Here are a few of the events throughout the week:

• Wine 2.0 Expo – Nov. 18 – $45-125 – Webster Hall
• NY Entrepreneur Week - variety of events around Manhattan throughout the week – price varies based on startup stage or investor level
• Web 2.0 Expo – all week – Javits Center – prices vary depending on level of access from $845-1995 – Expo Pass is free
• Future of Web Design – Nov 17 – New World Stages – $395
• Drinks4Startups – November 18 – Free
• Interop – all week – Javits Center – prices vary depending on level of access from $845-2995 – Expo Pass is free
• Diggnation – watch the Diggnation show live – Nov 17 – free
• Brandhackers “Google AdPlanner for Social Media Presentation” - November 16 – free
• Social Media Mixologists Holiday Kickoff Mixer - Nov 17 – free
• WordCamp NYC – Baruch College, CUNY - Nov 13 – free

Send me any events you would like to add to the above list. I expect all of you to get out there – at a minimum take all the free expo passes and mingle. If you would like to meet – drop me a line. We can chat about your startup, my startup, the industry, the subway, etc.

Please note that CN is listed as a media sponsor of some of the events throughout the week.

With that said, the winner is:

Deanna R from Buffalo, New York

If for some reason Deanna cannot fulfill the duties of winner, then the alternate winner is Rajiv D from San Francisco. I will be in contact with Deanna shortly to confirm her attendance.

A few of you asked about covering the event as press for CN and I will follow up with ya’all in the coming week. Thanks to everyone who participated!

The Web 2.0 Expo will be held in San Francisco this year and is just a month away. CN is a media sponsor of the event and I was able to get the O’Reilly and TechWeb teams to give me one full conference pass to give away to a CN Reader. If you would like the pass, submit your information and on February 15, 2009 we will pick a winner.

If you would like to cover the event for CN, let me know as well. Check out our previous Web 2.0 Expo coverage.

Enter Here for the conference pass by sending in your contact info.

Last night at the Eluma party I hosted, I spoke about the slow moving trend to useful apps instead of more social networks or more ability to poke people. It just so happens that useful apps are ones that people will actually pay for and could do very well in the current economic market.

After my talk, several people noted that Tim O’Reilly noted something similar in his keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it so here are a few recaps on Drama 2.0, Profy and More Ramblings.

Last night I checked out one of my favorite bloggers, Jan Chipchase, who has an excellent essay titled, "A Little Switch With a Big Impact". The switch Jan refers to is the "airplane mode" switch on the iPhone. The switch basically turns off all of the wireless connectivity functions of the iPhone so you can utilize the offline functions while on a plane. It’s a must read essay.

Jan looks at the issues of disconnecting your mobile for a number of reasons. There’s the usual reason of going into flight, but there are many other reasons including wanting to be offline. Some turn on airplane mode to extend the iPhone 3G battery life. One of the more interesting parts of the essay looks at how mobile devices are used when they are offline and should developers be considering this as they build their apps.

Jan notes, "What can you do with a connected/communications device when it has no connectivity? Again we can turn to emerging markets to learn from the usage behaviours of pre-pay customers who have run out of credit – they continue to use the phone as a status symbol, a clock, games machine etc. The bottom line – never equate ownership of a connected device with use of its primary function particularly when use of the primary function costs money."

I leave you with this… NY-based Meetup has created a campaign named, "unplug your friends". While the campaign pushes the use of Meetup (they make money on going outside), the video below certainly hits home for many people.

Spark Networks has 30+ dating sites and most of them are targeted towards a group. Gregory notes that people who are looking for serious relationships are seeking targeted networks. The three largest dating sites in their network are Jdate, BlackSingles and ChristianMingle. They believe that they are different because of the targeting, most of their competition tries to be all things to all people.

Spark Networks runs over 800 singles events a year. Revenue comes from subscriptions and advertising. Jdate subscriptions begin at $39/month and for those browsing the site, advertising is displayed. Gregory noted that ads are displayed to subscribers as well but said "most" of these ads are house ads promoting events and other services. I wonder if any Web 2.0 startups could get away with charging a subscription fee and displaying any advertising at all.

