eBay Developers Conference 2007 Boston | June 11–13

Get on the fast track to success!

The eBay Developers Conference 2007 contains Keynote Addresses  by members of our executive team and outside industry speakers.You’ll get the in-depth technical information you need, along with forward-looking information that can help shape your business and development plans.

You can also dive into the Conference Sessions that best suit your interests. This year's show has three tracks:Affiliate Traffic and Buyer Tools , Seller and Merchant Tools, Consultants and Integrators.

Affiliate Traffic and Buyer Tools

Affiliate Industry Summit
Jeremy "Shoe Money" Schoemaker, CK, Alex Schultz, Lily Shen (moderator)
We are gathering experts from the affiliate world to come talk about the state of the industry. Real life affiliate all-stars join eBay affiliate team leaders to discuss. How can developers succeed as affiliates? How do you run a successful affiliate business? How can eBay make its affiliate program better? These questions and more will be discussed in this panel.

Build a Shopping Portal
Jarrod Schwarz and Sunny Li
Learn how to build a comprehensive shopping portal powered by eBay's Web Services Platform that enables your visitors to search, browse, research and compare, bid and buy without ever leaving your site.  Understand the best ways to utilize search API's to take full advantage of eBay market intelligence.  This talk will also discuss using Shopping.com APIs and Half.com API's to expand the inventory available on your shopping portal.
 
Building an eBay Widget
Adam Flater - Effective UI
Want to build a widget? Cool. Want to build an eBay widget? Even cooler! Adam Flater from EffectiveUI presents on the eBay Actionscript SDK, and how to use it to build your own eBay widget.

Building eBay Mashups
Carsten Harnich
This talk focuses on using Web 2.0 technologies to integrated eBay data with existing websites for a unique user experience. See a real world example of a mashup created using the eBay API. Developer Carsten Harnich shows the underlaying technologies such as AJAX, integration of various data feeds, clientside rendering based on XSLT and a modified eBay datafeed.
 
Buyer API Feedback Forum
Ganga Muthyala, Alan Lewis, Steve Monseur, Rekha Patel, Adam Trachtenberg (moderator)
We've gathered some of the top influencers from inside eBay to conduct this live, no powerpoint, feedback forum. Help us guide the direction of eBay's APIs for buyer tools. Moderated by O'Reilly author and developer of real-life buyer application dudewheresmyusedcar.com, Adam Trachtenberg.
 
Content Tools for your Website
Christine Kim
Obtaining relevant content for your website is a key way to attract visitors. Christine Kim from the eBay Affiliates team discusses the currently available content tools that eBay offers, including AdContext and RSS. Also learn about the eBay web services that power these tools, and how you can extend them to create custom content feeds. Christine will highlight how to use mix of API calls to create a valuable site for your users.
 
Data Mining: The Key to Affiliate Success
Alex Schultz
Speaker Alex Schultz put himself through college as an affiliate and run the eBay UK affiliate program. That’s why you should come listen to him speak about the key to affiliate success: data mining. Hear real life examples of how data mining gives affiliates an advantage, how to optimize where you send your clicks, how to be truly certain you have a significant result from your optimization efforts, and more. Learn my secrets and make lots of money for very little work.

eBay Web Services Roadmap
Kumar Kandaswamy
What's on tap for eBay Web Services in the next year? Get the first peek at our roadmap in this session by head of platform product strategy, Kumar Kandaswamy. This is always one of our most popular sessions, so we're offering it twice this year. Make sure you attend at least once!
 
Future of the Desktop
Alan Lewis
Think the Desktop is dead? Think again. A new generation of desktop frameworks like WPF, Apollo, and Mozilla have reinvigorated desktop application development. Product Manager of the "San Dimas" project Alan Lewis shares his view of the new internet-connected desktop landscape. Learn how these platforms combine the simplicity of web development with the richness of desktop functionality.
 
Lessons from eBay Buyer Research
Jeff Resnick
eBay's buyer research team conducts interviews and studies with regular eBay users, all over the country. For the first time, we are sharing some of the results of that research. Learn about the different kinds of buyers, and about what they really want. Affiliates will learn how to market applications to buyers, and sellers will learn how to create listings that appeal to buyers.
 
Make Money with Shopping.com APIs
Ryan Dugan
Want to make money? Sure you do. Know how to use the Shopping.com APIs? Probably not. Then why not come learn how to make money, using the Shopping.com APIs. Brilliant!
 
