The company's software, MindManager, is based on a brainstorming technique called mind mapping. Popularized in the 1970s by British author and consultant Tony Buzan, mind maps show words sprouting off each other like the branches and leaves of a tree. They are generally colorful, spontaneous, and convey a great deal of information in a small amount of space.

And though mind maps may look like idle doodles next to a hefty Word document, a generation of business leaders inspired by Buzan -- such as Richard Branson -- have employed the technique.

MindManager was the first piece of software to put mind maps on the computer a decade ago, and it has gained steadily in popularity ever since. More than 2,000 employees at Microsoft now use it, as do many more at Apple, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM, and 80 other members of the Fortune 100. In all, there are 1.3 million MindManager users, with 1,000 converts being added every day.

This week Mindjet launched the first online-only version of MindManager, called Mindjet Connect. For $8.99 a month, users can collaborate with co-workers on the same mind map at the same time. A premium version, for $22.49 a month, adds Web conferencing and lets you turn Microsoft Office documents into mind maps.

That's pretty pricey for what is essentially virtual brainstorming. But Mindjet CEO Scott Raskin is relying on his rabid user base (the company does little marketing, and 69% of sales are from word-of-mouth) to spread the gospel of mind mapping. Will it work? Check out our gallery of MindManager maps and judge for yourself.

That's as much as I paid for my computer.

For that price, the average home will save $21,000 in electricity over 25 years -- a 45 percent return on investment.

From a simple web interface, customers can plug in their address and Sungevity will use satellite and aerial imagery to assess their rooftop solar potential and offer them a range of options within 24 hours. Ordering can be done online, as easily as ordering a book from Amazon. (The company fills out all the necessary permits and mails them for a signature.)

Rather than the months of a typical PV order, the entire process, from quote to installation, takes just a couple of weeks.

Now, to bring us back to earth, the caveat -- and it's a doozy.

This system is available only to residents of San Francisco, and only temporarily, as it is pegged to the $1.5 million in incentives the city will begin handing out today through its Solar Energy Incentive Program. The program will offer up to $6,000 to individuals and $10,000 to businesses to install PV. In non-SF reality, Sungevity's 1.5kW starter system is around $8,000 installed.

Still, the company's got plenty to boast about. In fairly short order, it has undercut the price of other solar providers in California by up to 10 percent. How? By taking steps to commoditize the PV market.

"There's so much money being spent on the hardware and technology end of the business," says Sungevity CXO and president Danny Kennedy, "and yet 50 percent of the cost the customer pays -- which is the only price that matters -- is downstream of the factory gates. Even if a Nanosolar panel came out and it was free, it would still cost $5/watt to get it up on a roof." While press and investor attention largely focus on whizbang new generation technologies like modular CSP, nanotubes, and printable films, Sungevity is focused on distribution, installation, and customer service.

Kennedy worked for years as a Greenpeace organizer, pushing for solar support in California. Now, with a group of fellow green expatriates, he's knee deep in commerce. (Says Greenpeace USA head John Passacantando, "Danny Kennedy was one of our greatest warriors fighting for a green and peaceful future. But I always knew victory would be at hand when some of the warriors would shift their focus and raise the capital to literally build the green energy future with real green jobs.") When I spoke with Kennedy, what he's most excited about is a recent milestone: "We made our first fully online sale! It was to an octogenarian, which sort of blew away our assumptions about who the customer was."

Sungevity only went state-wide in California a few months ago, one of many businesses pulled into the slipstream of the state's Million Solar Roofs program, but its ambitions are large. Right now the company is limited to Calif., because that's as far as its installer subcontracting network goes, but Kennedy expects to go nationwide, or at least to top solar states, within a year or two. And he wants to start building a nationwide network of reputable, certified installers:

The whole point of Sungevity is to facilitate the scaling of solar by making it easier, not just for customers -- that's the first innovation -- but also for installers and other contractors to get in the game. Our view is that to save the planet with solar we've got to something like 700x the solar installed capacity. You're not going to do that just by growing the mom-and-pop shops. With all due respect to them -- and they're wonderful people, and I've known and loved and worked with them for over a decade -- that high-end, low-volume, high-cost business will always have a place for the premium and elite customers, but there also has to be a Dell.

(And sure enough, Fortune's Todd Woody has dubbed Sungevity "the Dell of solar energy.")

Because rooftop assessment can be done remotely and on the cheap, Sungevity can size up large numbers of roofs at once. Kennedy is open to working with larger customers, "be it a city that wants to reduce its carbon emissions, a corporate that wants to support its staff to do the green thing, or a utility that wants to value add to their grid and preserve them from the need to invest in substation upgrades or new transmission."

For a small East Bay town called Albany, the company remotely assessed around 3,500 roofs and discovered that roughly 2,000 were solar-appropriate. "If every one of those customers went solar with Sungevity, the 2,000 homes combined would save that community $30 million in electricity over the next 25 years and 40,000 tons of CO2," says Kennedy. The company sent direct mail to those 2,000 addresses; each mailer had a picture of the house with a PV installation on it, a price quote, and a pitch for the investment benefits of PV. Through this kind of marketing, Sungevity is attempting to scale the solar market beyond the LOHAS choir.

As it happens, the aforementioned octogenarian was one of those Albany customers.

"This is a serious way to make the dream of a million solar roofs in California real, or tens of millions across America real," Kennedy says proudly. "We now can effectively model, aggregate demand for, and design a cost-effective way to deliver that dream."

Still, Suranga Chandratillake, CEO of Blinkx, is one of the lucky few who took an internet company public last year. No, he didn't ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange -- instead he took his act overseas. He raised roughly $50 million through a public offering on the London Stock Exchange AIM.

We chatted with Chandratillake yesterday, the one-year anniversary of Blinkx's IPO, about the pesky acquisition rumors, the advantages of going public, and his take on the economy and the online ad market.

Wired.com: How did you end up going public in London and not the U.S.?

Suranga Chandratillake: [Our banking advisors) recommended how they thought we should raise funding, and the options were to take on venture capital, raise private equity, or a debt-based investment, or to float the company. They said there were a few markets in the world that still support small [public] companies really well. We always assumed an IPO was too expensive and too complex for a company of our size -- it wasn't something we'd seriously considered, but as they described it, it began to sound attractive.

Wired.com: So if you had to do it over again, would you go through with an IPO?

SC: Yeah, I think we would, on reflection. The obvious cons are that it's a lot of work -- not just going through the process but the ongoing responsibility to shareholders, which is more complex than with VCs or private investors. [Through the IPO] we raised the funds we needed and it meant we could share the value of the company with our employees. And I also think it has raised our profile to some extent -- we're based in San Francisco and have less of a presence in the U.K. Now people are more aware of us because we're out there. While [the IPO] was a lot of work, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Wired.com: Has it been challenging to recruit people since you're already public or has it been a distraction for existing employees?

SC: I don't think anyone attaches that much meaning to it. There are definitely some people who would rather join a private company with only 10 employees, but we're not that company.

Wired.com: We keep hearing that every startup is for sale right now, and there have been rumors that Blinkx is an acquisition target. Is there anything you can comment on?

SC: We're moving along as normal . . . From the point of view of all the speculation, we put out a press release to say we hadn't had any formal bids that we were aware of . . . We inhabit a pretty desirable space, and we offer a very fast growing portion of the search business which is of strategic importance to all the media companies. For that reason, it's not surprising that we see that speculation.

Wired.com: And what do you see coming in the economic pipeline? Marc Andreessen recently predicted a 'nuclear winter' is coming . . .