Spark Networks is a public company and reported second quarter 2008 revenue of $15 million with a net income of $1.6 million.

As for success rates, 60 Jdate subscribers a day report back to Spark Networks that they found their soulmate on Jdate.

I asked about comparisons to PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. Gregory said that PlentyOfFish actually drives traffic to sites in his network because of the ad model they employ. As for eHarmony, Gregory believes not everyone wants to fill out a 350 question survey. Jdate allows members to search and utilizes a basic survey to help align members.

In terms of what’s new on their network of sites, Gregory shared two new premium features. The first is an option to highlight your profile in search results. This works similar to highlighting an auction on eBay or a job listing on Indeed. The other update is featured profile. This allows members to push their profile to people they want to meet on search results. Let’s assume you are looking for a 30 year old woman with 2 children but she is looking for a 20 year old man with no children. Using this new option, you could force your profile into her search results basically saying "hey look at me, I want you!". On Jdate, this feature is $10/month.

The online singles market continues to be a huge moneymaker for Spark Networks and the other sites in the market. As long as people want to find that special someone, there will always be someone willing to pay to find that person.

Much of this exploration has lead me to believe that the most powerful “pregnant” web concept is the simple idea that the web should be a web of objects, and should become less a web of text or pages. Indeed the web has been moving in that direction, but the road map has not been entirely clear.

Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C have pioneered the broad outlines of the concept of objectifying the web with the ideas embodied in the W3C semantic web specifications for RDF, OWL, and SPARQL technologies. But in truth, most developers have no idea what the term the “semantic web” means and are totally unfamiliar with RDF, OWL and SPARQL.

Despite the fact that the officially proposed terminology and methodologies have not quite taken hold, the idea of “objects not pages” most definitely has. Application developers are creating APIs to allow people to access their data objects, and other application developers are using those APIs to consume data objects. And because the need is so great, when developers do not make their data objects easily accessible, other applications are going as far as scraping web pages, in effect manually objectifying source sites.

And so, while the most common term for the idea of “objects not pages” has been the “semantic web”, I would really like to get everyone around the lesser known but more encompassing term, Web 3.0.

I know the idea of glomming onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon rubs some people the wrong way, but we need a “big tent” term to describe stuff that is so important, and the truth is the word “semantic web” just doesn’t cut it. In fact, in my informal surveys, it almost universally turns people off.

But terminology aside, the concepts here are really important and are building momentum. We must, as a developer/entrepreneur community begin to focus on best practices for this object-oriented web, and to discuss its broader implications. The emerging mashups and semantic applications are compelling, but they are just the beginning. Facebook and its social graph is really the first major Web 3.0 application, so make no mistake, these ideas are powerful.

Because I believe this is such an important mission, and because I strongly believe it needs more shepherding, I have committed to doing my part to move these ideas forward. I am co-chairing the Jupiter Web 3.0 Conference Series, which launches in Santa Clara next month. My co-chair is Dan Grigorovici who writes lots of interesting stuff on this space at web3beat.

The Web 3.0 Conference is the first in what will be a regular series that we hope will become *the* gathering ground for talking about how we can, should, and will approach these next generation issues. And indeed since I have been thinking a lot about these issues I will be writing a lot about them in the next few weeks.

Particularly if you are in the Bay Area, but really no matter where you are, if you want to get a view into where the next generation of the web is going and how you can leverage it, this will be the place to be. But whether you come to the conference or not, I am hoping to spark a discussion about moving the ball forward. Needless to say I have my own ideas, which I will be sharing, both in person at the conference and on these pages in the next few weeks, but this should be a multi-way discussion. If you blog about this issue and let me know I will link to you in upcoming posts, and I will try to respond as well.

Let the Web 3.0 Era begin!

Web 3.0 Conference, October 16th & 17th, Santa Clara, CA

Check out other Sightix reviews on Alt Search Engines and Webware. Here’s Ari explaining how Sightix works when trying to find models like Bar Rafaeli:

Here’s Josh to explain how BeenVerified works:

There’s no Google, no Yahoo, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace. Friendster is there, but it’s Friendster Asia. There are a good number of hosting companies. As much as I love TripAdvisor, nothing they do is Web 2.0. Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM have large booths, Amazon has a tiny booth for AWS. There are several companies which seem to be looking for developers. I saw Present.ly, Mzing, Twing in the main expo hall which could be some of the only companies that could even be remotely considered Web 2.0.

