Future of Web Apps Conference – Edinburgh

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

“Hello, I’m Ashley, and I’m a FOWA impostor“.

When Ryan Carson asked me whether I was a designer or developer, I held my hand up and admitted I was, in fact, a FOWA impostor. Even though I can’t quite code a fully functioning web app just yet, I still took a lot away from the Future of Web Apps conference. More than I expected. In fact, I now have my moleskine full of invaluable advice offered from the likes of Roan Lavery, Stefan ‘MOO’ Magdalinski, and Ryan Carson himself.

I’ve been documenting my brief affair with Ruby on Rails on this very blog, and while I haven’t exactly been flagging in the motivation department, today’s conference has made me more enthusiastic about pursuing it than ever. Not to mention it’s given me food for thought in a much larger scale; marketing and general running of business.

I’m not going to go into details regarding each of the talks; I’m pretty sure videos will make their way online soon enough. I will say, however, that my two favourites were ‘Turning your big idea into a business’ by Roan Lavery, and ‘Lessons learned from selling Dropsend and other web app stories’ by Ryan Carson.

Ryan said something that stuck with me more so than anything else; “Start right now. Seriously”. I’m a sucker for procrastinating, as I’m sure many of you are, but, as from now, I’ll be applying that ethic to my work.

I can’t wait for other Carsonified conferences to make their way through to Scotland. I’ll see you there.

Tags: FOWA
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I’m Going To FOWA – Are You?

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Tomorrow is the Edinburgh leg of the Future of Web Apps road trip. I toyed with the idea of going, and even though I’ll most definitely feel like an impostor (I’m an Internet Marketing Manager, not a developer… Yet), I ended up getting a ticket. I say ‘getting’ a ticket as opposed to ‘buying’ a ticket because I have the fortunate advantage of labeling it a business expense. Yaldi!

I’ll be giving the morning workshop a miss, so I’ll likely be turning up between one and half one for registration. I’ll also be avoiding the speed dating for geeks speed networking, but will definitely make it along for post conference drinks.

The line-up itself looks awesome, but I’m also excited about meeting people in the field of web apps, purely because I can pick their brains about the area I plan on steering my work into in the future, and also because they will likely be geeky. A bit like myself.

So, I think I’m just about sorted. I have some non-smudgy pens (a must have for a lefty like myself), a notepad (unfortunately my fancy Field Notes haven’t arrived), a fully charged iPhone, my Canon, and… No business cards. But what exactly would I have on my business card anyway? “Hey, I’m Ashley. Hire me to beat Mile High Club for you”.

I’ll definitely be taking some pictures, not to mention writing about my experience at FOWA, so check back soon.

Tags: FOWA
Posted in Work | 4 Comments »