Cork will play host to the 5th International Conference on Social
Software - BlogTalk - from the 2nd to the 4th of March 2008.

The BlogTalk event - see http://2008.blogtalk.net - allows
practitioners, developers and academics to connect and discuss the
latest trends and happenings in the world of social software (blogs,
wikis, social networks, etc.). A workshop on the hot topic of "Social
Network Portability" will be co-located with the event.

BlogTalk has attracted prominent speakers in the past, and this year is
no exception. The conference will feature three keynote speakers from
Silicon Valley talking about their Web 2.0 experiences and future plans
for the emerging "Web 3.0":

* Nova Spivack- CEO, Radar Networks - Nova is the entrepreneur behind
the Twine "knowledge networking" application, which allows users to
share, organise, and find information with people they trust. He is a
leading voice of the Semantic Web or Web 3.0. Nova co-founded EarthWeb
in 1994, which led to the first big tech IPO. He will talk about
semantic social software for consumers.
* Rashmi Sinha - Founder, Uzanto - Rashmi is a designer, researcher and
entrepreneur in the area of user experience and interactions with web
technology. She led the team that produced SlideShare.net, a popular
presentation-sharing service that some have dubbed "YouTube for
PowerPoint". Rashmi will talk about lessons learned from designing
social software applications.
* Salim Ismail - Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo! - Salim is a successful
investor and entrepreneur, with expertise in a variety of early-stage
startups and Web 2.0 companies including the conference directory
service Confabb and blog feed collector PubSub. He currently leads
Yahoo!'s internal start-up think tank. Salim will talk about
entrepreneurship and social media.

Other presenters, panellists and confirmed attendees at the event
include: hypertext pioneer Mark Bernstein; the CTO of SUP-LiveJournal
Sergei Komarov (one of the world's largest blogging services); and
"Mobile Web 2.0" expert and consultant Ajit Jaokar. Topics to be
discussed include the impact of social media on politics (and vice
versa); the use of social networks and blogs in corporate environments;
mobile internet solutions for education; issues to be aware of now that
anybody can design and produce social media; the "long tail" effect from
having multiple online identities; and blogs about dieting.

Co-located with BlogTalk will be a workshop on "Social Network
Portability". Nowadays, people have accounts on a variety of social
networking sites. However, many users are experiencing problems when
they register for a new site: they don't want to re-enter their personal
profiles from scratch, and they want to be able to easily discover their
existing friends from previously-used social networking services.
There's a real need to be able to port profiles and social relationships
(i.e., whom we are in touch with on a particular site) across various
services. This workshop will discuss how we can solve this need by
making both social network profiles and associated data portable.

The event is being sponsored by Microsoft, the Digital Enterprise
Research Institute at NUI Galway and BT. Places are limited to 200, so
those interested in attending should signup as soon as possible.

For further information:

Web: http://2008.blogtalk.net

E-mail: blogtalk2008@...

Contact: John Breslin, DERI, NUI Galway

Phone: 091-495134

= Invited speakers =

== Keynote Talks ==

* Entrepreneurship and social media - Salim Ismail, Head of Brickhouse,
Yahoo!
* Lessons learned from designing social software - Rashmi Sinha,
Founder, Uzanto (SlideShare, MindCanvas)
* Semantic social software: the Semantic Web for consumers - Nova
Spivack, Founder and CEO, Radar Networks (Twine)

== Invited Panels ==

* Mashups, microformats and the mobile web - Sean McGrath, CTO,
Propylon; Bill de hÓra, Engineer, NewBay; Conor O'Neill, Founder,
Argolon Solutions (LouderVoice)
* From blog-style commentary to conversational social media - Stephanie
Booth, Consultant, Climb to the Stars; Matt Colebourne, CEO, coComment;
Donncha O Caoimh, Developer, Automattic Inc. (WordPress.com)

== Workshop Keynotes ==

* Privacy and revocation, two sides of the same coin: using Google Open
Social APIs to illustrate a new privacy model for the social web - Ajit
Jaokar, Founder and CEO, Futuretext
* Stuff I've been thinking about lately - Dan Brickley, Co-Founder,
Friend-of-a-Friend Project and Programmer, Joost