SC: There are lots of reasons why you can logically argue that [there's going to be a plunge in the U.S. ad market] -- the U.S. economy doesn't look fantastic, and based on that, you can say advertising is probably going to shrink. But we haven't seen any of that. Every single month that we've been in business has been a bigger month than the one before. We haven't seen any of the slowdown that's supposedly happening, and I think one of the reasons is that online advertising is such a fast-growing market, and within that space, video advertising is growing fast.

In the U.S. and Canada, eBay Inc.'s StubHub will serve as the "official fan-to-fan ticket marketplace." In Europe, the role will be filled by Viagogo Ltd., a ticket reseller that also will sell "VIP packages" -- higher-priced tickets that include amenities like backstage passes and meetings with performers.

The endorsements highlight the growing popularity and influence of so-called secondary ticketing companies, which let both fans and brokers sell tickets to others at prices that often far exceed their face values. Concert promoters and artists have long complained that they are locked out of the secondary marketplace, putting money in the pockets of speculators and middlemen who aren't involved in staging or promoting concerts.

Sports teams and leagues have entered partnerships with secondary ticketing companies. But executives at Viagogo and StubHub called this the first time a major music artist has officially embraced the secondary market on this scale.

"It's the future of the ticketing business," said Chuck La Vallee, StubHub's head of business development for music. "Promoters have always complained that we don't have skin in the game."

Terms weren't disclosed, but people close to the deal said Viagogo is paying promoter Live Nation Inc. and Madonna a flat fee, while StubHub is offering a percentage of revenue on top of a fee. Despite the official status of the two companies, fans would still be able to buy and sell tickets on other online marketplaces, such as TicketsNow, RazorGator or Craigslist. But Viagogo and StubHub will be promoted in emails to fans and other marketing materials.

The tour is the first for Madonna since she announced a $120 million partnership with Live Nation in which the promoter is to participate financially in nearly every aspect of the pop star's career. The album she is promoting, "Hard Candy," is the last under her record contract with Warner Music Group Corp. The "Sticky and Sweet" tour is to start in August, with nine dates in Europe, followed by 18 U.S. shows in the fall. There will be several stadium shows in the U.S., including at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium -- far larger venues than the arenas Madonna has historically performed in. Prices weren't announced.

Live Nation's contract in the U.S. with IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ticketmaster expires at the end of this year. At that point Live Nation will begin selling its own tickets for its concerts. Arrangements like the one with Viagogo -- in which Viagogo handles a portion of the so-called primary ticketing, in addition to resales -- could become more common on Live Nation tours once Ticketmaster is out of the picture.

So how's the book? Well, it's about what you'd expect if you took a bunch of earnest creative-writing graduate students and told them to write a thriller in mini-snippets. There's terrorism. And love. And yoga. In other words, it ain't Tolstoy. Or Robert Ludlum, for that matter.

Still, Pandora represents an interesting experiment that offers a glimpse at how the Internet could change not only the way books are distributed but also the way they are written. "The book publishing industry has been operating the same way for 150 years. They're still not understanding that they have to embrace the Web," says Susan Heilbronner, president of WEbook. "Our goal is to be a next-generation publisher."

Pandora isn't the first group-written potboiler (the 1969 bestseller Naked Came the Stranger was one), but WEbook would be one of the first publishers specializing in the genre. Heilbronner will publish books the traditional way (on paper) but will also deliver electronic books via download from the Web. It will use SMS (Short Message Service) to zip links to people who want to read chapters on their cell phones. Pandora's 59 chapters are all short.

Heilbronner believes that next-gen publishers like WEbook can get 5% to 10% of the $50-billion-a-year U.S. publishing market. That's a tall order, but she's helped by the general techno-cluelessness of book publishers.

Literature, however, adapts readily to technology shifts. Just as 19th-century mass-market periodicals enabled the rise of the serial novel, today the Internet is spawning new forms, like novels pecked out, and read, on cell phones. Sounds crazy, but some of these are bestsellers in Japan.

Who's to say the novel can't evolve into a massively collaborative art form? Aspirants on WEbook post a book idea or synopsis, or a few chapters of something they've started. Others chime in with criticism, advice or offers to help. Right now WEbook has 700 members cooking up 58 projects. Teams compete to get their chapters into a project, and once the book is done, the community votes, American Idol-style, on the best ones to publish. WEbook aims to put out a half-dozen titles this year, and 15 to 25 in 2009.

Projects under way include some good prospects (a self-help book called Bouncing Back From a Breakup), some exotic ones (a novel called Xanthippe, about the wife of Socrates) and some that are just plain nuts. My favorite in this last category is the synopsis for Gunhands. It's set during World War II. Have a read:

After a horrific accident, the sharpshooter Gunther Hans awakens and sees that his hands were dissolved in acid. And miraculously, his guns were fused to his wrist stumps. They are organic now, his veins grown into them.

He drinks a lot of whiskey, bending down to the glass and sipping it from a straw. He can't pick up a glass any more [sic] . His girlfriend leaves him. Now he has nothing to live for. and everything to die for.

I'm not making this up. Keep an eye out for Gunhands. WEbook will offer a vanity press for work that doesn't make the cut.

Instead of calling to schedule an installer to physically come to your home and climb up on your roof, you can log onto Sungevity’s website, enter your address and monthly electricity usage, and get a rough estimate of how good your rooftop is for solar back in 24 hours. Employing Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform, Sungevity uses high res oblique satellite imaging to determine not only area, but shading as well.

Sungevity President Danny Kennedy says that the initial online evaluation saves on the cost of labor, and also gives the company a greater reach: “We can sit in our offices in the Bay Area and size systems in Indiana or India,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy estimates that other installers only have a 10 percent conversion rate for in-person on-site consultations, so, he says that nine out of 10 times the company has wasted time and money trying to close a sale. The hope is, Kennedy explained, to do 90 percent of the sale and education on the website and then go that last mile via a phone call and, eventually, a final on-site evaluation.

Installers are struggling to find ways to squeeze out the costs of putting solar on rooftops. Installers like SolarCity and Sun Run are offering innovative financial terms to help spread out the cost of residential solar, and Akeena has partnered with Fat Spaniel to create a web-based solar energy monitoring system to track performance.

Sungevity, which sells its systems for $6,999 to $35,999, is tackling the middle step of assessing a home for installation. “The only limitation here is digital imaging, which has millions of dollars going into it now, and we’re just leveraging that to spread the solar all over the world,” Kennedy explained.

This technology also isn’t limited to residential applications. Kennedy added that Sungevity could go to a city, like Phoenix, which is looking to add new peaker power plants that provide energy only during peak hours, and propose an alternative that could provide peak power from several roofs they had already assessed as viable.

The company currently has 15 employees that includes a full installation crew. Kennedy said the long term plan is to work with other solar installers by using their technology to do an online assessment and sending out on-the-ground reps to seal the deal. Kennedy said the company will likely be looking for funding this year.

Sungevity, Kennedy's company, has come up with a Web-based system for evaluating the solar potential for a given home through satellite data. Customers log onto Sungevity's site and provide an address and some information about their monthly electrical bill.

Within 24 hours, the company sends customers a quote for installing a solar system, an estimate of how much the system will save them over 25 years, the prospective increase in the value of their home, and simulated imagery of what their home might look like after solar panels are installed. Traditionally, the process that provides all that information takes days and a physical examination of the roof.

"We do all that (the calculations for preparing the estimate) in about 10 to 15 minutes," he said.

Your solar system, Sir! Click a few buttons and Sungevity gives you an accurate quote for a solar system. It cuts out a lot of the time and money of putting these in.
(Credit: Sungevity)

And in a few more clicks, customers can schedule an appointment and put a deposit down on a solar system.

I did an estimate on my grandmother's home. The system would provide 25 percent of the home's power and cost $7,511 after rebates. It would save $27,360 in electrical cost over time, according to the quote. They gave the option of paying upfront or through installments. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are accepted for the deposit. The quote came back two hours after I handed over the address.