There is a "long tail pavillion" which means $3k for a tiny, no space to move table. A variety of startups are in that area – if you make it over to the event, those tables are on the far right of the expo hall. Let’s not even talk about the lack of NY-based companies in the main expo hall.

I’ve attended over 100 events at the Javits Center over the last decade and the companies in the expo could have been from 1998, 2001 or now. As I spoke with over 50 people, most echoed my comments. Most of us assume that the cost for a booth much have been too high for startups to afford. But this is the first tech expo I’ve seen in a long time that had no Yahoo or Google presence.

Here are some of the photos and check out the full set on Flickr – the videos will be posted later today.

Monday

• Social Ad Summit – all day
• Interop – all day
• NextWeb – 6:15pm
• BrandHackers iPhone Advertising – 7pm
• IgniteNYC – 7:15pm

Tuesday

• Interop – all day
• Web 2.0 Expo – all day
• GirlsInTech Launch – 6pm
• Web2NY – 6pm
• TechSetNY – 6pm

Wednesday

• Interop – all day
• Web 2.0 Expo – all day

Thursday

• Interop – all day
• Web 2.0 Expo – all day
• OMMA Global – all day
• Fashion Meeting – 6pm
• Eluma Party – I am hosting this party, awesome Vodka I hear and Flip camera giveaways – email me if you’d like to attend.

Friday

• Interop – all day
• Web 2.0 Expo – all day
• OMMA Global – all day

Thanks to everyone who participated!

You know CN will be at the event in full force and I look forward to meeting everyone and learning about your products and services. I have some exciting surprises in store for ya’all as well.

Enter Here for the conference pass.

So in this post a quick guide to holding a great and business successful party. This is not a guide to having the most fun at a party you hold, rather it is some advice about how to hold an event which furthers your business goals (and probably does not risk negative press on Valleywag).

1. Know your business goal(s) around the party. Why are you throwing a party? A seemingly simple question but one I suspect many don’t ask themselves. Is the party mostly for your team (and perhaps your investors, clients and partners?) If that is the case then it probably shouldn’t be a public party and I would strongly consider not holding it during a conference or event unless that is the only opportunity for the whole team (and/or for your partners, clients and investors to be in town). If, however, your goals are publicity, recruiting, business development/sales then you may indeed be well served by a more publicly announced party. Likely you will still restrict attendance in some manner (conference badge holders, free but required RSVP, flyer/ticket from your booth) which allows you to manage the crowds (to a degree) and keep your party focused.
2. Pick a venue that is appropriate at both the low and high ends of your estimated attendance. Last night many of the parties were in venues which were too small, resulting in events which were packed and generally of limited utility for anyone attending. In contrast  the parties in larger, more appropriately sized venues seemed full even when starting, but accommodated the crowds as they arrived. The ideal venues have multiple bars (if you are serving), easy access to food, and spaces to expand into as the crowd grows (nightclubs with back rooms/VIP sections often are great here.
3. No matter your purpose in throwing the party your employees and brand should be omnipresent. Everyone who attends "your" event (even if co-sponsored with partners) should leave having had an encounter with your brand many times over the evening. Ideally they should have had great conversations with your team, seen your branding around the event, perhaps left with something to remember your brand and the party. Last night at nearly half of the eight parties I stopped by or attended the sponsor’s brand and employees were not present. At many if employees were there I had no way of telling (this is a great time to break out the company schwag or a least train employees on greeting people (and/or to use & enforce the use of nametags)
4. Alcohol is always popular but great parties also have great food. This is almost universally true, even late night parties are enhanced by arranging for food (one party last night arranged for a Taco Truck to be outside). Great food is not terribly hard to arrange for, but does take some local contacts, the right venue, and some thought.
5. Balance the light and noise to your goals for the event. Some parties are about the dancing and mingling, so a great DJ, nightclub lighting and loud music are fine. But many business and trade show related parties are about more than just blowing off steam and celebrating, if you want to recruit, to make business contacts and develop sales or partner leads, then people have to be able to talk with each other, to see each other, to pull others into a conversation and make introductions. This can be as simple as working with the DJ to focus the evening, quieter music early only breaking out the dance grooves and beats as the evening grows later.
6. Offer great, non-alcoholic drink options. Yes people drink and love to drink for free. But many people (myself included) don’t drink all that much or don’t drink heavily when working (and attending business networking events at conferences is or should be for any entrepreneur working). If you offer great options (not just soda or juice for mixed drinks) even people who would often drink likely will slow down. And many people also appreciate the underlying message of moderation – that as a business your event is focused on business, not just on drinking. Often as well you can have creative drinks with alcoholic or non-alcoholic options. I personally love a mojito without the alcohol (fresh mint, lime juice, sugar what’s not to like).

