The Next Web

Video: Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon.com) on “Uncertainty”

Written on July 24, 2008 – 4:13 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

Here is Werner Vogels’ keynote titled “Uncertainty” from The Next Web Conference 2008. Vogels shares with us that “everything fails all the time. We lose whole datacenters! Those things happen.” and “let us worry about those things, not you as a startup. Focus on your ideas.”. An interesting presentation whether you are considering using Amazon’s shared hosting solutions or not.

Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon.com) at The Next Web Conference 2008 from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

There is also a very detailed post about this keynote by Anne Helmond for TheNextWeb.org, and you can listen to an audio interview with Werner given at the Next Web Conference to David Petherick about Amazon’s Kindle. The video also shows all the questions and answers from after the keynote. Also see our other Next Web Conference videos:

Gil Penchina (wikia.com):
http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/19/video-gil-penchina-wikiacom-%E2%80%9Cgiving-insane-levels-of-control-to-your-customers%E2%80%9D/

Adeo Ressi (TheFunded.com):
http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/22/video-adeo-ressi-thefundedcom-at-the-next-web-conference-2008/

Khris Loux (js-kit.com):
http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/26/video-khris-loux-js-kitcom-at-the-next-web-conference-2008/

Scott Rafer interviews Kevin Rose (Digg.com):
http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/28/video-scott-rafer-interviews-kevin-rose-diggcom/

Nova Spivack “Making Sense of the Semantic Web”:
http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/03/video-nova-spivack-making-sense-of-the-semantic-web/

Leah Culver (Pownce): “Webapp in 5 steps”
http://thenextweb.org/2008/06/05/video-leah-culver-pownce-webapp-in-5-steps/

I hope you like that post!

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amazon, CTO, thenextweb2008, werner vogels

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Is your team diverse enough to face the year 2025?

Written on May 29, 2008 – 12:09 am
Simone Brummelhuis, writing about women on the web

Last week I attended two events in Amsterdam specifically aimed at women. What I took from those events as a message is interesting for men and women. At Diversity, a network event for professional women, female Internet hero Nancy McKinstry held a very clear and interesting lecture about her Wolters Kluwer, which generates 50% of its turnover of 3.4 billion from online products.

She concluded that because of macro trends affecting the information industry, all Internet and media companies need to deal with diversity. In 2025 Internet users will be diversified, mainly consisting of female information users and aging information users. And they use the information in a different way, other than all the white, geeky, male, young Silicon Valley whizkids may think! So try to get inside the brains of these women and senior citizens, try to understand the information gathering and buying habits of these groups.

A solution to the issue is to support this notion of diversity and to let those target groups jump on the band wagon of the Internet companies by letting them become part of the team. A company like Apple understands this trend; it may be the reason why it has appointed Andrea Young of Avon, the beauty power house to its board.

Another company which may have seen the start of a light in this issue is Microsoft. After my comments about the Dev Days and their lack of female speakers, I was invited to a small Women in Technology booth that was set up this year for the first time to try to meet the 2% women that visit this event. Female Internet hero Astrid Hackenberg, founder and CEO of Class-A and Jacqueline van der Holst of Avanade were invited to welcome other, younger developers, let’s assume the female CTO’s of the future. Here too, the notion of data being used differently by a diversified group led to solution of a diversified team.

But are enough internet companies taking this diversity trend into account in setting up their team?

CTO, female, heroes, trend, women

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