Web 2.0 EXPO Tokyo Wrap Up

While it has been a few days since the O’Reilly Web2.0 Expo in Tokyo ended, the events which followed, including buzz around meeting the Tokyo Web 2.0 community and Mashup developers, hasn’t stopped since. It’s been great!

But first things come first. Friday morning we snuck into the morning keynote as Tim was already in discussion with Evan Williams, Co-founder of Twitter. Evan was cool and casual about the meeting and relayed the story of how he went from no money to Odeo (then lost his way), to starting with lots of money and Twitter, now still trying to find his way. Speaking to some Japanese participants afterwards, they just rroshook their heads in disbelief. How can someone be that successful in America with no business plan and no idea of where things are going? It was a defining cultural difference between how Web 2.0 is done abroad, and how it is done here in Japan. VERY differently.

The next presentation was by Overture Services Inc. - a relatively new marketing company in Japan. While the presenter was the first keynote in Japanese (which finally allowed me to where the nifty transmitter to listen to the simultaneous translation - very UN like), I was captivated by how in depth and comprehensive her analysis was on coordinating a full assault campaign in print, radio, tv AND online. She clearly defined the difference between what the campaign should be on the web as well as the SEPARATE campaign required for the keitai or mobile phone. The detail left me with NO DOUBT Japan not only is mature in this arena, but is far ahead then any fancy PR company overseas. These people are not EXPERIMENTING with this technology. They have already EXPERIENCED what has worked and what hasn’t. If you company is wondering HOW to do it, connect with these guys. They’ll save you the trial and error.

The last Keynote Speaker put the earset back on the table as we switched back to English. Scott Dietzen of Zimbra took the stage and very slowly, clearly and carefully explained what his product was and the value it has in the market place. I noticed a real difference in the way Scott was received compared to the previous day’s speakers. Scott’s live demo of Zimbra share simply and quickly what the product does without too many “let’s cross our fingers” and “oops, that didn’t work.. anyways…”. When a presenter gets nervous, so does the audience. Scott had also “announced” the sale of Zimbra to Yahoo which sounded very exciting and almost like a “scoop”.. if it wasn’t for the fact the sale had taken place the month before.

The afternoon saw a number of great presentations, both in English and Japan. Some of these sessions had the translating transmitters available, some didn’t. We caught Joe Keller’s presentation of Kapow which I thought was a great product, and Joe’s presentation VERY informative. I was particularly blown away by the adoption of REST, an international standard of interchanging information from the Internet to be placed live into static objects such as a spreadsheet. I asked Joe when REST had become a standard and he said about 9 months ago. I really felt out of the loop but appreciative to be brought up to speed.

The final session we caught in the day was the one we had been waiting for since my article in early October. Sun Microsystems hosts an excellent and unique contest which brings out the development community to create wonderful Mashups with Web2.0 technology. And what better event to announce the winner than at the Expo?! Yuki Naotori accepted his $10k prize and used the opportunity to present his enthusiasm and encouragement to the whole developer community to get out there and share their creativity and skills… not only to Japan, but to the rest of the world as well. I was blown away by Yuki’s style and humor and was hopeful his message was heard by the room filled mostly with other Japanese developers.

While we tried our best to catch other presentation and chat with as many of the delegates we could, we had to dash and prepare for the evening’s blognation Japan Launch in Tokyo.

More on that to come.

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