Reducing a complex sale into a quick online exchange--the same trick that propelled Dell to the front of the PC world--helps reduce one of the nagging costs of the solar world: the install expenses. Installation costs come to around roughly half of the cost of a solar system. Sharp, Akeena, and other companies have tried to reduce installation costs through prefabricated frames for solar panels. Others have developed roof tiles with solar cells built in. SolarCity, meanwhile, has aggressively used software to coordinate solar panel deliveries and installations to cut down on the number of trips electricians and contractors have to make. SolarCity also leases solar panels.

Sungevity's software essentially eliminates the money and time it takes for an installer to drive out to someone's house, climb on top of it, and take a bunch of measurements to prepare an estimate. Only 10 percent of those visits lead to a sale, Kennedy added.

In all, Sungevity can cut the cost of a solar system by around 10 percent, he said, and cut out 80 percent of the on-site estimates. (Like Solar City, Sungevity also uses software to coordinate installations.)

The company's secret sauce is a trigonometry-heavy application that can take satellite imagery and create a 3D model of a house. From the model, Sungevity calculates the pitch of the roof, the azimuth (for instance, where the house faces in relation to compass points) and the available area.

"You introduce errors when you put a guy on the roof," Kennedy asserted.

Sungevity uses data from Microsoft Virtual Earth rather than Google Earth for its satellite imagery. Google Earth only provides a top-down view of a roof. Virtual Earth gives data from different angles, which lets Sungevity calculate pitch.

The data provides enough information to provide a fairly strong estimate even without customer input, he said. To prove its point, Sungevity is going to mail fliers to all of the homes in Albany, Calif. Each flier will come with a picture of the home that goes with the address on the flier, a picture of the home with simulated solar panels, and the cost savings. (To fine-tune the estimate, customers need to submit their power bills.) The company has largely been operating under the radar since it started in December.

Rather than install custom solar panel systems, Sungevity offers five different systems, ranging in size from 1.4 kilowatts to 5.6 kilowatts. Prices range from $7,500 to $38,500 for everything after rebates are subtracted.

While operating only in California right now, the company will try to expand to other states. It may employ solar installers as subcontractors in other states, or it may sell estimating services for installers in other states.

Like portfolio managers who carefully balance out their riskiest investments with safe bets to minimize their exposure to swings in the market, Americans planning trips to Europe this summer can minimize the cost of their vacations, should the dollar drop further, through careful planning now.

One of the most common ways is to buy an all-inclusive vacation like a cruise or packaged tour. Prices of such trips are typically set as much as 18 months in advance so they can be printed in brochures. Travelers who buy these trips lock in the price of their vacations, essentially shielding themselves from any price increases caused by currency fluctuations.

For example, Collette Vacations is offering an eight-day London and Paris package in July for $1,999, or $3,044 with airfare from New York. The dollar has dropped about 15 percent against the euro since the company set those rates more than a year ago. As a result, those customers received a built-in discount.

European cruises similarly stretch the dollar, and you can also pay for onboard purchases like spa treatments and shore excursions in dollars.

“If anything, the decline of the dollar has strengthened the attractiveness of an all-inclusive cruise product such as ours,” Ana Figueroa, director of business development for Amadeus Waterways, wrote in an e-mail message. Already, she added, the company’s summer river cruises in Europe are full.

Uniworld, which owns or operates nine river cruise ships in Europe, said business was up 30 percent. Cruise Holidays, a travel agency franchise that specializes in cruises, said its European bookings were up about 14 percent through March this year compared with the comparable period last year.

It’s possible to hedge without going the all-inclusive route, simply by prepaying as much as you can — for things like hotel rooms, airfare and car rentals — before leaving the United States.

“The more you can buy in advance, the better,” said Assen Vassilev, co-founder of Lessno.com, an online travel agency that specializes in discount trips to Europe. By prepaying in dollars, he said, “you’re not exposed to fluctuations in the euro” and travelers can also “avoid international fees from credit cards or having to pay exchange fees.”

Over the last year, Lessno.com has begun to offer travelers booking intra-Europe flights the option of viewing and paying for airfare in dollars at the prevailing exchange rate, so that American customers aren’t hit with fees for international purchases or penalized with higher exchange rates. This even applies to tickets on Lessno.com from low-cost carriers like Ryanair and easyJet, which typically price flights in euros or pounds. Another site, Europebyair.com offers a similar option. And hotels and tour operators with large American customer bases are rolling out guaranteed dollar rates to help keep costs down.

The Leading Hotels of the World, a luxury hotel marketing group, recently introduced guaranteed dollar rates at nearly 60 hotels throughout Europe to help address the ailing dollar. The Hotel Raphael in Paris is offering guaranteed dollar rates starting at $490 a night this summer for a “superior queen,” compared with its listed rates starting at 440 euros, or around $700 at $1.60 to the euro. To get the rates, customers must call the Leading Hotels at (800) 223-6800 and ask for discount code L09, and pay in full when booking.

Worldhotels, a marketing and distribution group for independent hotels, is offering a Stay in Europe, Pay in Dollars deal at more than 50 of its hotels that allows travelers to pay the listed euro rate in dollars. For example, an American traveler booking a stay for 150 euros a night would only pay $150. Bookings must be made from the United States by calling (800) 223-5652.

Because airfare can be as erratic as the stock market, knowing when to pull the trigger can mean the difference between a bargain and an overpriced fare. Increasingly, Web sites are offering tools for deciding the best time to book.

To help evaluate prices, Kayak.com offers its Trend graph, which shows whether prices for a particular flight have been going up, down or holding steady. FareCompare.com displays the lowest prices over the next 11 months for flights to more than 200,000 destinations, including much of Europe.

Another site, Farecast.com, now offers airfare predictions for over 87 European markets, including London, Rome and Amsterdam. In a recent search for flights between New York and London over the Fourth of July weekend, Farecast predicted prices would be likely to rise within the next seven days of the search, while flights from Atlanta to Frankfurt were likely to drop or stay about the same. Over all, fares to Europe this summer are expected to be 10 percent higher than last summer’s and cost about $350 more than in May or September, Farecast says. Flying midweek can bring down costs an average of about $55, according to the site.

Holding out for sales that sometimes crop up in July or August can also pay off. In 2007, this strategy worked well for flights to London. For example, a plane ticket from Seattle to London last July was about $1,100, according to Farecast, but travelers who waited until late May to buy a ticket saved $200.

To hedge against a further decline in the dollar’s value, consider buying foreign currency today for your summer vacation. In the coming weeks, Travelex, a foreign exchange company based in London, plans to roll out a prepaid foreign currency card for the American market that can be loaded with euros or pounds and used for purchases and A.T.M. withdrawals. The card, called Cash Passport, will be available at Travelex branches and allows travelers to lock in the exchange rate at the time the card is loaded. While there is a $2 fee for A.T.M. withdrawals, the card doesn’t charge currency conversion fees for foreign purchases (typically 1 to 3 percent) as so many credit cards do.

Travelex and other foreign exchange companies like International Currency Express also let travelers buy a stack of actual euros before their trips. Orders can be placed through their Web sites, with shipping charges of $10 to $15.

Of course, if the dollar surges, Americans would do better to wait. However, “if you like certainty,” said Jay Bryson, global economist at Wachovia, “you probably want to buy today. That way, you’ll know exactly how much the foreign currency will cost you.”

These days, there’s a new, greener PM in power and Kennedy is in California, running a solar startup that aims to minimize the time spent on rooftops by doing for the solar business what Dell did for personal computers: Digitizing the entire enterprise to cut costs and create a mass market.