Monetizing your Application
Jonathan Gabbai and Cian Weeresinghe
You've built a good, no, a great application. But how do you make money? Affiliate programs? Advertising? Subscription? Magic pixie dust? Come learn the lay of the monetization land in this talk.
 
New Buyer APIs Overview
Ganga Muthyala
We have been working on significant new tools and APIs for buyer applications. After hearing about them in the conference keynote, learn how to use them in this talk by product manager Ganga Muthyala.
 
Project Corona Overview
Farhang Kassaei
We're not spilling the beans on what exactly Project Corona is until the conference keynote, but trust us, you won't want to miss this talk.
 
SEO
Jeremy "Shoe Money" Schoemaker
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your web site to gain maximum visibility from internet search engines. Given the importance of search engine traffic for all web businesses, it makes sense to invest in SEO to ensure that potential visitors or customers can find your site. Jeremy "Shoemoney" Schoemaker is a leading expert in search engine marketing, and in this talk he leads you though what SEO is, and gives you practical advice on how to better market your business through search engines.

Web 2.0++: Why We Got Here and What's Next
Rolf Skyberg
The pony express. Claude and Ignace Chappe. Birds of the Salton sea. Web 2.0. How are these related? The web is full of lists describing the “what” of Web 2.0, but where is the list of the reasons “why”? Through an examination of the past, learn why Web 2.0 was a pre-destined consequence of social psychology, military dollars, and determined hackers and entrepreneurs. Come explore with us where the Web will be tomorrow and beyond by extending the same rich patterns which tie all these events and locations together.
 
What's Popular on eBay?
Greg Gunn - Data Unison
Learn about the phenomenon of eBay Marketplace Research & Intelligence and learn about how having access to eBay sales data gives you a competitive advantage. Research data helps you answer these questions: What is the market buying right now? What is the historical trend? What are purchasers willing to pay? How are my competitors doing? Greg Gunn from DataUnison shows in this talk how to use research data to answer these questions and more.

Consultants and Integrators

Bringing Offline Business Online
Ben Powers, neoverve, Kurt Davey, neoverve
Whether you are a consultant looking for more business in the ECommerce world or are a seller with a significant offline business you'd like to bring online, you'll want to hear tips from Ben Powers at neoverve. Learn why businesses should consider an online presence, how to understand the online customer, what are the processes for effective website development, and how to decide whether to do it yourself or hire a professional.

Building Effective Online Storefronts
Eric Anderson, neoverve, Kurt Davey, neoverve
Want to get more work from your current client base? Want to broaden your possible client base through ECommerce? Eric Anderson from Neoverve discusses the basics of an online business (highlighting the similarities between online and offline business), finding shoppers not browsers, the basics of site usability, and increasing sales effectiveness using additional tools. This session is targeted at professionals wishing to build online stores for themself or for a small business, ECommerce consultants, web designers and developers, and marketing managers.
 
Digital Content Delivery
Shannon Sofield, Payloadz
Learn what digital downloadable products are and how to use the eBay system to sell and deliver your products to your customers. Includes basic concepts of what digital goods are (music, movies, software, ebooks, etc), how to create them, and how to integrate them into eBay solutions. Also covers fraud and chargeback management.

IPN and the Desktop
David S. Johnson, IPCommerce
There’s now a way to incorporate PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) data into desktop applications and solutions. Until recently, solutions built around IPN messaging have focused on the web, and were difficult to access by desktop applications. David S. Johnson from IP Commerce discusses the IPPF Messaging Service, which incorporates IPN messaging within a desktop solution. Leveraging their expertise in delivering payment and commerce services seamlessly and securely, IP Commerce will present the process step-by-step, and include resources and quick references to guide developers through implementation within their own projects.
 
Managing Clients Effectively
Laura Thomson, OmniTI
In this talk Laura Thomson discusses how to manage your client interactions - from sales prospect to long term relationship - and  how those interactions change over time.  I'll cover managing expectations, effective communication, project planning, relationship building, and breaking bad news, all from a technical person's perspective rather than a sales or account manager's perspective.  Attendees should walk away with a better grasp on how to land clients, make them happy, and build long term profitable relationships.
 
New Features of the Payflow Gateway
Todd Sieber, Robert McGovern
In this essential session for anyone using or considering working with the Payflow Gateway, you will find out about the features of the new version of PayPal Manager, and how to post gateway transactions directly (without an SDK) by using simple HTTPS. You will also learn about the new Reporting Engine that allows you to obtain reports and data using XML. Finally, the pros and cons of using PayPal as your Internet Merchant Bank are presented.
 
