David Emery OnlineFuture of Web Apps
21 February 2007
So, Future of Web Apps has now drawn to a close and I think a good time was probably had by all – I certainly had one, at least. The common theme of all the presentations seemed to focus around simplicity and community – that and trying to say “Web 2.0” as many times per presentation as possible.
A lot of the talk on both simplicity and community was really good; Khoi Vinh had some interesting things to say about not overwhelming users with too many features or too much content, and the guys from Moo echoed his comments on keeping it simple – it’s a philosophy I very much agree on.
The folks from Moo also re-iterated how much the little details matter – things like hiding secret messages in the packaging, or using the best possible paper stock – and how this has to extend through the entirety of your organisation. This is especially true for any aspect that has direct contact with the customer, including customer support.
On the topic of community, they pointed out how the details they spent the time creating provided interesting stories for their customers to latch on to – a very effective way of quickly building a large group of interested users. Tara also had some interesting things to say on the topic – although nothing you wouldn’t know if you’ve ever read her blog – and the LastFM folk had some choice ideas surrounding attention data.
Like BarCamp at the weekend, the other main discussion point was OpenID. Simon’s OpenID presentation was one of the highlights, and although I’d seen something along the same lines on Sunday this time round it was a lot more polished, and a lot more convincing. There are certainly problems with OpenID, which Simon was very open (not a pun) about – I’m still concerned about the phishing problem, and I don’t think making it the browser developers problem is a good solution, but maybe it can still have a lot of interesting uses.
It was very interesting to compare and contrast BarCamp at the weekend with Future of Web Apps, especially considering FOWA cost about £200. FOWA was very good for hearing interesting and influential people speak, like Mike Arrington, Kevin Rose et al, and hearing the bigger companies like Adobe pitch their wares (I’m now quite interested in Flex). However, I think BarCamp comes up trumps in the end simply because of the amount of interaction possible – if you have a question you can ask it, if you want to talk to someone it’s easy, if you have something to say you can.
A conversation is always going to be more rewarding then one person speaking at you.