Felix Petersen, Jyri Engstrom and Brian Oberkirch. Photo by Ted Rheingold.
We know a lot of you are attending other exciting events, besides SIME. Here are some ideas and conclusions from FOWA (The Future of Webb Apps 2007) last week in London. The event, which was sold out, focused on successful web 2.0 applications. Thanks to Joachim Jardenberg, for the input! Check out Joachim’s blog for more inspiration or meet him at SIME in November.
What was hot at FOWA?
1. Jaikus backchannel: Seriously, it’s becoming clear that Jyri Engström is a guy to listen carefully to.
2. Heather Champ gave the audience a great behind-the-scenes tour of Flickr. She is always a great presenter with interesting ideas on how to create user experience.
3. The conversation between Om Malik, GigaOM and Michael Arrington, TechCrunch was a great introduction.
4. Kevin Rose, chief architect at digg, is a darling on stage, although he doesn’t have that much to say, that hasn’t already been cited a hundred times. But still. Cosy.
5. Paul Graham from Y Combinator was unexpectdely good.
6. Erika Hall, Mule Design, did a simple but tasteful story of the importance of using words in a proper way. Feel-good, in a Meg Ryan-kind of way.
7. What I liked the most were the participants! There was a great crowd here. Fascinating to see that there were so few Swedes. I think we were only four in total, among which Niklas Derouche was the most prominent. Where is everyone else? And where are the traditional media?
4 comments:
I was one of the few Swedes at FOWA, a pity that more Scandinavians have not discovered this event. FOWA is also running road shows in European cities, lately in Copenhagen.
There was much talk at FOWA about how to run and finance a startup. There is a lot more seed action by investers and business angels in the UK than in Sweden. Most new companies shared the same business model: offer a free service to attract many users and get ad revenue, then start offering premium accounts. Risky and tough for many, I suspekt.
I was much inspired by FOWA, both from stuff I think will be successful and other things that I don't believe in. And the networking was great, as usual at least 50% of the value of attending.
Some interesting sites:
http://www.etsy.com/ (smart interface design with e.g. search by colour)
http://www.sphere.com/ (links to related articles and blogs for media sites)
http://getsatisfaction.com/ (customer service for web sites)
http://www.tablefinder.com/ (Swedish service that is smarter than you think at first glance)
http://finetune.com/ (web radio)
Se also my pics from FOWA at Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/37afzc
Thanks Henrik. Your comments are always trustworthy and a true source of inspiration. How was the conference format at FOWA?
Hi Guys,
Great to hear that it sounds like you enjoyed FOWA, which makes all of the hardwork that goes into it worthwhile.
It was great to have such a big turnout and to finally get to meet everyone in person. I hope that it won't be too long before we can do it again,
Mel :)
The conference format at FOWA was efficient but very traditional: keynotes + 2 tracks (developer and Business) with speakers delivering their slide-based presentations more or less well and taking a Q&A with the audience at the end.
Seems to me that there is a great need for someone to organize a workshop around how to set up a "Conference 2.0" format. Where the audience is interacting much more with the speakers before, during and efter the event, and where the information and inspiration is documented, added on and distributed in all kinds of Web 2.0-ish ways.
Maybe I should start a company for this? /Henrik ;-)
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