This post is split in different sections. First it’s my review, then there are links to presentations, other bloggers, pictures and even video.
My review of FOWA Dublin
For those who want to see what exactly was happening review #fowadublin on twitter and see what people had been writing.
While a lot of people wasn’t happy with the event, I’m quite glad I got there. I got my ticket to Fowa in courtesy of http://IrishDev.com. Presentations was quite interesting and I met a lot of people interesting people.
Here is my notes from all the presentations. I hope you might find something interesting for you. I didn’t attended last two presentations (as I had to run away), but I heard they were quite impressive. I was unable to spot presentations over the net. Even thought they did promised they will put them out somewhere, I couldn’t find them.
1. “How to sell your web app” by Ryan Carson (organiser of event)
Ryan Carson sold two businesses already and now is building third one. Here is his tips on building business for selling.
- Use balsamiq.com for mockups
- Obsess over numbers (e.g. time user upgrades from free accounts to paid)
- IT projects have around 60-70% profit margin
- Use your own app every day
- Dont plan to get acquired
- Separate Google Analyitics account from company account
- Start the domain transfer early (as it takes months)
- You will have to pay around 30k for lawyers and accountants when selling company
- Do serious tax planning
- When sale takes place, you have to work 100% of your time for about 4+ months to make it successful
2. “Unconventional Web Apps” by Contrast
To be honest I was sure they won’t be able to go through their 200 presentation slides in those 30min, but they really did it and it was awesome, funny and valuable. While it’s kinda hard to put points over their presentation, I could say in general they were talking about how and when break the conventions in web applications. E.g. layout of the home page or signup process. Their ending statement was “Break the rules, question them and have fun.”
3. “Apps for All in a Web 2.0 World” by Robin Christopherson
Really great talk about problems in web applications for those with disabilities.
- Captcha is one of the greatest enemy for blind people. Often even if they have sound version, it is not good enough to understand
- A lot of pages become completely unusable after JavaScript is switched off. So you have to check that before releasing your app.
- Each map should have text version for it. E.g. Google maps have great example.
- A lot of videos auto start. If person opens page like that, he don’t hear text with voice reader any more and can’t stop the video.
- Flickering images is bad for people with Epilepsy
- Videos without any text explenations might be confusing or even scary
- Image alt text is very important and you have to keep it up to date if site changes
- Flash sites are almost unaccessible for people that can’t see
- You have to check navigation by rows and keys (not only mouse)
- See more information at http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/
4. “How to build amazing web apps - Lessons learned from building Twitter.com” by Blaine Cook
Blaine talked mostly about Natural Social Networks and real time updates. His belief is that we are still in stone age for social media networking and it still gonna grow. It’s kinda hard to explain what he was talking about, but he did mention OpenID, OpenSocial, webhooks.org and others. Try to look it up for more info.
5. “The future is Ruby w/o Rails” by Emma Persky
Emma told her about her experience with Rails and w/o them. She believes that every project has to use programming language or framework best suited for that application. Using always Ruby on Rails aren’t the best option.
6. “Yet another web app? Or a successful business?” by Morgan McKeagney, IQ Content
His talk about why few web apps are successful and few aren’t were really impressive. What makes anotomy of success is: product, team&personalities, value, punters, commercial-savvy, local to global. His example was great : there was two groups U2 and The Blades. While second had much better songs, singers and publicity, U2 got global. Why? Because they had “Vital Financial Breakthrough”. At the end of the day it is always - which one makes more money?
7. “How to build desktop apps that help your web app succeed?” by Matthew Ogle, Last.fm
Matthew told about his experience of building and growing last.fm with using “scrobble” and attention data. He mentioned that it is very important to make application Open Sourced if it is using user data. New software will be launched soon by last.fm - Buffin
8. “Web application horror stories” by Simon Willsison, Freelance
This was my most favorite presentation. We all love to hear how big companies failed on security and how we can improve our own apps not to fail similar.
- XSS - never let inject JavaScript. Don’t let inject HTML or CSS either. (e.g. “sany is my hero” - myspace worm, UTF-7 hole in Google.)
- SQL injection - worst case scenario you can let people do
- CSRF. Protection would be adding the crumb, but you have to protect the crumb by all possibilities. For example, if you have XSS hole, you will have CSRF problems as well. (e.g. Digg allowed to enter script that diggs post. Gmail got filter hacked. ING got funds transfers proceeded.)
- Login CSRF - to avoid it, force user to sign up on trused account
- Clickjacking - new attack with invisible frames (e.g. Flickr had “Don’t click this” worm.). Possible solution would be frame busting, but it will still fail in case of Clicky Game (e.g. how fast you can click on buttons on the game?)
- Do protect Admin access! (e.g. MacRoom life had problems with someone writting that Steve Jobs is dead. Twitter had problems with teenagers hacking admin account.)
Few bad points I was unhappy about
First thing - the wireless was crap. Most of the attendies used either macbooks or iPhones and it was almost impossible to get connection.
Second thing - you had to buy drinks and food. For the price I paid for this event I expected at least get some free drinks or suggestions where to go eat (only sandwitches provided by bar). I heard Contract and IGOpeople both payed €200 for drinks for ppl at the bar. Great to hear that.
ANNOUNCING PRIZE (you can still apply for this)
Announcing IQ prize of €10,000
Slideshows and other info on presentations
Web Security Horror Stories Presentation
Web Security Horror Stories Notes
More info on Sun StartUp Workshop
Notes by Renate Valdes Olmos
How to build webb apps to succeed Notes
Apps for All in the Web 2.0 world Notes
Blog posts about FOWA Dublin
FOWA by Andy (quite unhappy review of the FOWA)
Fuck the Real World by Peter (about one of the last presentations)
Fuck the Real World prsentation review by Thomas Wittek
Unhappy FOWA review by Peter
FOWA Review by Dave Concannon (quite short and very nice review)
John Keys review of all talks
Lessons Learned from FOWA by Kabling
Great speakers, poorly organised by John Breslin
Photos from FOWA Dublin
Flickr FOWA Dublin tag pics
One pic of “Fuck the Real World” speaker
Another pic of “Fuck the Real World” speaker (ppl really loved the presentation)
Paul Seys photos on Flickr
Photo by blurredfocus.co.uk
Paul Seys TwitPic (the one in middle is organiser)
Last.fm presentator on Mobypicture
Fowa crowd on Mobypicture
Movie on after party
The Official FOWA wrap party will be taking place at The
Dandelion Club on March 6th 2009. See youtube
