"Building a Web 2.0 Platform"
It's not enough to roll out a great self-contained site these days... every web business needs to be thinking about how to build a platform that extends across the Internet and offers whatever user experience each individual prefers. Jeff Barr of Amazon Web Services and Syndic8 has been a pioneer in this area for years and has lots of stories to share.
"The Dark Side: why engineers leave engineering"
Talk to engineers who left the cube to seek opportunities in PM, marketing, or sales. Long-time 106 members Brendon Wilson will represent product management, Jeremy Zawodny speaks for our marketing brethren, and a player to be named later will stand in for sales.
"Every business needs a mobile strategy"
Russell Beattie and Mike Rowehl are the founders of the extremely popular Mobile Monday events around Silicon Valley. Mike is an engineer at RSS search startup Feedster, and our friends in purple were very lucky to recently nab Russ.
"Financing fundamentals for founders"
Jeff Winner is a principal in venture accelerator Alacrity Partners. He was most recently VP of engineering at Friendster, leading the well-known scaling and performance rewrite. Previous posts include Demandtec, eGroups, Netscape, Collabra, and Verity.
"Third Time's the Charm: the thrill of serial entrepreneurship"
Dave Sifry has enjoyed an enviably varied engineering-entrepreneurship background, founding three hot startups within eight years: Open Source services company Linuxcare, wifi firm Sputnik, and now RSS search engine Technorati.
"The Power of Two: finding a venture partner"
Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer have been founders of several major projects, including Excite (aka Excite@Home aka Architext), Digital Consumer, and a new company called Jot.