How to have great food on a startup budget.

As an event organizer whether for an evening event or a multiday conference I always focus on having the best possible food for my attendees, very often food is the largest cost at an event I organize, but that said I almost always still manage to feed people very well on less than many events spend to provide not very good food.

1. Great food starts with your choice of venue. Many venues are already serving food (restaurants, bars, hotels) and this typically means you are restricted to food which they provide. So evaluate the venues accordingly, if you wouldn’t eat there regularly it is rarely the case the food they prepare for a party will be very good. One minor exception you can sometimes use – some venues will allow you to bring outside food which they don’t serve. For example a bar that only serves appetizers might allow you to bring in a cake and other dessert items.
2. Ask a venue to stretch a bit. Not completely outside of their comfort zone but see if they can do dishes that are more reflective of the ability of their kitchen than you might typically find at any event (i.e. not just "fried dough" or "meat on a stick").
3. Always have great options for vegetarians and both sweet and savory items. Whether a pre-dinner afternoon mixer, an evening networking event, or a late night party mixing up sweets and savory items is always good. Offering great vegetarian options is both accommodating of many people with a range of dietary restrictions – not just vegetarians but anyone who keeps Kosher or Hallal, many people on diets, or many people with food allergies and a way to stretch your budget.
4. On the issue of allergies have detailed descriptions on signage and well trained servers. Many people have serious food allergies most critical of which is nuts. A side effect of asking a venue to have good signage is often selecting better food and venues. I would avoid any venue that is serving items which were reheated or prepackaged. Well trained servers if you have passed appetizers will be able to answer any questions about the dishes they are serving and will set of professional tone for your event.
5. Costco, while tempting, is easily spotted. If you are holding an event at your own offices or which you are catering yourself (i.e. at a venue which allows you to bring in the food) it is often tempting and seemingly easiest and cheapest to make a massive run to Costco, buy a bunch of bulk packs of veggies, brownies, fruit and assorted other items and call it a party. Far better, I think, is to work with a great, local restaurant or caterer. For not much more in many cases you can get amazing, locally prepared from fresh ingredients food which will impress your guests. If entertaining in a city you are not overly familiar with look for nearby local restaurants, especially ones that take their food seriously without being too expensive. Here in San Francisco many of the smaller restaurants in the Ferry Building which is a local food market emphasizing quality and local, organic items, offer catering. These are places that focus mostly on a lunchtime crowd and can offer great options for a lunch or afternoon event. I’ve ordered boxes of fresh fruits from a local CSA as the afternoon snacks at a conference I ran. Everyone loved the seasonal fruits and local nuts. Healthy, tasty and not, in fact, all that expensive (<$250 for enough food for 150+ people)
6. Think about the format as you select dishes with the caterer. Even if that caterer is in fact yourself, think about the logistics of eating the foods you serve. Ideally most items should take only one hand (though if you must have "meat on a stick" try to make it creative and tastier than the rubber chicken/dried beef all too often seen). Also try to avoid dishes that risk serious mess or frustration while eating – a common failing here is "something on very crunchy bread" which are often served but rarely enjoyed. Another common failure are dishes that require a lot of coordination – salads while tempting often require a plate, utensils and a solid surface on which to eat from. For a standing cocktail party this is often awkward.
7. A bit basic, but think about cleanup. Have strategically placed garbage and recycling bins which are emptied over the course of the evening as needed. Or if mostly a served event, have clearly placed spots for people to leave empty plates and glasses. A few minutes of pre-planning here can avoid the messy clutter all to common at parties. Clutter and mess, in turn, rarely create a forum conducive to business.

