Martin Crockett

The Future of Web Apps

Today, I attended the Carson Worksops Summit, “The Future of Web Apps” which offered a unique insight into the future of Web 2.0 Technologies. Hosted by Ryan Carson (DropSend/Carson Systems), the event featured Web 2.0 luminaries from Delicious, Flickr, Yahoo!, 37signals, Mint, Adobe and Google.

This one-day conference brings together those pioneers in the web development industry who are setting the agenda for tomorrow’s apps. They will be discussing how Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way we interact and how you can use these to build powerful, next generation tools. So whether you’re a business owner, developer or entrepreneur this day will help you choose the right technology for your next web-based application.

I’ll just briefly review the speakers:

Delicious - Things we’ve learned
Joshua Schachter - Delicious

This was a good start, nothing too techincal and no code. The audience’s ears were fresh. Everyone seemed happy.

Building Flickr
Cal Henderson - Flickr

Cal’s presentation was fun and insightful. Using the Flickr images was a good call.

Designing Web 2.0-native Products for Fun and Profit
Tom Coates - Yahoo!

Easily the best talk of the day. Very well presented, interesting and

Happy Programming and Sustainable Productivity with Ruby on Rails
David Heinemeier Hansson - 37signals

Missed the first few minutes after having a longer lunch than expected. Came in just as Agile was being mentioned. Lot of interesting code snippets on screen, tips on refactoring (at least that’s how I read it). Very cool. RoR is one to watch.

10 Reasons Why You Need to Build an API
Shaun Inman - Mint

Probably the worst of the bunch; Shaun raced through some slides and then took questions. The chosen topic probably wasn’t the best (too one-dimensional) and the presentation was sketchy at best. Plus, he kept grabbing the water bottles!

Flex
Andrew Shorten - Adobe

Not having a tough act to follow, Andrew dropped jaws with the Flex 2 application. Very impressive.

How to Build an Enterprise Web App on a Budget
Ryan Carson - DropSend

Good, no B.S. mini-story on mostly the finances of DropSend. Didn’t really focus on the tech side of things but that was okay. Nice slides!

Greater Expectations - Reality-Checking the AJAX Web Application Architecture
Steven Crossan & Steffen Meschkat - Google

Heavyweight talk from Steffan and harsh presentation slides to boot. Everyone felt the pain!

Panel Discussion

No new ground was covered, save for one guy who asked about accessibility which kinda got half-answers.

Overall: good show, too many laptops. Leave ‘em behind next time, guys.

Plus: Tom Coates - Yahoo!

Minus: Shaun Inman - Mint

Must try harder: The summit CD: packaged in a DVD box, I was expecting to find a wealth of material but there was barely enough to half-fill a CD!

Carson Workshops
Flickr
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