Putting photovoltaic panels on residential rooftops remains largely a labor-­intensive cottage business, often involving multiple visits to a client’s home to make the sales pitch, measure the roof, and design a custom system. Sungevity, which officially launches Tuesday on Earth Day, takes all that online.

Enter your address on its website, and satellite-imaging software zooms in on your home, and Sungevity’s proprietary algorithm calculates the roof’s dimensions — the pitch and azimuth — selects appropriately sized solar arrays, and shows what they will look like installed — while computing your return on investment. Once the order is placed, one of five off-the-­shelf prepackaged solar arrays is shipped to the customer’s door, and an installation crew is dispatched. A database tracks local building and permit requirements, sending the necessary forms to the homeowner for their signature while beaming local regulations governing solar arrays to the installation crew.

“This changes the game,” says Kennedy, 37, who co-founded Sungevity last year after leaving Greenpeace and relocating from Sydney to Berkeley. (Full disclosure: Kennedy’s kids and Green Wombat’s son attend the same elementary school.)

Kennedy and his partners have raised $2.7 million from investors that include German solar giant Solon and actress Cate Blanchett. “Our technology allows us to size up an entire city remotely and work out what the solar potential of the roof space is,” adds Kennedy, who will be speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference on Monday. “This is the real secret sauce, the thing that rocks the house.”

Says Joe Kastner, an executive with solar financier MMA (MMA) Renewable Ventures: “If you do a lot of site visits, that can end up being a big portion of the cost. Anything that can make these projects more efficient and cut the costs on the front end is good.” He adds that Sungevity may appeal to potential customers accustomed to managing their lives online and who are loathe to hang out at home waiting for solar sales or service people to show up. “I would be interested in doing as much as possible over the Internet,” Kastner says. “There’s definitely a market for it.”

Rather than employ its own installers, Sungevity will work with unions to train electricians and other contractors so that it can tap pools of green-­collar workers in local markets. “That’s probably long-term what’s most needed to achieve a million solar roofs,” says Kennedy, referring to California’s solar target. “[Solar panel] supply is not the big constraint. The real issue is labor — it’s the limiting factor in the growth of the industry.”

At the company’s Berkeley offices down the street from Chez Panisse, Kennedy and Andrew Birch, a board member and solar economics expert, run through a live demo of the Sungevity system. In about 15 minutes, a spokesmodel had walked a potential customer through the sales pitch and ordering process while on the backend a consultant is sizing up the roof with the software tools. Within a day or so an e-mail will be sent to the customer with different solar array options and the relative return on investment. “With a traditional solar installer, that would have been about a two week process,” says Kennedy.

Whether this all works so smoothly once volumes of real-life orders start coming over the transom remains to be seen, of course. And the limits of the system become apparent when Birch types in my Berkeley address and the picture shows a large Japanese maple overhanging my house, which would have ruled out a solar array except the tree had been removed a year and a half earlier. Kennedy acknowledges that leafy cities like Berkeley with its mishmash of architectural styles and every-which-way rooflines are problematic. Instead, Sungevity’s target market is middle-American suburbia, with its vast tracts of cookie-­cutter houses.

That’s just fine with potential rival SolarCity, the Foster City, Calif., solar installer backed by PayPal co-founder and Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk. “Their technology works very well for track homes — that’s maybe 2% of our business,” says SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive. “Our market is more retrofit homes, existing homes in well-established areas that are looking to go solar.”

“I like it when companies like Sungevity get into the market,” he adds. “They’re forcing innovation and the most important thing is the widespread adoption of solar.”

Sungevity’s launch comes as utilities like Southern California Edison (EIX) and PG&E (PCG) and tech giants like Google (GOOG) are pushing for a mass expansion of solar energy.

Nat Kreamer, president of San Francisco-based solar installer Sun Run, says Sungevity’s move to digitize the solar business is valuable but it will have to focus on the installation process to really get costs down. “Once you figure out how to size up someone’s system, the challenge is the speed you can get it built,” he says.

Installation costs account for roughly half of a solar system’s cost and solar installers like Akeena Solar have developed modular arrays containing wiring and other components to minimize the time spent on installation.

Sungevity will not focus on zeroing out customers’ electricity bills, but like Sun Run, will push the “hybrid home” - selling smaller, cheaper solar systems that will cover that portion of a home’s electricity use that is the most expensive to buy from a utility.

For instance, after rebates, a standardized Sungevity solar array for a four-bedroom home in Northern California will cost about $21,000 and deliver an estimated return on investment of 13% over the system’s 25-year life.

“We’re selling this as an economic asset,” says Kennedy, “not just as a way to go green.”

Rebtel launched in May 2006, is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and now employs nearly 40 staff.

Serial entrepreneur Hjalmar Winbladh founded the firm with Jonas Lindroth with their own money and later scored $20m in venture funding from Index and Benchmark.

Winbladh tells us why it's a market ripe for disruption - and that the only obstacle is our own inertia.

• Explain your business to my Mum.
  "Rebtel lets you use your mobile phone to call friends and family abroad for pence per minute, instead of mobile operators' rip-off rates."
• How do you make money?
  "We make a small profit on every call we carry."
• What's your background?
  "I'm a serial entrepreneur. Before Rebtel, I was a strategy consultant and entrepreneur-in-residence at Investor AB, where I provided counsel for investments in the mobile/fixed convergence arena. Before that, I co-founded and spent seven years as president and CEO of mobile technology innovator Sendit AB, which we successfully took public in Sweden before it was acquired by Microsoft for $150 million USD.
  "But my first company was a bicycle delivery service company in Stockholm, called Pedal AB, which I started in 1990, and served as managing director for four years. In addition to all of that, I've been a member of the board of directors of Startup Factory AB, as well as Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Ventures."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
  "We are getting very close to the 1m mark with a healthy conversion to paying users."
• • What's your biggest challenge?
  "Focusing on short-term business opportunities while figuring out what and when to our next services.
  "People spent $63bn on short text messaging last year - that's 61m times more expensive than instant messaging over broadband. Mobile operators will not let the internet business model, where the customer is king, into the mobile world that easily."
• Name your competitors.
  "Our largest competitor is inertia. People can spend hours surfing the web to save a few dollars on a flight, but seem to have given up on the idea they can be smarter when it comes to mobile communications."
• Are we in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
  "I don't think so. However, we have a lot of start-ups that don't have a clue how to make money and are only focused on getting internet eye-balls. That works fine in an upbeat market where you have a lot of venture capital money floating around, and big companies afraid they're going to miss the next thing. But in a slower market, things tend to dry up pretty quickly, closing the window for companies without revenue."
• If you had £10m to invest in another web business, what would you invest in?
  "Not another social network, that's for sure. Probably really good local, niche internet services that have global potential, and which actually solve a real problem or issue for an end-user - and, that doesn't rely on ads as its sole revenue stream. Some of the mega-businesses beyond mobile-telecom that need to be disrupted are banking and insurance."
• What's the weirdest business experience you've had so far?
  "Hmmm... probably the meeting I had with Microsoft back in 1999 when I was running the mobile internet company Sendit, and was struggling with its too early bet on Windows NT as the underlying platform.
  "We went to Microsoft to get their cooperation and support, because it was difficult to engage Vodafone, France Telecom and the rest. They were very nice and polite and the next day they called me up and asked if I could stay in Seattle until Monday to meet Steve Ballmer. The rest is history..."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
  "With our recent expansion into China, Central America, the Middle East, Asia and Central Europe, we now operate in 45 counties - but it also means we still have another 150 countries to go."
• Are you the next big thing?
  "Compared to world peace or solving world hunger - no way. But we like to think that we're doing our part - standing up and doing something good for people. We really do believe the world will be a better place if people talk more with one another, and it's great to give people a smart alternative for making international calls with their mobile for free or a fair price."

