AOL Developer Conference - a quick summary

I had the pleasure of attending Sree’s Developer Conference.   Like the previous [OCP based] conferences, this has a theme.  This time it was “Lord of the Rings”.

 

Addressing the most obvious question

I have to give it to Sree.   He’s honest, and addressed the question on “should I stay or should I go” head on.   He also clearly believes in Open Services and Open Platform.—and states the reason clear why: We must be present to win,  and you can’t bet against the internet.    My favorite Sree phrase - “We need to be the soil, and let the plants grow”.   He said that a few times, essentially meaning we become the layer other developers and users build upon, because who knows what they can come up with. 

 

Back to “Should I stay or should I go”, which I think is a name of a song from the 90s.   The rumors flew around that he had resigned.  He said it was over frustration that the Open Services platform was not moving and it was “business as usual”.    He had some long discussions with Jon Miller.   The answer is he’s staying, he believes we must do this,  that we have the scale and experts to build an Open Platform.    The work now needs to move along – and  =f=a=s=t.

 

Jon Miller Keynote

Jon Miller gave an excellent key note on “AOL 2.0 Open.  Key in his address is “Product Lead”. His message - “It’s all about the product”, the Long Tail. He generated lots of buzz.  (See the ec.aol.com for the Webcast). 

 

Conference Time

Now onto the contents of the conference itself : many teams presented, including AIM, OCP, Boxley, Mail,  SOA,  Publishing, Ad.Com.   Many developers attended, with people from Dulles, Mountain View, Seattle, Tucson, Dublin, London and “Europe”, which is a small suburb just outside of Florida.  A few off us manager types slipped past the security and also got in.

 

Here’s a highlight from the tracks I went to :

 

AIM Web APIs

Andy Wick and the AIM team discussed the AIM Web Services that are coming soon.  Including :  

• New API’s to Send an Instant Message from a Web page,  Not an entire client but ability to send IM’s over a Web API.   A widget can created and put on a web site.
• New API’s for AIM Messaging (such as the one above to send / receive). The AIM Express team should take a look at these (if not already).
• Location Service API to set and get location of a buddy.      Currently Triton has a plugin that uses this service.      Andy has a mashup application that shows the people using AIM and the location.    To get location info, they use things like the MAC address or IP address, and allow the user to override, which in turns teaches the location service.  Try this in Trion, and you’ll see what I mean.
• Buddy Feeds will soon support 3rd Party feeds, so willblog post on blogger.com.  Nice. allow your buddies to see feeds such as new photos posted to Flicker or new

 

Mail Web APIs

• The Host Mail team had a few presso’s.  Junaid tag teamed with me and attended the “FX” presentation. 
• Open Storage API – File Storage System API – is currently under development.  Targeted internally for September and external beta December.   This gives developers a low cost file storage system.  Using a REST based API, you can PUT. GET, QUERY and DELETE files.  For example, you can upload or put any file type to the servers.       This is cool stuff, and could be very powerful for developers and applications to use (both internal and external). 
  
• Sree talked about (and stressed) that we must feed the Web Ecosystems, which means we must have Mail APIs  E/g a site like Netvibes should be able to show AOL Mail (allowing to get total mails, view mail, link back to product etc). that enable widgets to be created by us and other companies.

 

Micropayments

• Jeff Warrington gave a good pitch on an innovation project he has worked, which he said “Will enable the little guy” - Micropayments.     Example here: say a user is selling digital photos at $0.001 a piece. Once the amount gets to a certain level (maybe $10),  the system will transfer the funds to the seller.   It’s not cost effective to do it for the tiny amount.  He showed the prototype (built on the SOAPHP) that allows exchanges of the money through AOL and to Paypal.     All good, and great to see such passion and innovation in the area.
  

 

SNS and new Web Based APIs – Show them the honey!

• The SNS team is made up of some smart people. It’s one of the teams that gets only negative feedback (when it’s down they hear, . .when things work well, they don’t).   But the team is great, Praveen is a star.  Can you imagine being the team that runs auth? (Note: I once managed the SNS team when auth was based in MV)        
• A couple ofsessions on SNS,  the challenges and a good open forum.    People dialed in from the West Coast for this one.      On Thursday, a session on the new  REST based APIs that’s under development, again with lots of input.
• One thing here: every now and then, use a bit of “honey” towards the SNS team – it goes further than a splash of vinegar, and that team sometimes needs a bit of love.

 

The slides and materials will be on the CSI website soon.

 

Finally, some nice schwag – t-shirts,  laptop stickers,  Microsoft on site giving t-shirts, Mapquest giving printed atlases and hats…… and of course a replica “Ring”….   Coffee not so good though

 

Expect a lot from this team, and we should also contribute to the platform. We have a lot of web products in Mountain View, so we are certainly going to be consumers of these API’s, as well as producers of new ones. 

 

That’s it. If you read this far, I’d be amazed. My longest post yet.   And you are probably asleep, bored or ready to turn off the “Alert” from the blog :-)

 

And that last post… who came up with that quote about “SOA turning to WOA”?     I did.  I made it up.     So many buzz words in the last 24 hours, I didn’t know what to do with them.    I thought I could create a new and bold statement using all the buzzwords.   I will now go back to my day job.