A slightly belated post but I thought I should write a few words about (last-)last week’s Future of Web Apps. Since there are plenty of thoughts and opinions out there already, I’ll try to keep this brief.
The good:
- Blaine “Twitter” Cook and Joe “Digg” Stump (for the “comedy duo uber tech jargon” thing)
- Ron “Revision3″ Richards (his enthusiasm for online TV was infectious)
- Ben “I Can Has Cheezburger” Huh (for his passion, humour and many LOLcats references)
- Jason “Mahalo” Calacanis (for being the Simon Cowell of web startups)
The bad:
- The venue’s wifi (couldn’t connect or was super-super slow)
- The AIR dragons thing (too rushed and the ideas were pretty poor)
- The Digg-Facebook-Myspace Meetup after-party VIP area (are Kevin and Alex celebrities now?)
- Jason Calacanis (for being the Simon Cowell of web startups)
Special mention goes to: Tim Bray, whose talk I found pretty interesting for directly addressing the current financial climate; Live Diggnation, which I didn’t think I’d enjoy but I really did and Ryan Carson for keeping his hat on - all the time.
So, was it good? Was it worth it? I’m not sure.
Some of the talks were interesting - but not all. I could probably get the same from setting a day aside and watching them online. Some attendees love meeting new people, networking and swapping business cards. That’s not really my thing. I soon get tired of the whole “What do you do? This is what I do.” conversation. That’s my own fault though, not anybody else’s.
As a conference, I would recommend Future of Web Apps to other web developers - the pace is pretty chilled, the venue is big so it’s easy to get a decent seat and it’s a good place to meet new people. Since I live in Paris and I’m not interested in collecting business cards, I’m not sure I’ll attend another one.
Well, maybe as an excuse to visit NYC or Miami…
For a different take on the conference, check out the post at BigRedCircle.com by my friend/conference chaperon/sidekick, David McGeorge.
Posted on 23rd October 2008 at 9:41 pm