Amateur and professional writers alike have found voices in blogs and social-networking profiles, bypassing the cut-throat competition of old-line publishing. Now a Bethesda start-up is trying to leverage that community of would-be authors to help write books, or at least improve them.

WEbook, which launched last week, invites writers, editors, topic experts and anyone else who has something to say to put their virtual pens together to work on literary projects. If the finished works get high marks from the site's members, WEbook publishes hard copies and sells them through online booksellers such as Amazon.com and retail stores including Barnes & Noble. Some books can also be read via mobile phones or in e-book format.

WEbook's first published novel, a 58-chapter thriller called "Pandora," was written by 17 people and will hit shelves next week.

By adopting the growing crowd-sourcing model, which aims to tap into the wisdom of a wide range of people, and the collaborative style of Wikipedia entries, WEbook hopes to help frustrated writers realize their potential.

"The idea is that a book would turn out better if the author could get fast, early feedback during the writing process," said WEbook President Sue Heilbronner, a former lawyer whose pent-up creative ambitions drove her to the entrepreneurial world.

Novel-writing isn't considered to be the most social activity, Heilbronner says. That's why many of the 90 projects on the site take the form of anthologies of first-person essays, how-to guides and short-story collections. Current works in progress include "101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do," a playful tutorial on how to cook a steak or break dance, and "The First Year," a collection of essays about the experiences of first-time teachers.

In addition to attracting writers, WEbook hopes to tap into the expertise of people with detailed knowledge of more esoteric fields. Heilbronner hopes experts in law or espionage, for example, could lend their know-how to make a legal thriller more authoritative.

The company has received the financial backing of Greylock Partners, an early investor of social-networking site Facebook, social-news site Digg and online-ad firm DoubleClick, which was just purchased by Google. In addition to its five-person staff in Bethesda, WEbook has a small development team in Mountain View, Calif., where Google also is headquartered. Founder Itai Kohavi, who got the idea for the company while trying to write a children's book, lives in Israel.

WEbook plans to pull in revenue by selling content produced on the site, mostly through hard copies of books, e-books or even audio books. For works not selected for publication, the company will give members the option of self-publishing their manuscripts through WEbook. Eventually, the site plans to charge for premium listings for highly skilled writers or book promotions.

WEbook isn't the first to experiment with collaborative publishing. Last year, Penguin Books in Britain launched a wikinovel project called "A Million Penguins" to see what happens when dozens of people weigh in on the plot, characters and title of a manuscript. Book publisher HarperCollins tried a similar venture by letting teens contribute chapters for a teen novel, now available as an e-book. Each November, National Novel Writing Month, thousands of aspiring writers gather in groups across the country to hammer out 50,000-word novels in social settings.

Some writers reach out for help on their own, posting parts of their works-in-progress online. John Blossom recently posted the first two chapters of his upcoming book about digital media, "Content Nation," on a blog of the same name to get suggestions from readers.

"Through their contributions, not only do authors get input for the book but they also build up an enthusiastic community to promote the book through word of mouth," said Blossom, president of Shore Communications, a consulting and research firm. "Communities then develop a more perfect rough draft . . . and identify content that is more valuable when it is converted into mass media."

Lorraine Shanley, principal at Market Partners International, a publishing consulting firm, said online publishing models can help break down the barriers involved with entering the traditional publishing world.

"But I would worry that 17 cooks stirring the pot could result in either the lowest common denominator or just a mismatched potpourri of conflicting genres," she said.

Heilbronner said a flurry of different perspectives is exactly what WEbook hopes for. Members can help one another overcome writer's block or add an unexpected twist in the plot.

And on WEbook, writers who don't want everyone to be able to read and contribute to their work can control who has access.

Melissa Jones contributed two chapters to the site's first published book and got so involved with the editing process that WEbook hired her to oversee the site's content. She sometimes makes the final call in disagreements between writers or helps moderate brainstorming sessions.

"There is definitely a lot of back and forth, and a lot more voices involved," she said. "But that's how good ideas come up that wouldn't have come up if it was just me writing."

Dealing with the recession

Keith O'Brien (PRWeek): Despite the recession, what are the opportunities for the technology sector?

Bob Angus (A&R Edelman): I'm not sure we've seen the [recession] here yet. Hopefully we don't. The tech sector usually lags in terms of recessionary tendencies [as opposed to] the rest of the country. But I think if we do see recessionary tendencies here, I think our profession will have a tremendous role in helping our companies through that because we're great at demand generation. Demand generation will give them better share of market and hopefully they'll be able to weather any storm that might come along.

Ryan Donovan (Hewlett-Packard): I'd be willing to bet that [with a] recession or not the role of social media in communications [won't] die down. The blogosphere is not going to die down simply because the market slows down. So there is a huge need for companies and [firms] to continue to engage that community and make sure they monitor and participate in those conversations. There [will] always be a need for that.

Karen Kahn (Sun Microsystems): Traditional PR is getting completely redefined. I won't say it's dying, but I think people need to get with what's on the cutting edge, in terms of building communities and starting conversations— as opposed to that traditional one-way dialogue. I think the recession is really scary for companies like Sun and Intel. We're all looking at emerging markets, but I do think what [will] be most interesting is going to be in the social and community-building realm.

Donna Sokolsky (SparkPR): We took a look at what professional money managers and hedge-fund managers were doing at the start of the year. It was interesting to note that in both Europe and the US they are quite bullish on tech because they're really not confident in putting their money elsewhere. It goes to what everyone else has been saying— tech does seem to be doing well for now and it is a lag indicator. But, so far so good.

Paul Bergevin (Intel): Tech is less exposed to the vicissitudes of the financial sector. If you say recession, you have to be very specific about which parts of the economy are doing well and which are not — it's very uneven. The companies that are more global-facing in addressing global market needs— the HPs and Intels — certainly look at that as a way to continue to drive innovation and satisfy demand on a very global basis.

Sabrina Horn (Horn Group): I'm based in New York — one block from the [NYSE] — and the heads are down there. The sheer impact of the negative psychology of this dark cloud in New York — the Bear Stearns news on the heels of the Spitzer news — will travel to the West. But I come off the plane out here and it's just like people are handing out money. It's like there is no recession.

On the agency side, if it does impact us, it will be in longer sales cycles. A recession is an excuse for people to delay a decision or not make a decision to work with an agency. For midsize firms like us - having an integrated [approach] - doing more than just PR and doing digital marketing is important.

Tim Dyson (Next Fifteen): It is a danger that we consider all recessions to be equal. I think this recession — if it is a recession — is very different from the one the last time around, especially for the people around this table, [who] were the people on Wall Street six or seven years ago.

We were right in the front of the boat with the waves crashing over us. It was a pretty miserable experience. Now we're in the back of the boat and there are a bunch of accountants, bankers, and real-estate people at the front and they hate it. We've been through it before and it's not quite as bad. I think you'll see some very different reactions from this group this time around, partly because we've been there before. I think agencies, in-house [communicators] are all going to react very differently in the tech area this time because last time around everyone didn't quite know how to deal with it — partly because the companies were staffing like crazy, spending like crazy. This time around they haven't done the same thing and some of them are still having to grow incredibly quickly — companies like Facebook are exploding as organizations. Most tech companies haven't been on that ridiculous spend and hire frenzy that they were the last time around. So I think it'll be a different experience regardless of what happens.

Brandee Barker (Facebook): It's also hard to predict that we are going to be there, although the dark cloud is looming above us. But it also seems there is tremendous opportunity forming with organizations — Kleiner announcing a new fund for applications built on the iPhone and Bay Partners throwing out millions of dollars for companies building applications on sites like Facebook, MySpace, or any of the other social sites. So I think the opportunities [will] shift a bit. Certainly the agencies in the Valley can go after that as great revenue.

