How to Use Web 2.0 to Promote Your Business
presented by
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Enterprise Forum of Chicago
You may have heard the term "Web 2.0," but what is it and what does it mean to you? Often Web 2.0 is used to describe a social network or a particularly novel-looking website, however, distinct underlying principles of sharing and interconnectivity separate Web 2.0 sites and services from their predecessors. Join the Chicago chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum as we welcome Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, and Harper Reed, CTO of Threadless, two locally and internationally renown experts, as we discuss:
# How you can apply new web ideas such as social networking to advance your business
# How increasing the responsiveness of your website can help your business
# What lies ahead in exciting and emerging web technologies
Howard Tullman, CEO of Flashpoint Academy, will moderate the discussion. Come ready to drink from the deep and cool well of Jason's, Harper's, and Howard's experience as we plan a lively round of audience interaction and dialog with our speakers, after they initially shine light on their business success through social networking past and future.
A profile of our speakers:
Howard Tullman is an education and information technology entrepreneur. He believes that educational institutions can be run effectively and profitably. While President of Kendall College, he breathed new life into the school when he presided over a rapid move of the insolvent enterprise from its aging campus in Evanston to a brand-new facility on Goose Island. He is now leading Flashpoint Academy, a new 2 year digital media college in the Loop. The college teaches filmmaking/broadcast, computer game development, recording arts, and visual effects/animation. The college takes a hands-on, fully-immersive approach to teaching new media subjects with everything done by teams of students working collaboratively and across the four disciplines. You can read about his adventures in education, his other entrepreneurial excursions, and his art collection on tullman.blogspot.com and/or at http://tullman.com.
Jason Fried (pronounced Freed not fried like chicken) is a founder of 37signals.com. He's known for developing a successful business model around the 37signals productivity product line that he calls Fremium. They launched their first productivity product, Basecamp, in 2004. They developed the Ruby on Rails framework to create Basecamp. When they released Ruby on Rails as open-source the framework and the ideas behind it set off a flury of web development and inspired hundreds of imitator frameworks in dozens of languages. Jason followed his own rule that "No decision is final" when he transformed his company from a web design company into a web product company in 2003/2004. His products have a rabid following in the small business productivity software space.
Harper Reed is the amazing CTO for the awesome Threadless.com. He is responsible (along with a cadre of amazing engineers) for bringing Threadless.com from the mean streets of startupville to the streets paved in gold of enterprise city. He is waiting for the singlularity. When not causing problems with technology, Harper can be found yoyoing, juggling and hacking random internet appliances. You can read his blog at nata2.org.
When:
Tuesday, Mar 24, 2009, 5:00 PM until 8:00 PM
Where:
At our host sponsor: Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP
http://www.bellboyd.com/
70 W. Madison St., Second Floor
Chicago, IL 60602