Here’s my take on the Carson Workshops Future of Web Apps Summit that I attended yesterday.

 

Highlights

1. Almost choking when a screen grab of the Chatsum website came up in Tom Coates‘ presentation.
2. Simon Willison’s shared SubEthaEdit notes that meant I could concentrate on the talks or the backchannel.
3. The IRC back channel that made even the worst talks entertaining.
4. The best use of conference photos on Flickr yet, once more people fill it in that is.

 

The presentations in order of preference

1. Designing Web 2.0-native Products for Fun and Profit by Tom Coates
A clear and well presented overview of why Web 2.0 is different and where it’s going with very few technical references. This has to be at the top for providing reassurance that someone in one of these big companies is thinking about the long term social consequences of where the internet is headed.

2. Delicious - Things we’ve learned by Joshua Schachter
The perfect blend of anecdote and truly useful technical information presented in an accessible way. Lots of great tips that we’ll be working into the development of Chatsum.

3. How to Build an Enterprise Web App on a Budgetby Ryan Carson
Everyone was worried about one of the organisers talking but it turned out to be great - a really frank and honest overview of the development of DropSend with real figures. Again, the perfect balance of anecdote and useful facts.

4. Happy Programming and Sustainable Productivity with Ruby on Rails by David Heinemeier Hansson
I’ll probably try Ruby on Rails again after this talk but a lot of questions went unanswered and there was a certain sense of over-arrogant programmer coming from David - especially through his continual attacks on PHP. As said in the back channel, it was a little like a Evangelical Christian sermon.

5. Reality-Checking the AJAX Web Application Architecture by Steffen Meschkat
Good marks for systematically addressing every attack ever made against JavaScript by programmers proficient in other languages and for doing it with passion. Bad marks for doing it in a Google-Geek, computer science lecture way at 5pm after a whole day of intense talks.

6. Flex by Andrew Shorten
Adobe’s paid for slot, used to reel off a practised sales pitch for Flex which just seems to be the latest version of what was Multiuser Server. A sales pitch delivered in an Adobe uniform for an expensive, closed source product. Best backchannel comment: “If it keeps the cost of my ticket down, I’m in”.

7. Building Flickr by Cal Henderson
Sorry Cal but because of all the hype around your talks, I expected more. This was effectively an overview of Flickr for dummies. I like to think that everyone in that room already knew 80% of this but I could be wrong. There was really nothing for me to take away from it though.

8. 10 Reasons Why You Need to Build an API by Shaun Inman
Great designer, terrible speaker. Sorry Shaun but you said you were going to tell me why I should build an API and you spent 15 minutes telling me how you made something like an API for Mint. Then when you realised you had 30 minutes left you opened it up to questions and failed to answer the most important one: With APIs (in general not just Mint’s) how can you assure people that the service they build their services on will still be there tomorrow.

 

Overall

All in all the really good talks made up for the bad and I’m really glad I went. It was great to be part of a conference in the UK that had all the hallmarks of one of those great American conferences you hear about (Flickerarti speaker, backchannel bitching, computer science geek heckling and a speaker from Google that makes you wonder if anyone in that company doesn’t have a computer science PhD). One last request for the Carsons: change the venue for one that doesn’t serve UHT milk with the tea, that shit’s abysmal.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.