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Apr 08

mesh society keynote: Joseph Menn

By mesh conference mesh10

For many people, the first real wake-up call over issues of online security came in the aftermath of 9-11, when Richard Clarke, White House cyber security adviser from October 2001 to March 2003, spoke out about the dangers to US security from online attack. And if not then, certainly as concerns about online identity theft have grown from a murmur to a roar over the past few years.

I’ve been interested in this issue for quite a while, and for quite some time have thought that we were approaching or were already at a critical point – the point where the bad guys were finally better at it than the good guys, and where online attacks, including by independent operators, finally became an governmentally-sponsored means of state and industrial espionage.

It would be hard to argue now that we are not at that point. Recent events particularly have brought to public light the astonishing breadth and depth of espionage and criminal activity now carried out online.

Where are we, how did we get here and what happens next? We’re fascinated by these questions, and delighted that this year we have an opportunity to dig in with FT reporter Joseph Menn, author of Fatal System Error, a fascinating investigative exploration of crime online. Please join us at mesh for Joe’s insights into this subterranean world.

Apr 05

Love0

mesh media keynote: Chris Thorpe

By mesh conference mesh news

We’re pretty excited about having Chris Thorpe do the media keynote for mesh 2010. Chris comes to us from The Guardian, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, where he is the Developer Advocate in charge of the paper’s Open Platform. This puts him at the forefront of one of the most fascinating frontiers in the media industry: namely, the transformation of traditional media entities such as newspapers into digital-information services that distribute their content in a variety of different ways online. And sometimes that involves experimenting too: an offhand remark during a lunch presentation by Clay Shirky, for example, recently led to the creation of a “ChatRoulette for news” called Guardian Roulette.

The Guardian’s Open Platform is based on an open API (i.e, application programming interface) similar to that provided by Google, Twitter, Facebook and other companies provide, which allows developers and programmers to use The Guardian’s content in a variety of ways, and build it into third-party services at no cost. The New York Times also has an open API, but it only provides access to a small part of the text in each story, whereas The Guardian’s provides the full text of every story.

In a blog post last year, British MP Tom Watson wrote:

I’m not bowled over much these days. But Guardian Open Platform is a chasmic leap into the future. It is a work of simplistic beauty that I’m sure will have a dramatic impact in the news market. The Guardian is already a market leader in the online space but Open Platform is revolutionary. It makes all of their major competitors look timid. Governments should be doing this. Governments will be doing it. The question is how long will it take us to catch up. (British MP Tom Watson)

Chris gave a presentation last year at the Future of Web Apps conference, which is embedded below, in which he talked about how The Guardian’s use of an open platform is “building the stacks of a mutualised newspaper.”

Building the stacks for a mutualised newspaper

View more documents from The Guardian Open Platform.

There’s also an interview with Chris here:

Interview with Chris Thorpe (The Guardian) from Publishr on Vimeo.

Mar 11

Love0

Why Mike McDerment’s Stoked About meshU

By mesh conference meshU

I’m excited – let me just put that out there.

I’ve spent the past seven years building FreshBooks (a Web business), and the past five years involved as one of the organizers of the mesh conference series. Over the past three years, I have also played a key part in organizing mesh University (or meshU, a one-day conference for people who want to learn more about building online businesses.

So why am I excited? Let me tell you about this year’s meshU line-up.

First, there are three important component you have to get right when building an online business: the design, development and management (of things like sales and marketing). This year, meshU will be hosting top-notch talent – people have helped build kick-ass Web apps. You may not have heard of them all but you don’t want to miss out on what they have to say.

Building a dev team? Who better to learn from than the chief architect who took Digg from nothing to something – Joe Stump, who just struck out on this own.

What about low cost marketing activities to acquire users? Have you heard of services such as Box.net, Xobni, or logmein? These services are all known for having touch-less sales cycles, and many are using freemium products. As well, they are among the most successful products that aren’t called Google, Yahoo!, Facebook or Twitter.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that one person had key role in making all these products viral by helping to design their registration processes: Sean Ellis. Don’t miss your chance to learn from Sean.

While we’re on the topic of sales, let me tell you about one of my favorite entrepreneurs. He’s hugely successful and you’ve probably never heard of him. He’s Isaac Garcia, the founder and CEO of Central Desktop, a massively successful online project management service. You may not know about Central Desktop but Isaac has built one hellevua business that’s based on profitable high growth. He’s going to teach you how to run an inside sales team. For any venture capitalists out there, get your portfolio companies to this one.

This is the first installment of the meshU lineup. It’s just the tip of the iceberg as we haven’t put the spotlight on the designers coming. Please pass along this post along to anyone you know who wants to build a Web business. At $289, meshU is a steal for this kind of high-quality content – get your ticket now.