Mozilla, Zappos talk at DevCon keynote

June 18, 2008

The keynote at the end of day two of DevCon had three industry leaders providing very different, if parallel, visions of the future. Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s chief evangelist, talked about love: how the web loves us, and we love it right back, illustrated with photographs of his exceptionally cute baby daughter. Mozilla’s own practice of setting the information free, and making it easy for users to change platforms, leave you and come back to you, is something that all developers should hear: the days of locking people into one platform forever are gone.

Tony Hsieh from shoe company Zappos talked about creating a culture where customer service is not what the company does, but what it is. Defining your culture from day one and hiring people who have not only the expertise, but the personalities to fit, should make for a happier workforce. And companies should be transparent: “be real, you have nothing to fear”. I hope eBay’s upper management were listening.

Finally, a very short speech from eBay CEO John Donahoe made three key points:

  • “You are very important to our success”: developers have in the past increased user engagement and improved the user experience, and that will remain the case going forward.
  • “We’re excited about Echo.” It should drive innovation.
  • “We’ve only just begun.” eBay want developers’ thoughts, ideas and feedback: “it’s a kinder, gentler form of feedback than that eBay community can be sometimes”.

There may be trouble ahead…

It’s available on listen again if you want to hear it all for yourself.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events | 5 Comments