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.

Is it just me? Is it just the winter blues? Slashdot has been terrible recently, Digg has gotten worse - reporting more and more old news, BBC News just isn’t cutting the mustard, my favourite RSS feeds update less often than I check them and tonight even Stumbleupon isn’t giving up the goods. You know something is wrong when the Plasticbag stops posting. Is this the beginning of the end? Has the Web 2.0 bubble burst already or is it just February, the least productive month of the year?

All I can hope is that the Future of Web Apps Summit tomorrow can re-ignite my love of the internet, otherwise it’s back to watching T.V. and there wasn’t anything on that last night either! Peter frikkin André on Cribs and the Midnight Meat Sale on QVC, somebody throw me a bone!

Update 1: What the hell is going on? 4 clicks on Rate My Kitten and not one cute cat yet.

Update 2: Praise be for Kitten War and Cute Overload! The internet does still contain fresh, mindlessly uplifting imagery that can make even the most entrenched cynic smile.

Update 3: And a new 1GB iPod Nano! Now you’re talking, I’m feeling better already. Thank you Stumbleupon!

I’ve been meaning to post about the abysmal state of the London Planetarium since we took Yumiko there for a birthday treat back in October. You know how it is though, you leave it a little while and then start to wonder whether the world really needs another blog-based rant. But something happened this morning that caused my anger at Madame Tussauds‘ management of the Planetarium to resurface - the news that, by this summer, the 40 year old London Planetarium will be no more.

According to Madame T., only 3 in every 10 visitors to the mighty house of wax bother to attend the miserly 15 minute projection of the journey from earth to the edges of the known universe and some of them have been falling asleep. Now this I can believe, but unlike Madame Tussauds, this I can also explain. You see, to visit the London Planetarium it is necessary to queue for approximately half an hour, hand over £25 for the privilege of fighting your way through a warehouse of wax effigies, ride a bizarre and slightly worrying parody of London through the ages and push past the corporate tie-in waxworks just to get to the unassuming entrance of the Planetarium. Now, how many potential planetarium visitors do you know that also want to spend two hours looking at life-size replicas of the rich and famous? Oh, and are prepared to pay £25 for a 15 minute show that fails to fulfil the actual purpose of a planetarium - to act as a guide to the night sky as seen from the earth? I’ll admit that I was one but there’s a reason I really wanted to go to the Planetarium. You see, one of the few memories I have of my childhood is a school trip to the, then much better, planetarium and I can still visualise the poster I got there and how long I kept it on my wall obsessing about the structure of our solar system. I remember how in those days space was something to marvel at, something that grounded you and your understanding of the human race’s position in the universe. If I’m fair, I have to say that the current planetarium show does still do this by pointing out that “there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on all of the earth’s beaches” but if you wanted to find out anything more then I’m afraid you’d be in the wrong place.

So what are your options for appeasing the space obsessed in the capital? It appears the Royal Observatory Greenwich currently has a temporary planetarium and plans to open a much grander affair in 2007. Failing that you could always take a trip to Birmingham who’s Thinktank Planetarium was recommended to me as the best planetarium in England a couple of weeks ago.

Farewell dear London Planetarium, may we all forget our insignificance in the grand scheme of things and set our sights clearly on the shallowness of modern celebrity.