FOWA Miami 2010 Conference Review

by Brian Rinaldi, Fusion Authority Online Editor

I was fortunate enough, thanks in large part to my employer, Pongo Resume, to attend The Future of Web Apps conference in Miami last week. This event is an regular conference put on by UK-based Carsonified, who also do the Future of Web Design events, and features some of the top entrepreneurs, developers, venture capitalists and general technologists in the industry. This year featured speakers from leading-edge companies like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Palm and more.

Part of my goal in attending FOWA was to broaden my horizons a bit. I have been attending various conferences over the past five years but they have all had a number of things in common: 1) they were all Adobe technology focused (i.e. MAX, CFUnited, 360|Flex and cf.Objective()) and 2) they were all code-focused (as in, they tended to focus on the how and not the why). Part of my goal this year, as both a programmer and end-user of software and technology and an Adobe Community Professional that evangelizes certain products, was to step out of my comfort zone to attend events where I don't know everybody. This event certainly achieved that end in many positive ways, leaving me energized and inspired about my work.

The first day of FOWA was an event held at Nykki Beach, which is at the southern tip of South Beach. It featured sponsor tables and presentations as well as general networking and food. Sadly, the weather was somewhat uncooperative for anything outdoors that day but the indoor space was nice. I didn't actually see the sponsor presentations but I did speak to each sponsor at their respective tables and found some interesting products.

The next day was the main day for the conference with a ton of speakers lined up. It was held at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road in South Beach. The format was slightly different than the conferences I usually attend, with only one track running all day, with slightly abbreviated sessions running anywhere from quick 15-minute demos to 30-minute "full" sessions. Throughout the day, Ryan Carson, the owner of Carsonified and emcee for the day, kept everything on a very tight schedule but still managed to allow the audience some time to ask speakers questions.

That night there was a great after-party held upstairs at the Clevelander on South Beach. It took a while to get the party going but it went late into the night and was a great opportunity to network and, in particular, to meet the speakers in person. If I recall correctly, I may have drunk a little too.

As for the content, it was a mixture of the very technical (for instance, John Resig on Advanced JavaScript and jQuery and Alex Payne on functional languages), to inspirational (Fred Wilson and Aaron Patzer are good examples), to entertaining (Tara Hunt was informative but fun and Gary Vaynerchuk was more fun than informative but a great way to end the day). Without exception, each session was excellent. If you are curious about the full content of each session I attended, I am posting them on my blog and keeping a full list of links here.

The second full-day, if you chose to register as I did, consisted of two half-day workshops held at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Downtown Miami. There were a number of workshops in each time slot to choose from but I pre-registered for the Facebook Connect workshop by Ryan Merket in the morning and the jQuery workshop with John Resig in the afternoon. If the primary conference sessions focused more on the why than the how, the workshops were, on the other hand, very much about the how. Both of my workshops were outstanding and I left learning a lot from both. In particular, Ryan Merket dispelled a lot of misconceptions I had about Facebook Connect.

While overall, FOWA was a huge success, in my opinion there were a few items I'd love to see them improve upon next year. The venues were spread out around the city, which I found a bit confusing - and I grew up in Miami and am very familiar with the area. This was accentuated by a lack of clear communication about where the venues were and what to expect. For instance, I think many people didn't show up to the after party until late because no one seemed to know if food would be provided (it was, to a degree, as trays of appetizers).

Overall, though, these were minor glitches in a very successful event. I can safely say that I took much more out of FOWA than I have from many conferences. I left reminded about the things I love about what I do and inspired to do more.

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