The Disappointment of The Future of Web Apps

Ryan, Gillian and the team at Carson Systems organised a great event overall and my now bigger/smarter brain thanks you. Most of the talks were excellence and while last year some of the more technical presentations went over my designer head all were very accessible this year.

I will detail the talks in my next post but first let me explain my disappointment.
I attended FOWA last year and came away wowed. It gave me the final drive to stop talking and actually do something about our web app ideas. And we did. I assembled a great development team and we have been working stupid long hours building and designing for a solid year. All while bootstrapping and trying to cover the bills. Its been damn hard but we had a goal. FOWA 07. We had done it too. We had a working beta of our amazing email newsletter app Toddle, organised demonstrations with some key people and plans to rugby tackle anyone else walking by to show them. And then the killer. No Wireless internet access. Telling an excited dev team back home who are texting and asking what the feedback is that it’s a washout is not fun.
Now I don’t blame Ryan for being let down by the supplier (and we should also have had some backup options) but I don’t understand how in a centre full of the brightest minds an alternative could not be found. Or why a call was not put out to the crowd for a bit of help to find a solution. I don’t know the industry players in London but locally here in Ireland there are two suppliers with cheap plug and play wireless boxes you can buy in most electrical shops. Was a few of these not an option in London? I know there was paid BT Openzone access but this was overloaded and unusable for a demo.
So in part it was a pretty frustrating and disappointing experience. I did get to talk to a few people about it and explain what we were doing and their excitement was great to see so my next step is to follow up with them and get some momentum going.

1. Hi.
   I am Javier, the founder of Trendirama.com, a community of online amateur writers. We write about the future of everything, and I would like to invite you guys to write an article on the Trendirama.com website, perhaps “The future of web apps” or whatever you are passionate about? It is up to you, you choose the subject.
   You would get a link back when you link to your own article, if you wish.
   You can even re-use some of what you have here, in the last part of the article, “your view and comments”. That would save you time and still be interesting for readers.
   Don’t underestimate this opportunity!

   Failing that, if you like the project and you can help me to promote it even if you don’t write it would be great.
   By making this valuable information available online for free, I truly believe we are helping to make the world a better place.

   And you could do your bit for the world too.
   Your help is appreciated, and if you let me know your contribution, you’ll be rewarded appropriately in due time. If you link to us or mention us, we can link you back too.
   You can even use our valuable articles on your websites, provided that you link back. Any better offer than that?! :)

   Look forward to hearing from you or read your article in Trendirama! Join us!

   Best regards
   Javier Marti
   http://www.trendirama.com

   
   — Javier Marti    Feb 25, 04:50 AM    #

2. agreed, the missing wifi totally sucked, but I guess it’s not as easy as you suggested. (but I’m no networking guy, so…). however, I guess we all learned that having a UMTS-card/phone at hand seems to be a good idea…though expensive if you came from abroad like us, I don’t really want to open my phone-bill for february :/

   
   — Michael Kamleitner    Feb 26, 03:14 PM    #