New Opportunities with PayPal Mobile
Evers Ding
PayPal’s new mobile checkout APIs present a new realm of possibilities for developers working in the mobile space. In this session, the new APIs are presented in detail, and show how PayPal’s WAP 2.0 Mobile Checkout flow makes mobile commerce a reality. Also hear about other PayPal mobile features including Text To Buy and Text To Give.
 
PayPal: What's New and What's Next
Damon Williams
With over 130 million accounts, PayPal is becoming the global standard in online payments. Recent enhancements to the PayPal platform have allowed developers greater flexibility in building powerful PayPal-enabled applications. New options for authentication, new communication protocols, and new APIs are examples that will be discussed in detail during this session. We expect this session to be popular, so we've repeated it for your convenience.
 
PayPal Developer Certification Bootcamp (Double Session)
Patrick Breitenbach
This session prepares attendees to take the exam to become a PayPal Certified Professional Developer and is presented by an actual exam test item writer. All DevCon attendees have the opportunity to take the exam for free (a $150 value). Material you need to know to pass the exam will be presented at this session, and you will also have an opportunity to use an on-site computer lab to take the exam shortly after this PayPal crash-course.
 
ProStores Certification Overview
Mike Miller
The ProStores Design Certification program is being introduced at eBay DevCon. As a certified designer you'll be able to tap into the ProStores eco-system to offer merchants custom design services. This certification bootcamp teaches you how to become a certified designer: including discussing the available tools, training material and processes available to help you complete certification. In this session ProStores staff also discuss the business opportunity for designers who design and build storefronts for small and medium businesses, and present a high level design architecture of ProStores with example ProStores sites. Note that the first 100 to sign up for Certification receive 50% off certification fee ($49.50 value).

Skype: A global opportunity
Paul Amery
Skype has over 171 million registered users from all 4 corners of the globe. As a developer Skype can provide you with the tools to build you application, and help you market your application to the users. This session presents to you the global opportunity available to developers.

Skype Development Techniques and Tools
Peter Kalmstrom
Skype is offering a range of different tools and techniques for developers. Controlling the Skype client via the API, showing presence on the web or building a Skype extra. All will be covered!

Skype Extras: Concept to Cash
Lester Madden
If you’re a developer looking to build applications for Skype’s global market place then this session is for you. In this session you learn all you need to know in building and deploying Skype extras with the publishing studio.

Skype Public APIs and Developer Services
Peeter Motskula
With more than 170 million registered users worldwide, a number of public APIs, the Extras distribution framework, and developer services ranging from technical support to software certification, Skype is a great platform for software developers. In this session, Peeter Motskula gives a high-level overview of the APIs and services offered. Questions and ideas welcome.

Up Close and Personal with the PayPal API
Tom Kutter and Yanick Bercy
Come see how to accept payments, manage transactions, and pay affiliates using the PayPal API. We will walk through real code examples, so bring your questions and ideas and we will show you how to seamlessly integrate PayPal into your applications. In addition to the traditional SOAP API, the new Name-Value Pair (NVP) interface will also be presented in detail.
 
Utilize PayPal Reporting for Order Processing and Reconciliation
John Chiu
Learn about PayPal’s new Business Portal and Automated Reporting features and how they help streamline your business. After this session, you will understand how to configure and use PayPal’s reporting server, and how to simplify your payment processing through PayPal Reporting features.

Seller and Merchant Tools

Community Driven Item Specifics
Brian Johnson, Ajay Agrawal, eBay
This talk discusses eBay’s new form of Item Specifics. The existing Item Specifics System is controlled by eBay and uses numeric IDs to refer Item Specific names and values (attributes). The new system uses plain text strings for Item Specifics names and values and moves the control of these to the Community (buyers and sellers). eBay’s role in the new system is to provide recommendations based on successful Community generated item-specific names and values. This is a must see presentation for anyone who uses or supports Item Specifics.

