Tag: web2con web20 oreilly

This is an early notice that later this Summer I will be organising a Web &gt2.0 Conference in London, UK (exact location TBA).
The attendance fee will be $2.795 ($2 and 795 cents) and all proceedings will be donated to an open source project TBA.
At the conference will be several speakers presenting why Web 2.0 is so yesterday and what Web 2.1 can offer.
There will also be brainstorming sessions to come up with new and tantalising buzzwords – ideally trademark-able after general adoption.
On a more serious note. I am an IT professional and have always favoured O’Reilly technology books when making new purchases. I have often recommended them to friends and colleagues.
The latest attempt by O’Reilly to trade mark Web 2.0 and going after the little man with a Cease and Desist letter have made me think twice.
It could be a sign that O’Reilly have lost touch with their audience and also that they don’t fully understand the term that they were a part of popularising.
How can a company that recently so strongly advocated against the Amazon one-click purchase patent make a such an u-turn I cannot comprehend.
O’Reilly should have been clear from the beginning (2003) and stated their intentions by adding a (TM) every time they used Web 2.0. Had the general public been aware of the pending TM I doubt that the term would have gained such a popularity.
One decent way for O’Reilly out of this mess would be to accept that the term is by now in Public Domain.
As long as O’Reilly is very knowledgeable in upcoming web technologies and a leading force in advocating Web 2.0, no imitators will be able to steal their thunder!