I saw a link about @Media Antarctica on Sunday and got really excited at the thought of learning about the latest things in web development, whilst in a serene landscape filled with Penguins and Polar Bears. I even got as far as investigating flights to Argentina before it dawned on me that it was a well crafted practical joke.

The website looked so real, with lots of attention to the details and completeness of the experiences. I totally fell for it! Nice one guys.

For a moment I did wonder about the availability of conference facilities and accommodation on the South Pole, but I brushed it off, because I thought heading somewhere exotic for a conference would actually be really cool. Part of the reason I enjoy attending industry conferences is for the inspiration, and what better place on earth to actually get inspired?

Perhaps the @media guys have unintentionally stumbled on a new cash cow…. extreme Web 2.0 conferences in exotic locations…. Now that would be fun!Its started this year, with @media expanding to cover three continents, Future of Web Apps also followed in the footsteps of Kate Winslet and became another successful British export to the USA. And, as much as I enjoyed the fact that I could just walk home after dConstruct and Flash on the Beach, a new exotic set of venues could refresh the creative juices. Plus, perhaps everyone would be too busy taking in their surroundings to notice the lack of female speakers!

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This week, I managed to attend the Future of Web Apps conference in London. Having found last years conference a large source of inspiration, I had high hopes for this one, and I’m glad to say that it met most of them!Obviously, taking a one-day conference and making it a two-day conference means that you need to find double the amount of speakers. Often, you end up with a few big names and several sessions which could be described as filler. In the case of FOWA, the filler-effect was mostly avoided, though there were many 10-20 minute ’spotlight’ spots scattered throughout the two days, most were entertaining.The conference itself seemed to focus on three things in particular: Social Web Apps, Attention/Filtering and Starting Your Own Business. Being a corporate whore, one of those perhaps holds lesser interest to me but it was interesting to hear about it nonetheless. Plus, there were some great opportunities for networking with fellow web geeks; though, ironically, I managed to miss most of the people I wanted to meet!One thing I did like was the open mic slots - opening the stage to attendees’ to present on a topic of their choice. This can always be a bit hit or miss, but kudos to everyone who got up on stage and gave it a go. I think each of the sessions I watched taught an important lesson when it comes to doing a successful presentation:

• Always make sure your presentation has some kind of point, which the audience will appreciate. Messages like “Well, I started a business and bought all my employees laptops” and “We work remotely so don’t see each other” , delivered in an obituary tone don’t really educate the audience. They would much rather share your lessons learned from the above, rather than hear about which version of SVN you are using!
• If your presentation does have a point, is it meaningful and relevant to people/companies other than your own?
• The best approach is often to prepare your presentation in the pub the night before!
  • Always make sure your presentation has some kind of point, which the audience will appreciate. Messages like “Well, I started a business and bought all my employees laptops” and “We work remotely so don’t see each other” , delivered in an obituary tone don’t really educate the audience. They would much rather share your lessons learned from the above, rather than hear about which version of SVN you are using!
  • If your presentation does have a point, is it meaningful and relevant to people/companies other than your own?
  • The best approach is often to prepare your presentation in the pub the night before!

   Its hard to compare things to last years conference as in my mind they had much different themes. I was not really inspired this year and on the train home I found myself catching up on this week’s ‘24′ rather than designing my next web app. I think that had a lot to do with the content of many of the sessions - rather than grand presentations like Tom Coates’ excellent session from last years conference, it was more a case of “Hey, I built xyz.com, here is what I discovered…”, most of the sessions were re-treading the same ground rather than perhaps shining some light on a new topic or a new idea. Not that this was the fault of any of the presenters, they all did an excellent job. I think its more the general state of the industry - the AJAX buzz is over and it is no longer ‘cool’, its the norm. The same with things like tagging, filtering etc. Thankfully, there are still a few cool things on the horizon to get excited about, like Apollo!

 Its hard to compare things to last years conference as in my mind they had much different themes. I was not really inspired this year and on the train home I found myself catching up on this week’s ‘24′ rather than designing my next web app. I think that had a lot to do with the content of many of the sessions - rather than grand presentations like Tom Coates’ excellent session from last years conference, it was more a case of “Hey, I built xyz.com, here is what I discovered…”, most of the sessions were re-treading the same ground rather than perhaps shining some light on a new topic or a new idea. Not that this was the fault of any of the presenters, they all did an excellent job. I think its more the general state of the industry - the AJAX buzz is over and it is no longer ‘cool’, its the norm. The same with things like tagging, filtering etc. Thankfully, there are still a few cool things on the horizon to get excited about, like Apollo! (more…)