Design Considerations for eBay Selling Apps
Brian Johnson and Ajay Agrawal
There are a lot of things to consider when you set out to create an application that makes it easier for sellers to do business on eBay, such as error handling, picture management, attributes and catalogues, suggested categories, and item recommendations. This session for new and intermediate eBay API developers identifies design issues. In the context of eBay Web services focused on the sell-side, we touch on major processes in the selling life-cycle, including item status, checkout management, relist and revise, and notifications. You’ll walk away with a solid grasp of the building blocks the make up a good selling application.
 
eBay Web Services: The Basics
Amish Patel
New to eBay Web Services? API, WSDL, REST... What do all of these terms mean, and how can I use them? This session provides a comprehensive introduction to eBay Web Services. Developer Technical Support guru Amish Patel discusses the different services available with examples of a simple implementation of each. This session builds the foundation for any developer looking to use eBay Web Services. Most importantly, attending this session enables you to get the most out of the other sessions at the conference. See you there!

eBay/PayPal Trust and Safety Feedback Forum
Aaron Daar, Bhaven Avalani, Liam Lynch, John McDonald, Max Mancini (moderator)
eBay and PayPal work hard to combat fraud on our platforms. In this open feedback panel, talk directly with the key people on our Trust and Safety teams. Let us know what is and what isn’t working well for you, and how we can continue to work together to make it easy for honest sellers to use eBay and PayPal. Be sure to bring your specific questions and suggestions.
 
eBay's SOA Architecture
Bhaven Avalani and Sastry Malladi
Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) are all the rage, but how do they work in the real world? eBay has been working on implementing a services architecture, and we want to share our experience with you. Hear about the challenges of creating a large scale, high performance SOA platform from leading engineer on eBay's web services team, Bhaven Avalani.
 
End-to-End Integration for PayPal’s Website Payments Pro
Pablo Barros, Infopia
PayPal’s Website Payments Pro is an API-based solution that combines both credit card processing with PayPal Direct Payment, and PayPal processing with PayPal Express Checkout.  While both of these solutions are very different in their approach, when implemented correctly, the technical details can be very similar.  In this session, you will learn how to properly implement the Direct Payment and Express Checkout payment options for state-of-the-art payment processing.  This presentation includes suggested design patterns, code organization structure and code samples.  Participants will see it all in action along with actual results from using these features on your website including increased sales and easier order processing. Topics include Instant Payment Notification, Authorization & Capture, Direct Payment, Express Checkout, Processing Refunds, and Payments for eBay Items.
 
Fighting Online Fraud
Ryan D'silva
Online fraud is an industry-wide problem, costing merchants roughly $3 billion in lost online revenues in 2006. Fighting online fraud while keeping operational costs low is a challenge and in this session, you will learn where fraud starts, how online fraud can impact your business, what PayPal does to protect you, and what you can do to better protect you or your client's business from fraud.
 
Improving Your Checkout Flow
Marshall Smith, ChannelAdvisor
Building a seamless checkout system for eBay and PayPal transactions can be very complicated. Marshall Smith from Channel Advisor discusses topics such as PayPal Web Site Payments Pro, the eBay Checkout Redirect system, processing in real-time for transactional checkout, and overall efficiency issues. This session will also cover the issues involved in integrating PayPal Pro into an existing checkout system that has already been built to support eBay and PayPal.

Marketing your Software to the Community
Debbie Levitt, As Was
eBay Certified Solutions Provider Debbie Levitt from As Was looks at ways to get the word out about your tool to eBay sellers and buyers. What are good names for your software, and how might a bad name work against you? Who is your target audience, and what kind of software do they need? How can you differentiate your product to your target audience? How should you explain your product to the eBay community? What kinds of partnerships might help? What programs does eBay offer to help promote your software? This session is for both technical and non-technical attendees.
 
Seller API Feedback Forum
Madhu Gupta (moderator), Anne Fletcher, Catherine Chang
eBay's seller APIs power more than 50% of the listings on ebay.com. We have put more than 6 years of development work into these APIs, but we want to make them even better. Come tell us what selling APIs you want, and help influence the eBay selling API roadmap for the coming year and beyond.

Shipping Demystified
Anne Fletcher
Tired of failing to get eBay to accept your specific shipping terms? This session removes the mystery behind eBay’s plethora of shipping options, including the recent USPS changes. Learn how to configure domestic and international shipping, use flat cost shipping for domestic shipping while also specifying dynamic shipping for international shipments, add shipping cost surcharges for US areas outside the “lower 48” states, specify separate insurance and handling costs for international and domestic shipments, allow sellers to set up shipping-related promotions, and provide a means for sellers to assign shipping rules to items on a group basis via the new Shipping Cost Discount Profiles. If you’re selling – and shipping – on eBay, you need to attend this talk.
 
Web Security Tips from an Expert
Liam Lynch
Back by popular demand, eBay's security architect Liam Lynch provides expert advice on how to develop secure web applications. No one can afford to ignore security, and no one can afford to miss this talk.