Rich Cline (Voce): I think there will be a softening of the market eventually. But in this case I don't think it will be a general softening. And it'll depend on the company more than ever. And there are companies at this table that are a lot better prepared than others will be. So I think there will be an impact but it will depend, like you said, if you're a global-facing organization and you're geared towards other markets to withstand. There are emerging companies that aren't Facebook and don't have that driver, they are going to experience some drying up on the wells and that's business. So I don't see anything treacherous but I do think we need to be very smart.

Luca Penati (Ogilvy): I don't see any recession right now. However, if there is going to be an economic downturn I think we need to define what that would be because there are two kinds of technologies that are very different. I think this recession would probably be a consumer-led downturn, so consumers will not spend money on gadgets. But on the b-to-b side, I don't see any recession because companies will need to stay ahead of the competition. So they will invest in technologies to give them the competitive advantage. So as PR professionals it's all about giving a competitive advantage to clients — what that competitive advantage depends on the sector you are. It could be social media, digital, it could be anything that would give companies the competitive advantage. Finally, as people have said global companies will get more of the emerging markets. That's why I'm so excited to be responsible for the global technology practice — our offices in India and China are just growing like crazy.

O'Brien (PRWeek): It seems like agencies are being very thoughtful about the clients they add and how it fits into the overall roster. Are any of you on the agency side are you thinking far ahead and strategizing what a potential downturn would do to each of your clients?

[Audience says “of course” in unison]

O'Brien (PRWeek): How much?

Dyson (Next Fifteen): Everyone around this table started doing that six years ago. That was the thing that did not go away after the last time when you were stupid and you didn't do that. You don't make the same mistake twice. You just can't afford that. But that doesn't mean you'll get it right though and that's the part where you do look at which VCs are funding these guys, how much do I trust their track record. You're not really looking at the VC firm, you're not really saying it's Kleiner, you're looking within Kleiner and saying which partner because some of the partners are better than others. Is that person backing it? Ok, they have a good track record. People are a lot more granular than they once were and I wouldn't say it's new behavior. I would actually argue most of the agencies around learned a very hard lesson last time and do not want to be hit with that big, wet fish again.

Sokolsky (SparkPR): We're looking to diversify, not only within the US but abroad, so that 50 % of our new business comes from outside of the US. So we've looked across the entire spectrum of technology companies and financial companies for what is the best in the world, not just what's big here in the US That's been really helpful because we're seeing amazing stuff come out of Eastern Europe or Sri Lanka and other places.

Penati (Ogilvy): As Tim pointed out, as agencies we had to look at what are the hot industries and what are the industries that will do well during a recession. As agencies we need to look at the spectrum of opportunities. It's all about prioritization. It's all about matching the skill-set, the things you have, and the opportunity a company can give you as a brand. But you're always juggling so many things.

Horn (Horn Group): There is so much interest in our employees to work with Web 2.0 companies. And that's a lovely bubble and there will be some winners and probably more losers. So you have to temper the interest in Web 2.0 companies, when so many of them are features that belong inside something else. So we're looking at other markets like clean tech and alternative energy which is a bubble that will continue simply because of the guilt factor. And [it] will have a long shelf-life. But you really have to do your homework and your due diligence as to who you are investing your time in.

O'Brien (PRWeek): Are there delineations within the agency in which interest in working on certain accounts is based on demographics? Do younger staffers prefer to work on different brands than older staffers?

Cline (Voce): We try to focus on the opportunity because it is a natural phenomenon to have someone say, ‘I know this company, I use it, I want to work on that.' And then you'll say, in reality the job on that is not as good as the job on this — even though you know the company. This one is the bigger challenge, there is access to the executives, there is more strategy, and it's a really interesting campaign that we're putting on — even though it might not be pervasive with your generation. Once you get that a couple of times and really start training that, it has a profound impact on how you work because then you're not juggling as much brand nirvana and it's more about the project.

Angus (A&R Edelman): There is a lot of matching going on. People have interests in different things. I'm surprised at the number of young people that come in and want to work on infrastructure, or switches and routers, and those that want to work on clean tech. If you can find a right match that really strikes people's soul then they tend to be passionate about the subject if you've got the luxury to match. We try to do a little bit of matching for everybody, everybody gets to work on one passion project and everybody works on one that might be a little less of a passion. But that gives a nice mix that keeps people energized.

Sokolsky (SparkPR): Especially right now it's really important to be well-rounded because we are starting to see the pendulum swing. The Web 2.0 is starting to reach its peak and the VCs are starting to invest in more innovative, deeper technologies, and I feel as though I wouldn't be doing my job properly unless I was giving everybody the training so when they walk out of Spark three, four, or five years from now and they haven't worked on clean tech clients or venture capitalists — we've really done them a disservice.

Dyson (Next Fifteen): PR is supposed to be about more than media relations, but for a heck of a long time it hasn't been. [Silicon] Valley has been in love with media relations for a long time because it's an incredibly efficient form of public relations. But I think the other thing that is rearing its head thanks to social media is suddenly people are looking at different sectors. They have been exposed to using different techniques and the client is willing to pay for it. The clients previously weren't willing to pay for anything other than a headline or a great photograph and great quote. But now they are saying, ‘There is some pretty great stuff you can do directly with customers' and that's pretty [attractive] to young people. If the client is really interesting — that's great — and that used to be how you could get people to do great work because they loved the technology or that particular sector. Now get people who really love the techniques involved in social media and that's just as attractive to them. They can be passionate about the particular customer sector but they are so inspired by how they might use Facebook or Google products to get the message across to the customer and that can be just as compelling to them.

Barker (Facebook): I've been aggressively recruiting for quite awhile to grow my team. There was a time in my career that I really looked at candidates for communications backgrounds or journalism skills and writing. I still think there is a lot of value in that but someone who can come in and tell me how to use Digg, comments on blog, Facebook beyond just using Facebook for looking at photos, and Twitter and all the other social media and Web 2.0 technology — that is a skill that is so valuable now.

Social media

O'Brien (PRWeek): It seems like there is a belief that the younger generation studying communications immediately loves and gets social media. But anecdotally, I've found a lot of them still want to pitch The New York Times to pursue the tactics that have historically dominated the profession. Meanwhile, the experienced PR pros expect these kids to come in and immediately teach them about social media, but even young PR pros need to learn that there is more to PR today than media relations.

Donovan (HP): Regardless of the vehicle, it is about relationships. If people come into an organization, I believe it's flawed to think you'll have an old-line PR pro inside expecting a fresh graduate to come in and teach Twitter to them. You should be learning Twitter on your own, if that's a tool you want to use to communicate with your constituency. You shouldn't rely on some... AE. It is [on] the communications pro to master the vehicle.

Dyson (Next Fifteen): Last time we had a recession, the media collapsed like a pile of cards right at the same time. When clients were struggling, the media [simultaneously] were vanishing before our very eyes. Red Herring was closing down, The Industry Standard was closing down — it was just shocking. So the argument for having a budget to talk to the media was going away before our very eyes.

Now even if the media shrinks —which it will continue to do —there is this whole other avenue that is growing. You can't sit there within HP, Intel, Sun or any of these large [entities] and say you have a smaller number of people to deal with [things] than you had 12 months ago. In most cases, that number has grown very significantly.

Kahn (Sun): One of our hiring priorities is [finding] kids right out of college or fresh MBAs just for that different level of thinking. We're really interested in user-generated content and I have kids sending me video resumes, posting videos of themselves, sending me audio blogs. It's the coolest stuff ever.