These are just a starting point. But a bit of planning and attention can transform your event from a costly waste of money into an event that cements relationships and sparks serious business opportunities.

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content which will launch in a few months.

So a few suggestions and a local, foodies, guide to SOMA near the Moscone Center.

Spots for Coffee or Tea (not Starbucks)

Samovar Tea – located above the Moscone North is a spot most convention attendees miss. Somovar is a serious tea shop offering a peaceful (if slow – in a good way) alternative to Starbucks. A great place to meet someone for a light, flavorful lunch or an afternoon meeting over tea. The foods and teas are first rate. Food and a pot of tea will run you about $20 a person and is well worth it.

Blue Bottle Cafe – my personal vote for quite possibly the best coffee in the country, not just in San Francisco. Located at 66 Mint St which is just two blocks from the Moscone West, Blue Bottle Cafe offers more than six different ways to have coffee, all amazing and flavorful. From some of the best espresso drinks anywhere (including single origin coffee) to an imported from Japan Siphon Bar the coffee, all of which they roast themselves in Oakland, are prepared with great care and attention to detail. To compliment the coffee they serve a small selection of great foods and desserts and also have a small selection of fine wines and beers. They close relatively early in the evening, but for coffee either in the morning or the afternoon they can’t be beat. I suggest that everyone in town for Web 2.0 Expo get at least one coffee from Blue Bottle while they are here, walk over with a new business contact and impress them with your local knowledge (and if they are not a coffee drinker they have many great alternatives to choose from). One note, taste you drinks before you assume you need either milk or sugar in them – the coffee here is not like anything you have likely had before, the cappuccinos and lattes in particular don’t need anything)

Great places for working dinners

Canton Seafood and Dim Sum – located at the corner of Folsom and Hawthorne, just a few blocks from the Moscone, Canton is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. I had a great dinner there last night in fact, and while there another group of Web 2.0 Expo attendees came in and following my advice had a fantastic 7+ course feast for $22.50 a person complete with salt & pepper crab, Peking Duck and many other dishes. This is Chinese food prepared with great care and attention, with friendly service and great flavors. As usefully for conference attendees Canton is a venue where any size group (and I do mean any size – up to a few hundred though I’d call ahead in that case) can be handled with aplomb and ease. For any group larger than 5 I would suggest getting a fixed price meal which would result in likely more food than you need for a price anyone’s budget (even a bootstrapping entrepreneur) can handle.

Tara – located on 2nd St just below Market Tara is the less well known Thai restaurant on the same block as the more well known Osha (which is also a good option but likely crowded and for San Francisco tech folks a place we end up eating at a bit too often). The food at Tara is good and most of the time it is a bit less crowded and less noisy than the more well known Osha just down the street. If you want to do Osha I suggest their second downtown location on the Embarcadero (4 Embarcadero Center) which is a bit longer of a walk from the Moscone Center but I think offers a slightly nicer space and slightly better food than their 2nd street location.

Straits – and more broadly the restaurants of the Westfield Center. Straits is located on the 4th floor of the Westfield center and is part of the "restaurant collection". The food at Straits is Singaporan which is one of the great, if not well known cuisines of the world. A combination of Asian flavors it has similarities and dishes in common with Indian, Indonesian, Thai, Chinese and many other cuisines of the Asian region. Straits is not a discount restaurant, expect to spend around $20-25 a person for lunch here and more for dinner, but the food is worth it and they can accommodate a large party with ease. For a fast meal, I suggest Out the Door in the basement of the Westfield center which offers Vietnamese food from the same folks who run the world famous Slanted Door restaurant (which I highly recommend but can have a many week wait for a reservation – though worth calling and checking especially for their private room if you have a group). For lunch or dinner however Out the Door offers a great alternative with great food served quickly. The other options at the food court in the basement of the Westfield Center are also great, not typical food court options in the least.

Last minute tech supplies

Apple Store – the San Francisco Apple store is just blocks from the Moscone Center at the corner of Stockton and Market. If you need a power adapter or your Macbook stops working this is where to go.

