mesh conference, Author at mesh

Mar 12

An all-star lineup and a special guest

By mesh conference mesh news, mesh09

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the lineup at mesh ’09 in April, but we are pleased to announce another very special one: a surprise appearance by Toronto mayor David Miller, who will be doing a one-on-one interview on April 8th, the second day of the conference (there’s a full version of the two-day schedule here — and be sure to register soon, because tickets are going quickly).

Mayor Miller will share with mesh attendees some of his thoughts on the idea of an “open city,” with all that that implies about issues such as civic transparency, data sharing and connecting directly with citizens. Toronto has made some major strides in that area recently, including some ongoing steps by the Toronto Transit Commission to open up and share its data, as well as the Mayor’s own use of Twitter to connect directly with residents.

This conversation with Mayor Miller fits right in with one of the themes of mesh ’09: the rise of what might be called “politics 2.0” — a move towards more transparency, more direct civic engagement and the use of social-media tools as a way of empowering citizens to speak out about a host of important issues. Much of this wave is due to the success of the Obama campaign in the U.S., and that is a topic one mesh panel will be discussing in detail: how the campaign took shape, what it is like to cover the new politics from a media perspective, and what it suggests about how politics as a whole is changing.

Moderated by former Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar, the panel includes top political reporter Jonathan Martin from Politico.com — one of North America’s leading new media entities — and Micah Sifry, co-founder of TechPresident.com, which has been tracking and analyzing the changing nature of politics and the Web since Howard Dean first discovered the power of the blogosphere.

We also have a panel that will look at the increasing use of the Web and social media as tools for advocacy and citizen engagement on civic issues. Moderated by Darren Barefoot, the panel includes Duarte Da Silva, one of the co-organizers of the massively successful Hohoto charity event and Sarah Prevette — who ran the Toronto version of the international charitable event known as Twestival.

If community management is your focus, we have a panel that will tackle that issue head-on — a panel including George Tsiolis, founder of the small-cap investing community Agoracom, as well as Howard Forums founder Howard Chui and Keith Bilous, co-founder of ICUC, a Winnipeg-based company that handles community management for the CBC and CTV. There’s also a panel on word-of-mouth as a marketing tool that includes Sean Moffitt and Freshbooks community manager Saul Colt.

In the media stream, meanwhile, we have a panel featuring Gabe Rivera — founder of the popular tech aggregator Techmeme — as well as Rachel Nixon, news director of Vancouver-based NowPublic.com, and David Cohn. David has been involved with several “citizen journalism” ventures such as the OffTheBus project with The Huffington Post, and is the founder of a new “crowd-funded” journalism venture called Spot.us.

And in the business stream at mesh, we will have a powerhouse panel featuring Paul Kedrosky — whose Infectious Greed blog is one of the most popular finance websites, and who advises several venture funds in the U.S. — and Howard Lindzon, a venture capitalist and investor who is also the co-founder of the video blog Wallstrip (which was sold to CBS) and the investment network Stocktwits.com.

There’s more — much more — including a special one-on-one interview with David Usher, one of Canada’s most social-media savvy musicians; a panel on managing your advertising buy online; a panel looking at the risks and benefits of developing for platforms such as Facebook and the iPhone; workshops on dealing with iTunes as a content provider, monetizing your video content and managing your online persona.

And of course we have our four excellent keynotes: Kiva.org co-founder Jessica Jackley, Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, Ford’s Scott Monty of Ford and Mike Masnick of Floor64 and Techdirt.com.

Please think about getting a ticket soon — they tend to sell out quickly, and we’d love to see you there. Mesh on!

Feb 26

Love0

All Local, All the Time

By mesh conference mesh09

One of the more interesting developments within the online media landscape over the past few years has been the emergence of Web sites focused on providing news, information and insight about the local scene.

At a time when newspapers are struggling to find their way online, city-focused sites have established a growing presence by giving people an extensive amount of coverage about local politics, arts, culture, sports, restaurants, entertainment and architecture.

For anyone engaged in their community, these sites are a great resource to find out what’s happening and connect with other people.

Given how vibrant and exciting this market has become, we’re excited about a mesh media panel featuring three of the most popular local sites in Canada. The line-up includes:

– Tim Shore, the publisher of BlogTO.com
– David Topping, the editor of Torontoist
– Matthew Blackett, publisher, creative director and one of the founders of Spacing magazine, which runs Spacing.ca.

The focus on the panel, which happen on April 7, is whether hyper-local works and, if so, why it is resonating with people.

Tickets for mesh can be purchased here.

Feb 25

Love0

meshU Management Magic

By mesh conference meshU

While there’s a strong focus at meshU about the design and development of online applications, the third stream – management – is also important element as a part of corporate ecosystems. You can have the best players in the world but if the manager or coach doesn’t do a good job, it can be difficult to be successful.

This year, our management line-up is looking really good with speakers offering some different perspective on the key to success. Whether it ‘s being able to implement agile development projects, bootstrap a start-up, or find and keep the right people, you’ll get the insight you need to do business better.

Our speakers include:

– Dominic Bortolussi from The Working Group, who will speak about “Experiments on selling agile development projects. Are Estimates the new ‘Spec’?”
– Carl Mercier from Defensio on “Lessons learned: How I founded, bootstrapped, grew and sold my Web start-up”
– Daniel Debow from Rypple on “Finding and Keeping Great Start-Up People”

You can purchase meshU tickets here, and check out the speaker line-up.