Courtney Hohne (Google): We injected our department this year with 30 kids straight out of school. It was a significant percentage of our department at the time. We've always had the luxury of our communications challenges being a bit of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, but there is so much to do.

For these young ones coming in, we can't guarantee what [they will] be doing in two or four weeks, but [we tell them to] trust us that [this] is going to be a lot of fun. Some of them obviously like a little bit more structure, but others have really risen to the challenge and discovered that if they love working with the phenomenon of the blogosphere or social media, [they] can go to South by Southwest and get paid to sit there and Twitter.

Cline (Voce): We've had a ton of people [at Voce] who have tried virtually everything. They go mad on all different tools for emerging companies and the clients they work on. Now we're trying to ask: What is the strategic application? This is cool, but are we deriving value? We're at that mode where [we're] looking at it from what works and what doesn't because not everything does and not everything should be done.

Horn (Horn Group): There is so much interest in our employees to work with Web 2.0 companies. And there will be some winners and probably more losers. So you have to temper the interest in Web 2.0 companies when so many of them [have] features that belong inside something else.

Measurement

O'Brien (PRWeek): Do you feel clients/companies are asking for enough measurement? Do tech clients ask for measurement because they're data-oriented people?

Barker (Facebook): I can emphatically say that we care about measurement and data. I have an extremely technical CEO. I am expected to walk in with performance metrics on the messages that we get out in market — and the return. He and everyone else in the company and in the market can see the impact of certain things, as well. And our users are very vocal in telling us what's working and what's not.

Angus (A&R Edelman): Measurement has changed. Now we look at demographic accuracy. Are we reaching the right audiences? Five years ago, you could not do that very effectively, not in real time at any rate. Now we know who we're reaching, when we're reaching them, [whether] they're getting it, and [if] they are responding to it.

Marketing programs can be tapered that way to make sure they are reaching the right people. And it's really important along those lines to ask: Are we getting to the right crowd?

Sokolsky (SparkPR): But it also comes from within. I find that we're all [somewhat] news junkies ourselves and there are so many different tools out there. So, our teams are constantly checking Technorati or Google Trends. They are forever slicing the data after every launch just to measure themselves and have a bit of good fun and rivalry among the teams.

It's nice to know [the initiative is] coming from within, and it's not a mandate [from superiors] because there is... so much that we can [monitor] in real time.

Kahn (Sun): For communications people, the power of measurement is incredible. We measure things on a daily basis, from clicks on press releases to downloads based on headlines to clicks on videos for multimedia press releases. I run the Sun.com homepage and I check the data almost hourly on how many people are clicking on our stories. Maybe I want to rotate the stories later in the afternoon because I want to pick up traffic from developers who might [be looking] to read more about an open-source story. We look at those numbers because they are just so instructive.

Bergevin (Intel): The premise of your question is spot-on. We work with companies that are often led by engineers for whom empirical data is kind of what they trade in —the everyday currency.

You can measure a number of things as well as the quantitative stuff. You can look at qualitative fidelity of message playback, how the stories are actually what you intend them to say, and do that in a way [similar to how] an Intel engineer would measure yield on a wafer. People at Intel understand that kind of thing.

Angus (A&R Edelman): It really legitimized our industry. It's not ethereal anymore; you can really measure [the] impact we have.

Content creation

O'Brien (PRWeek): Companies have now become content producers. Is there no end to what companies think they can do? At what point does it become an endeavor without the proper return?

Hohne (Google): Google has done a lot of content creation, on the blogs in particular. Now increasingly through YouTube, we have a Google channel [there]. We've done a good job at content creation, but now we're exploring ways to open it up to the community.

You can imagine the debates that must take place about whether to open the main Google blog to the community — millions of people have very strong opinions about [us]. What editorial decisions will we have to make if we have a pipeline of comments? How much would we publish? How much do you restrict? How much do you want it to be representative?

We want it to be open, [whimsical], and fun, but we also have business realities we need to deal with and things we must protect. The spirit is overwhelmingly, ‘let's open it up and let's engage' and I think we're doing well in some of the community development blogs but how we are going to bubble that up to corporate level communications continues to be a challenge.

Dyson (Next Fifteen): We are much further from the edge of the cliff than the advertising industry. We have a lot more that we can do to get to the audience that we want, unlike that advertising industry that has pretty much pushed the envelope as far as it will go in many areas in terms of being able to say, “we'll use the online community to put some kind of interactive component in just about every tiny corner of the Internet that somebody might touch.” So I think for our industry the cost relative to the advertising agencies doing the same thing is still relatively low. So our risk-opportunity ratio is so different. I think we have a mountain more experimenting to do. Because of every day you think you have reached the limit and then someone comes out with a completely new field that you didn't even think of exploring.

Sokolsky (SparkPR): Technology is always going to advance, so what you said earlier was pointed [to] the last downturn with the media. We are seeing an acceleration of that this time. I'm not sure if anyone saw but the Pew Institute study on the state of the media recently came out and it was really grim and a lot of reporters were really concerned about moving into other fields because there is concern [media] is not viable and it will sustain another collapse. And I think we can that [see that shift] happen even more with more mediums and more channels, but the flip side to that is online advertising continues to grow. And we're seeing an overwhelming number of online advertising companies pop up now.

Angus (A&R Edelman): And ad spend is up, it's just being spent in a different way.

Penati (Ogilvy): The bigger evolution in our job is not learning about social media and digital. It's about changing from a [text] storyteller to a visual storyteller. I think as PR pros we always related to the written word, and these new Web 2.0 applications relate to being more visual —except Twitter.

How do you train people who always thought about writing a pitch to a reporter to think of telling a story visually? The visual media—especially the tech media -—are moving online. I'm talking about paperless PR. By 2010, there won't be any more print publications in tech. It will be all online. But moving online always changes the way we use content. If you look at Computer World, one-third of its content is editorial, one-third is user-generated, but the other one-third is vendor generated content. So the traditional [media outlets] are not dead, they are just evolving. As PR professionals, we need to train our people to tell a story visually. That's a major shift and when you interview candidates you have to if they know how to operate a camera, do they know how to edit a video — it's not about a cool video that takes 20 days to edit. It's all about — you have an interview and you are taking a video and then you recycle the content in some way. The shift of writing AP style to tell the story visually is a huge thing for this industry that I'm really passionate about.

Hohne (Google): We just hired a graphics designer. Traditionally, [that person] either sat in product organization or marketing doing more traditional marketing activities. But this is dedicated to more traditional corporate communications and our engineers and product managers have responded extraordinarily well.

We've brought them [in] to say, "Help us tell us your story." And they really struggle - along with us - to take a complicated topic, turn it into plain English, and decide whether the language is better for TechCrunch or The Wall Street Journal. But [what] we've all found to be universal is in graphical and video representations. Lots of videos that look like they've been shot in somebody's basement in front of a whiteboard [have gotten] pickup across the blogosphere. We've now made it best practice when we have product announcements to make sure we have an accompanying visual.

Kahn (Sun Microsystems): We just got 30 different cameras that we got for PR people. So whenever we have a chalk talk or you do a big interview —PR people are responsible for shooting their own stuff. We have a studio on our campus, but it costs $5,000 to step into our studio. People have to know how to use the equipment, take photos, post them on the blog — I actually had to learn how to use it. It's a great skill.

Angus (A&R Edelman): This is the most consumable media for a global audience. One thing we have now is a global audience when you think about the long tail, the globalization of everything we do — video can be understood in any language, virtually. So this is a really consumable media that argues against the audience of one because we've got phenomenal long tail that is fueled by communities around that world that aren't even adjacent but are connected. Consider only 15 % of the world's population have access to the Internet today — you have a whole 85 % of the world to bring into this and talk to and reach and video and audio is the way to do that.

