by Brian Solis

The Silicon Valley PRSA chapter hosted its annual Media Predicts event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Industry trendsetters, chroniclers and luminaries shared their predictions for trends, issues and technologies for 2009.

Media Predicts is literally a black tie affair that attracted PR professionals from every major agency and tech company in Silicon Valley.

Sam Whitmore of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey emceed the evening and Ann Windbladt of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners served as the moderator.

The panel consisted of tech media heavyweights:

Elise Ackerman, Technology Reporter, San Jose Mercury News
Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
John Markoff, Senior Writer, The New York Times
Mark Veverka, West Coast Editor & Columnist, Barron’s
Richard Waters, West Coast Editor, Financial Times

The discussion ranged from netbooks to Web 2.0 to Google and Facebook to Microsoft and Yahoo and everything in between. The witty banter seemed to lead us all over the place, but overall, it still fun and entertaining.

The panel invited us to gaze into their respective crystal balls for a moment, but for the most part, we dissected and analyzed the successes and epic failures of 2008.

Here are some of the highlights;

Some viewed the Obama campaign as the killer app of 2008, while others were ready to move beyond “Web 2.0.”

Michael Arrington, for example, scrubbed Web 2.0 from TechCrunch. When asked by Ann what his definition of Web 2.0 is, Arrington responded, “Web 2.0 was a renaissance from a nuclear winter – the last recession. We’re all about technology.”

Richard Waters defined Web 2.0 as ultra-low cost publishing with a bit of interactive tools.

Joh Markoff described it as open interfaces and open tools that plug services together in a Lego-like function.

The conversation promptly shifted from open to closed systems.

Arrington characterized a trend that closed could be the new open. He highlighted two successful companies that are based on closed systems, Apple and Facebook. In 2009, he’s looking forward to the competition between Android, iPhone and other smart phones.

Markoff countered, claiming that Apple is not closed. “If you count the lines of code in the Mac OS, 1/2 are open source,” he exclaimed.

Arrington pointed to Microsoft in its prime. “What if Microsoft approved all apps for the Windows OS before they were allowed to sell to the public,” he asked.

Richard Waters jumped in, “Apple is a closed system and closed platform,” he stated.

Ann introduced Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009:

• Virtualization
• Cloud Computing
• Servers
• Web-Oriented Architectures
• Enterprise Mashups
• Specialized Systems
• Social Software and Social Networks
• Unified Communications
• Business Intelligence
• Green IT

In response to the list, Arrington revealed that he’s fascinated by the cloud computing efforts that are targeted at enterprise and consumers. However, he cautioned against the over enthusiasm of 2009 trends in the enterprise as it may well be the year of tremendous IT cuts in resources and budget.

Richard Waters refererred to Chris Anderson’s next book, “FREE.” In 2009, he believes that free is no longer going to be a good business model to support. “Cheap, on the otherhand is a great business model,” he believes.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Ann Winblad, John Markoff

Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

Mark Veverka, Barron’s

John Markoff

Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News

Sam Whitmore

For more pictures from the Media Predicts 2009 event, please visit my album on flickr.

Special thanks to DNA13 for the invitation to join them at the event.

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