What you’ll hear at DiscoveryBeat 2010: the unexplored territory of finding apps

DiscoveryBeat 2010 is just a day away. The conference at the Mission Bay conference center in San Francisco will have a single-minded focus on the problem of discovery, or finding the content that you want.

Like in the early days of the internet, finding what you want with the fewest steps possible is a problem that is only getting worse as more and more apps are piling into the Apple, Android and other app stores. The day of a million apps is not that far away. While Google and Yahoo solved the problem of sorting through millions of web sites, no one has figured out how to do the same in the age of apps, where cross-platform complexities and walled gardens stymie easy search solutions.

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At DiscoveryBeat, we have assembled 36 experts (and a bunch of moderators) who can cover the breadth of the discovery ecosystem. If you check out our logo, you’ll see that the theme is akin to the discovery of a new world and how to navigate it. The problem of discovery exists inside apps. Brian Reynolds (left), chief game designer, can talk in his fireside chat about how you design an app from the inside out for easier discovery. The discussion will cover topics such as better user interfaces, accessible design, and moving designs to new platforms.

Sebastien DeHalleux (below right), co-founder of EA Playfish, will also have something to say about those topics in his fireside chat — but from the perspective of being inside a company with lots of well-known brands.

What does good design have to do with discovery? Our speaker Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins who will talk on our Investing in Discovery panel, says you can’t have discovery without engagement. If someone plays a game for two months instead of two days, they will be more engaged and share their game more widely. Gordon and his fellow panelists — Jennifer Scott Fonstad of DFJ, Savinay Berry of Granite Ventures, and Peter Relan of incubator YouWeb — will discuss what the opportunities are for investing in entrepreneurial startups and technologies in this new world. What investments make sense in this stage of of the ecosystem’s maturity?

That prompts the question: is anyone making money in discovery? Our Show Me the Money will focus on that question, with participants including Tapjoy’s Lee Linden, Flurry’s Peter Farago, Google-AdMob’s Aunkur Arya, and Mobclix’s Sunil Verma. The money must be there somewhere, right? Big brands are diving into the app markets. We’ll have a panel on that with Tim O’Brien of Disney-Tapulous, Travis Boatman of EA Mobile, James de Jesus of interactive agency AKQA, and Garrick Schmitt of agency Razorfish. And social discovery platforms are emerging. We’ll have a panel on that with Si Shen of PapayaMobile, Jason Citron of Aurora Feint, and Kabir Kasargod of Qualcomm’s Vive service.

We’ll have a lot of A lot of fresh thinking is going into discovery. Dave Smiddy, chief executive of Infrinity, is the winner of our Needle in the Haystack contest for the best new business ideas related to discovery. He’ll talk about creating a new kind of recommendation engine. William Mark, a vice president at research institute SRI, will also speak about how artificial intelligence can be applied to the problem of discovery. SRI spun out Siri, which built a cool AI-based discovery app and which was acquired by Apple.

Vijay Chattha will show that getting press for an app doesn’t have to be routine. Simon Khalaf (right) and Sean Galligan of Flurry will enlighten us on the topic of analytics and making money related to discovery. We’ll also have a lot of inspiring and instructive case studies from successful indie app makers, including Julian Farrior of BackFlip Studios (the maker of Paper Toss), Dave Castelnuovo of Bolt Creative (Pocket God), Doyon Kim of YD Online, Chris Williams of PlayFirst (Diner Dash), Justin Maples of Borken Thumb Apps (Zombie Duck Hunt) and Patrck Mork of GetJar, which runs an indie app store and which recently launched Angry Birds on Android.

One of the most successful new apps of the Twitter era has been Foursquare. We’ll hear how Foursquare — an app whose monetization is heavily related to how users discover new places — got discovered itself in a fireside chat with Holger Luedorf.

We’ll close the door with a discussion of the would-be app kingmakers and their tools. That panel will include Ben Keighran of Chomp, Alan Warms of Appolicious, Laura Fitton of oneforty (which discovers Twitter apps), and Chris DeVore of AppStoreHQ and iPhoneDevSDK.

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We hope you’ll join us in the undiscovered country.

Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. See the full agenda here. The conference takes place on October 18 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors include Flurry, Adobe, YD Online, Offermobi, appbackr, Altcatel-Lucent, Appolicious, AppLaunchPR, and Herakles Data Center.  To register, click here. Hurry though. Tickets are limited, and going fast.