Horn (Horn Group): This is really where PR is evolving to a new discipline. We're talking about integrated communications using all these new mediums. We have a video studio in our office and it's not because clients demanded it — it was more like we were shooting videos for so many different things and then all of a sudden, we realized we should just have a video studio. And now we think, “wow this is great — this is where PR is going.” It's a combination of the verbal brand with the visual brand, using digital marketing tools to have these integrated campaigns.

Dyson (Next Fifteen): It also introduces an interesting challenge for our industry because if you go back 10 years, you sought out influence channels — things that would influence a larger group of people. Now you still use them but they're not everything. So now you're the influence channel — you are the start and the end of the process. So before you built up this story and then watched it get diluted down until it got to the right person. Now you're [the] dilution mechanism, you're the filter, you're taking that content, and editing it and making it authentic. That's a very different role for our industry, we were never about authenticity but suddenly now we are. We have to start telling the truth and PR industry is not known for telling the truth.

Cline (Voce): The challenge to that is that authenticity does not reach the same audience size. It's a much more narrow. It may not attach to it the same level of credibility as well. You have to have a mix.

Angus (A&R Edelman): This work we need to do as a group. We need to work at establishing the credibility of our organizations and making it a truthful industry so that we are seen as authentic.

Barker (Facebook): I think the authenticity and transparency piece is really important — I argue more important than video is as a form of communications. We had a little thing called newsfeeds happen last year when 750,000 users protested and because we communicated to our user base — we issued a press release, but we also issued a blog that [CEO] Mark [Zuckerberg] posted and apologized our wrongdoing and it was received really well because we were willing to say we made a mistake. And that transparency, when we fall back on that as a company in our communications, we find success.

O'Brien (PRWeek): Does it make sense for this industry to talk so much about transparency when you can't ever be as transparent as the audience wants?

Angus (A&R Edelman): But you can be transparent about what you can't be transparent about.

[participants agree in unison]

Sokolsky (SparkPR): I think culturally we are shifting [to] a higher moral high ground because privacy has been dead for years as far as I'm concerned. We're talking about transparency, and we're splitting hairs but you can find thousands of blogs will address it and you can find out background on anybody before you hire them these days. I think there is something in the back of our minds being in technology that there is no other choice to take the moral high ground because everybody is going to find out about it sooner or later.

Kahn (Sun Microsystems): We have always complete transparency with our employees. We don't put out a lot of Sun e-mails because all the information is in [CEO] Jonathan [Schwartz]'s blog. It's just out there and it's part of the culture of what we do and that culture guarantees certain filters throughout everything. But with that comes certain risks that as communications people you have to be aware of.

O'Brien (PRWeek): Can you talk about the blog as an internal communications tool?

Kahn (Sun Microsystems): Before Jonathan had a blog there were a variety of different vehicles geared towards employees, all Sun e-mails — we don't do that anymore. Now it's “read Jonathan's blog on the subject.” It's earnings, it's acquisitions, it's a great new launch — his blog is mandatory reading. Why rehash that same information? It's like treating an employee like they're not that smart like we have to rehash that information in a new way just for you. [Now we] write it the same way for the whole market.

Relevance of green

O'Brien (PRWeek): Is green still a big deal?

Angus (A&R Edelman): It's very important and will continue to be. We're just at the start of it. Now the real products will come to market.

Bergevin (Intel): This goes back to comments about the recession to some degree. Not only must you look as to whether the tech industry is affected by the recession, but software, tools, semiconductors, the data storage—the things that we enable in the tech industry help businesses generate productivity and help get themselves out of economic downturns. It's a big part of the solution. It's not the only part, but it's going to play a role.

When you get to the image side of green, there is a certain amount of backlash, greenwashing, and all that. Companies must be careful to draw the right balance between what is legitimately helping the environment [and what] is just a nice marketing campaign to bring some sheen on the reputation.

Dyson (Next Fifteen): Green was the hot topic, [but] is not anymore. The economy has taken over as the hot topic. If you had a green story to tell nine months ago, you had a very high probability of getting people to listen. Now, the audience has dried up considerably. If it's a good story, it's a good story - but it's the natural ebb and flow of what's going on.

Key Points

Recession has yet to hit the technology sector

Measurement has become more prevalent, as well as more sophisticated

Tech PR is increasingly incorporating video into its work

Even if media outlets shrink, the blogosphere will give PR pros more chances to tell their story

The economy has taken the place of green as the new hot topic

Dealing with the recession

If the notion of teamwork sounds a bit counterintuitive when it comes to writing books, WEbook President Sue Heilbronner agrees. That's why the service is emphasizing nonfiction—anthologies, self-help, and essay collections, for example—more than novels, where a consistent author's voice matters more.

WEbook Launch
The site, launched Apr. 9, is essentially an online workshop. Indeed, while the online medium has become a nemesis for all forms of the printed page, WEbook thinks digital technology can be channeled in an effort to reinvigorate the staid, exclusive publishing industry. By taking advantage of community input and feedback, WEbook hopes to provide a new way for ideas and authors to emerge and move from idea to book.

Community members will propose the projects, submit chapters to different books, vote on the chapters, and then review and rate the finished books. WEbook plans to publish the highest-rated of its books digitally and in print, sharing a percentage of the royalties with the major contributors.

An invitation-only version of WEbook went live in mid-2007, inviting students and graduates from writing programs such as Columbia University's to join in writing Pandora, a thriller novel about terrorists and star-crossed lovers. Here's an excerpt written by Melissa Jones, who authored two chapters of the novel:

"A faint smell of dry earth wafted down from the round ventilation hole. Yusuf held his back straight and glanced at his hands against the fine dove-gray fabric of his suit. His fingernails were clean and well trimmed; the thick platinum band on his left hand gleamed in the harsh light. Two weeks in a bunker away from your homeland was no excuse for slovenliness."

Book Buzz
About 700 people are now members of the service, working on 60 projects, which range from Ex-Pat Journal, a compilation of stories written by people living outside of the U.S., to 101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do, a tongue-in-cheek handbook spanning topics from break dancing to cooking a steak.

Just because the site is all about "we" doesn't mean the site will shun those literary killjoys who eschew teamwork. Authors can also use the service to write their books in private, inviting a small group of friends to log in and provide feedback. They can also let the whole community read and rate their books but not edit or contribute to them. But it's in WEbook's interests to have as many books made public as possible, because then it has the right to publish them.

Since the community will determine which books are published, WEbook is betting that its members will also generate buzz in the same way that American Idol's audience provides a built-in boost for that show's winners. "Our idea is to provide a place where individuals can bypass a very exclusive system, where the odds of someone unknown getting published are 15,000 to 1," says Heilbronner.

Balance Is Key
The company was founded by Itai Kohavi, an Israeli entrepreneur who started Comfy, an interactive toy maker, and Neat Group, an online travel technology company later acquired by Cendant. Kohavi, also a writer with two novels and a children's book to his name, raised money for the concept from investors including venture firm Greylock Partners.

Still, books might not lend themselves very well to a group effort. The problem, says Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research (FORR), is that completing a book with a single vision with dozens of authors is a challenge. Take some of the popular wikis out there. When you look closely, the writing style and content structure tend to vary from entry to entry, he says.

In fact, none of the handful of books written by authors using a wiki-type system has been a popular success. One notable example is We Are Smarter Than Me, a book produced by a community of business experts and managers about how companies can make the most of online communities, blogs, and the wisdom of crowds. The book, released last year with much fanfare online and in the press, failed to break out. It's listed at 25,248 in Amazon's rankings. "Perhaps the best balance will be small central groups driving the majority of the content and vision, with collaborative help from the community helping shape and mold," says Owyang. "In either case, a balance will need to be found."