is on mobile, wireless and broadcasting, ICT applications for the information security sector, and ICT applications for the banking finance and insurance sector. It is highly subsidised by the UK Government (£40 for a day delegate ticket – a total steal) and a great opportunity for British SME’s to network and see what their competitors are up to and engage in a full seminar programme (with talks on entering new markets, growing your business with venture capitalists, protecting your intellectual property, and doing your market research). Check it out at Technologyworld07.com

Pluck, which re-packages social media content for publishers, broadcasters and major brands, is expanding beyond the US and is now on the hunt for a UK MD, according to a highly placed source.

Last year the Austin, Texas-based RSS and publisher services company, raised $7 million from Reuters, Austin Ventures and Mayfield and re-focused away from consumer-facing RSS services towards B2B products.

Their SiteLife Social Media suite generates user content via blogs, photos, comments, ratings and discussion groups to build the site traffic of publishers. The BlogBurst network re-publishes A-list blog content with publishers and MyNews enables publishers and portals to offer their users personalised news.

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason why there are more Germans in Second Life than Americans even though there are more American firms advertising inside the virtual world. Could it be down to better broadband in Germany? For now we'll have to ponder the results of a new Comscore study which finds that Second Life has a rapidly growing and global base of active residents.

The report found that about 1.3 million people ran the official software and logged-in to Second Life in March 2007, an increase of 46 percent in the number of active residents from January 2007.

On the face of it this sounds like rapid growth, but while the report found that only 207,000 people in the United States logged on to Second Life at least once in March, 'at least once' means they may never have come back – we just don't know.

At any rate, Second Life appears to hotter in Europe right now. In March, 61 percent of active Second Life residents were from Europe, compared to 19 percent from North America, and 13 percent from the Asia Pacific region. Perhaps predictably, 61 percent of residents were male while 39 percent were female.

In fact there are 209,000 Germans – 2,000 more than the US – inside Second Life. The UK is on 6 per cent, or 72,000.

This starts to get interesting when you realise that many of the businesses trumpeting a presence in Second Life are actually US-based: IBM, CNet, Reuters, American Apparel, Coldwell Banker etc. Where are all the German brands?

TechCrunch is unimpressed with these figures and compares them with the billions of pages and unique users experienced by MySpace users – for example – every day.

And it's also worth remembering what social software professor Clay Shirky wrote back in December last year:

"Second Life may be wrought by its more active users into something good, but right now the deck is stacked against it, because the perceptions of great user growth and great value from scarcity are mutually reinforcing but built on sand. Were the press to shift to reporting Recently Logged In as their best approximation of the population, the number of reported users would shrink by an order of magnitude; were they to adopt industry-standard unique users reporting (assuming they could get those numbers), the reported population would probably drop by two orders… There’s nothing wrong with a service that appeals to tens of thousands of people, but in a billion-person internet, that population is also a rounding error. If most of the people who try Second Life bail (and they do), we should adopt a considerably more skeptical attitude about proclamations that the oft-delayed Virtual Worlds revolution has now arrived."