1.    The Lean Startup: innovation through experimentation - Eric Ries, Startup Lessons Learned.

Eric Ries talks about the secrets behind creating value in online businesses and how to identify what customers want to buy before building or making follow-on investments in new features. A must see.

Category: Entrepreneurism / Monetization
Tags: innovation, lean startup, Startup
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2.    Zero to 1M Users: Lessons Learned from Dropbox – Drew Houston, Dropbox.

If you haven’t tried Dropbox yet, you’ve probably been living in a cave.
Drew will share his insights on the process of acquiring customers fast. Including using hacks during a company’s inception phase, courting the early adopters and evangelists, DIY marketing/PR, how to get people to use your product, and how to determine the best way to measure yourself.

Level: Intermediate
Category: Entrepreneurism /Monetization
Tags: Growth, Tech Startup
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3.    Banks: Innovate or Die! – Rob Garcia, Lending Club Corp.

Face it, the big banks are too big to innovate.  There is a new wave of financial service innovators pushing the limits. Incorporating cutting edge technology, social media and even …genuine customer service. The panel will discuss why big banks are failing with today’s Web 2.0 consumers, and will examine the new players in the space who are stealing customers away due to their innovation.

Level: Intermediate

Category: New Technology / Next Generation
Tags: Banking, innovation, Web 2.0
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4.    Rising Alternative Financial Services: Banking Without a Bank
 – Ken Rees, thinkfinance.com

This headline is just too interesting. Alternative currencies and disruptive business models in a conservative landscape seem pretty interesting to me.

Level: Intermediate

Category: Economic Concerns
Tags: Banking, financial services, Technology
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5.    The Future of Microformats – Frances Berriman, Nature Publishing Group.

For web developers and those interested data formatting and aggregation. 
Feeling intrigued to include one panel on pure web stuff. Microformats are designed for humans first and machines second, a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. 

Frances is an microformats evangelist, an admin at microformats.org and a former editor at DigitalWeb.

Category: New Technology / Next Generation
Tags: html, microformats, semantic web
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6.    Making Good Decisions from Bad Customer Feedback – Robby Grossman, oneforty

How do you know which customers or potential customers you should listen to?
How do you separate well-meaning critics from trolls?
How do you make sure you’re serving the silent majority rather than a vocal minority?

I think customer feedback is pretty damn important. But drawing the right conclusions is critical.

Category: Community / Online Community
Tags: CRM, custdev
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7.    Game On: Can Game Theory transform your app? – 
Damien Basile, Digital Somethings

Game mechanics are appearing everywhere on all sorts of devices. I believe game elements can even make or break any products are service success. It’s what makes us tick and I’m not merely thinking about collecting badges here. This panes will dive into the practical applications of game theory for apps and the proper balance of rewards compared to actual functionality of the application.

Level: Advanced

Category: Gaming on Mobile Devices
Tags: game mechanics, game theory, mobile gaming
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8.    Rebooting Iceland: Crowdsourcing Innovation in Uncertain Times – Finnur Magnusson, Agora

You computer freezes up – you reboot the damn thing. Problem fixed. 
An entire nation freezes up in one of the biggest financial collapses. What the hell do you do? Based on last year’s “National assembly” with some 1,500 citizens participating. Agile methods and crowdsourcing theory, resulted in a coherent set of values, vision and ideas. This year the government is planning a similar meeting in preparation for rewriting the constitution. 

Inspired by open-source processes and leaning heavily on social media technologies, these citizens are rapidly prototyping new forms of democracy utilizing the web and open innovation. Exciting stuff!

Category: Government and Technology
Tags: crowdsourcing, government, iceland
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Some 8 favorites that possibly could rationalize me jumping on a plane to Austin TX. Voting is closing August 27. Go to SXSW interactive panel picker and vote for your favorites. Use the search filtering to get relevant results faster.

Going to SXSW? Please leave your panel recommendations in the comments box.

My name is Valur Thor. I currently live in Iceland where I work with developing and managing web-based content, building websites, optimizing existing websites and interactive media applications.

I’ve worked in finance, online banking, small web bureaus and start-ups. I’ve also worked as a consultant. That’s how this site came about originally.

Feel free to drop me an e-mail anytime and tell me what you’re up to: [Just add the first part of my surname here]@meta.is. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

Best,
Valur Thor