Central Computer – located at 837 Howard St, just down the block from the Moscone West Central Computer is a great place to know about for the non-Mac attendees. Not the cheapest spot, but if you need a last minute PC part they are just down the street and can solve nearly any PC related computer need.

Hope these help guide you to a few of my favorites in San Francisco. Please add your own suggestions in the comments. There are hundreds of other great options throughout San Francisco and nearby, if you see me at the show feel free to ask for additional suggestions. And watch for my twittered spur of the moment dinners or lunches and feel free to join me!

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content which will launch in a few months.

click for larger

I’ll give you a hint, last week I covered Ad:Tech San Francisco.

The photo is of a selection of stickers which Web 2.0 Expo is handing out to all attendees as you register, the intention is to personalize your badges with the phrases and sentences that describe what you are looking for, who you hope to meet, topics you are interested in discussing while you are here in San Francisco at the Expo.

But conspicuous in its absence is advertising or more broadly revenue. Not the abstract and theoretical "business model" but actual revenues. The assumption appears to be that companies and individuals attending the Web 2.0 Expo are seeking funding, looking to hire (or be hired) and are interested in the technical aspects of the new web but are not interested in the business aspects of the new web. As one friend of mine noted when I pointed out this discrepancy (he is the CEO and founder of successful and venture backed software startup) that far too many people conflate funding with revenues, though the two are very different.

This is not to knock Web 2.0 Expo, the expo and especially related events throughout San Francisco promise a week of intensive networking opportunities. In addition to the many great firms exhibiting at the Expo, hundreds of entrepreneurs are in San Francisco from all over the world for the Expo and related events. In town this week are "missions" from Finland, the UK, and elsewhere. Not to mention the countless entrepreneurs who have flown here on their own for the week (or longer).

But having just spent the past week at Ad:tech which suffered from a degree of lack of technical expertise, of technical innovation. I think that Web 2.0 Expo shows a different lack, a lack of business emphasis and focus.

Of course, like everything in life, I see this through my own personal biases. Full disclosure: I am the founder of an advertising network. Thus, of course, I’m rather focused on the need to think deeply about the business aspects of Web 2.0 applications, and the appropriate ways in which advertising and commercial messages can participate. But even were I not making a business focused on this need, I do wonder if the attendees and companies participating in the Web 2.0 Expo are missing out an opportunity to network not just about the technical aspects of the latest innovations around Open ID, but also about ways to innovate in business models that can serve the needs of all parties – individual users, startups, and in many cases the advertisers (and related agencies and networks).

This week as I attend Web 2.0 Expo I will be talking with many people about not just the technical innovations they are seeing (and in many cases creating) but also the business approaches they are taking. I hope to also capture in later posts some of the atmosphere here in San Francisco this week. It is a chaotic, overly scheduled week we are facing, every night there are SXSW levels of parties – last night there were at least six major events, tonight another 6+ and Wednesday night there are well over a dozen different parties and evening events. And even on Thursday and Friday there are still a few additional evening events. During the day besides the conference (with some great panels and speakers), there will be the Web 2.0 Open (a barcamp like space free to all exhibit hall attendees where anyone can propose a talk), a blogger lounge, and the very full exhibit hall.

Perhaps not the best week for a company not here at the show to make any product announcements, though there are indeed many scheduled for this week.

As an entrepreneur my advice to anyone attending the show would be to take it slow. To indeed take a walk through the exhibit hall and see the booths, see how potential partners and competitors present themselves. But then to find a good spot at one of the many table filled seating areas, announce your location via twitter, then settle in for a few hours of lobbyconning (sitting still and letting people come to you to stop, meet, and reconnect). Check out the Web 2.0 Open and perhaps schedule a session on a topic of interest. And get to the parties but don’t stress out too much about any that you miss – follow along on Twitter and see where people are going.

But, and this is important, remember that you and you alone are the judge of what makes a conference for you – if, like me, you are interested in conversations about Ads and Revenues, ignore the missing stickers and seek out those conversations. Take a few people out to dinner (and skip a few overly crowded parties) and have some in depth conversations.

In my next post – some advice for attendees to make the most of their time in San Francisco.

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content which will launch in a few months.