Guest entry by Marck Pearlstone
Here is a short overview of the sessions held on the ESWC in Strasbourg this weekend.
Saturday, November 7, 2004
Welcome by ...
Didn't happen - the Mayor was busy with a council vote and
couldn't get away
Bits and Pixels - Increase your shareware revenues by focusing on
what's important
Mark-Jan Harte provided some clear insights into how to manage
a product life-cycle in 3 major stages - Development, Growth
and Maturity
A Global Solution for a Global Economy
Brant Pallazza explained clearly the ethos behind Digital
River's recent acquisition of Element5 and how the two
businesses are a perfect and complementary fit.
He assured us that DR are not "The Borg", intent only on
assimilation of the entire industry, however it may look from
the outside.
Panel #1: Publicity and Promotion
Dave Collins
Trevor Black
Dirk Paessler
Bob Gibson
This was a very interesting Q&A panel session with great input
from the membership. Nice to see Tucows represented here!
Securing Your Online Business Success Using Network Monitoring
Dirk Passler explained how important it is to monitor your
online network in order not to lose valuable customers. He went
into some technical detail about effective monitoring tools.
Writing documentation using DocBook
This session, presented by Sylvain Perchaud, was very
informative if a little hard to follow. He explained the
DocBook standard, how it relates to XML and to writing
documentation
Writing Help that Gets Read
This session was a highlight of the conference. Tim Green was
charming, amusing and very informative, guiding us through the
dos and don'ts of writing good help documentation. HIs
presention is a must-have download, full of humour and
countless tips and hints.
Help for Shareware -- Technical
Alex Halser gave us a fairly comprehensive view of the
technical side of using calls to help, with context and
sensitivity and keyword handling techniques.
Panel #2: Application Development
Marck Pearlstone
Henk Devos
Alwin Hoojerdijk
Chris Breeze
Hajo Kirchhoff, www.litwindow.com
Search engine success - a hands-on guide to being found
A clear and comprehensive session from Dave Collins - well
received and the Q&A session at the end didn't want to stop.
Sunday, November 8, 2004
Tracking where your sales come from.
A technical look at implementing customer tracking systems by
Adrian Grigore of Lobstersoft.
Web log analysis - Going for Gold!
Dave Collins on his favourite subject!
Google Adwords
This Dave Collins session was delivered to a packed room and,
as is becoming pretty normal for a DC session, overran due to
the many, MANY questions.
Panel #3: Commercial issues
Thanks to Brant Pallazza (Digital River) and Steve Kiene
(eSellerate) for fielding the (eventually) many questions from
the floor.
What's new in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005?
Dr. Frank Prengel demonstrated many programming techniques and
enhancements in the MS language family surround the new .NET
stuff for VS 2005 with many demonstrations and question /
answer breaks.
Panel #4: Customer Relationships
An interesting discussion of how best to handle customer
support issues, touching on email automation and template
systems, automatic key-reissue web pages and support ticket
systems
Marck Pearlstone
Sandra Erb
Alwin Hoojerdijk
Peter van Hove
Digital Rights Management and Software Protection -
Rudiger Krugler - WIBU systems talked in depth about Code Meter
and the very generous gift of a 256mb 'CM' stick (USB flash
drive) that was given to all attendees.
Richard Wienberg - Softwrap
Securing your Online Business
Steve Kiene
This was a highly technical topic that focused on the weak
points involved in an online presence and how to keep them from
buckling under the strain of modern worm, virus and hacker
attacks.
Affiliate Marketing Today
Digital River outlined the current state-of-the art in
affiliate systems and how to take advantage of them.