Telephone Blog

Oreilly’s Web 2.0 Expo New York ’09 revolved around the approach of “Less is More”, and especially in these rough times for all, including the tech industry.

Speakers of this event showed up from both coasts and were distributed across multiple tracks ( user interaction design,…) and there was a good representation from Europe as well.

This blog post lists the links of interest that we took home with us after attending the Web 2.0 Expo and spent time going through once we were back in the office.

Follow the link below to get a copy of all presentations given at the conference. Almost all speakers made sure that they slideshare their talks.

http://www.web2expo.com/webexny2009/public/schedule/proceedings

Every speaker had his / her favorite book that they would highly recommend. We thought you might be interested in these books so we listed them here (we ended up placing a nice big order from Amazon ourselves – some were kindled and some were hard copies).

For more detailed information about the web2expo, a twitter search for the hashtag #w2e will provide ample info.

Speaking of twitter, we would love to connect with you there @telephonedotcom

Take care!

• Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces – Carolyn Snyder
• Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships – Daniel Goleman
• Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives – Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler
• The Whuffie Factor – Tara Hunt
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow (science fiction book that mentions Whuffie)
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures – Dan Rome
• Selling To The VP of NO – David Gray
• Envisioning Information – Edward R. Tufte
• Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Steve Krug (number one seller of user experience books)
• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust – Chris Brogan
• Prototyping: a Practitioner’s Guide (New!) – Todd Zaki Warfel
• The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall) – Clara Shih
• Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back – Douglas Rushkoff
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini
• Rape in Cyberspace – Julian Dubell (article)
• Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (collaboration of many authors)
• Confessions of a Public Speaker – Scott Berkun
• Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful – Beth Noveck
• Designing Interactions – Bill Moggridge
• Content First: Why Content Strategy Will Save the Web – Kristina Halvorson (PDF)
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – Chip Heath
• Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web – Jessy James Garett

The Mobile Data Collection for Social Action conference that took place in Amman, Jordan, focused on how to best put to use recent technology to benefit causes spanning multiple developing countries.

One of the technology moves in that direction are UNICEF Innovation, who have been growingly working Social Media into their areas of reach. Their incentive is to facilitate communication between helpers, and those who need a helping hand, by crowd-sourcing it. What they do is enable informative SMSes to be sent to or from villages to target specific cases such as nutrition, health, AIDS, and more. This media of communication has greatly contributed to archive knowledge of what is actually happening, and hence, facilitated aid and contribution to these causes.

Multiple platforms were presented in the conference, including case studies, and actual data:

1. RapidSMS
2. Ushahidi
3. Dev Info
4. Sharek 961
5. Souktel
6. Snap ‘N Share
7. Grassroots Mapping
8. NiJel
9. Al Jazeera Mobile Reporting
10. ComCare
11. Supply Intranet
12. Geo Chat
13. Development Seed
14. Apstrata
15. FrontLineSMS

Participants of this conference were from different rich backgrounds. The body of people was collectively from different specialties, all with the intention of alleviating developing countries.

Please visit the following link for a list of TechFair contributors:

http://mobiledatainnovation.pbworks.com/Tech-Fair

Please visit the following link for a list of IgniteTalk presenters, their presentations, and videos of their IgniteTalks:

http://mobiledatainnovation.pbworks.com/IgniteTalks

It was our privilege to participate as Telephone.com. We would like to thank Katrin Verclas, the MobileActive team, and UNICEF Innovation for organizing this conference. We attribute great importance to our Corporate Social Responsibility program and are looking into the best ways to continue to collaborate soon with the different involved parties in order to bring their development, and ability to reach, onward.