Tuesday, August 08, 2000

All I Want for Christmas is…


A scaleable e-commerce solution! Well, such was the wish and topic for many forward-thinking new media networkers at NYNMA's evening panel series on "Scaling For the Holidays" at the Cooper Union on Tuesday, August 8. Stockback.com's CIO Joseph Larizza summarized the themes of the night's discourse: technology, social interaction and web site design all related to the e-commerce aspects of sites selling on the web. Each of the five times the question "how do you scale" came up, the answer was "think big!" If you want to sell online, plan and structure your shop for the maximum number of users. If you start with just a Yahoo! store, what are you going to go when you have a huge spike in site visitors and buyers? And where are you going to do it? Who are the people you'll need to hire when you begin scaling? A good systems administrator, database administrator, lead programmer and project manager. Another panelist who doled out dollops of droll and decisive information was Bluefly.com's Andreas Turanski, who stayed around after the presentation to answer many more questions from inquiring minds. I indulged in many Swedish meatballs and wasabi-spiced pea snacks provided by Clementine Catering. As I popped in a few meatballs, I chatted with 55-Broad Street-based Melene Follert and Vienna, Austria-based Alexander Kreisler of IBM. 

Excite PR principal Joann Soo introduced me to Fanning.com's David Cowen and Maureen Mehl. Shop.com's Alexander Jacobson and HauteDecor.com's Shuja Keen were chatting it up with some of the panelists afterwards. Lois Paul & Partners Colleen Krenzer and Stockback's Deborah Parrott were mingling with guests and representatives of sponsor Interactive Futures Adam Goldman and Karien Cohen.