Oct 10 2008
FOAW 08: Day Two
Getting Through the Tough Times by Tim Bray, Sun Microsystems
This was my favourite talk, and one that I would recommend watching. Tim is a bit of a legend in the community and he was at the top of his game in this presentation. He had expected to give a talk on ‘The Fear Factor: What to be Frightened of in Building A Web Application’, at the 11th hour, he re-wrote it to take note of the credit crunch. Great advice on what do to if you loose your job and if you don’t how to hold on to the one you have. Lots of advice about growth areas and skills to keep an eye on. One bit was of note; he said that he expected all projects in our respective businesses that needed a large capital expenditure up front for future benefit would be canned.
Cloud Computing in the Enterprise – How Businesses are Taking Advantage of the Future of the Web by Adam Gross, Salesforce.com
Bit of a sales pitch this one. Darlings of the SaaS (Software as a Service) industry SalesForce.com has realised they are sitting on a massive infrastructure that they could ‘leverage’ as a platform, – here we have force.com – all about running your apps in the cloud. I spoke to the chap after the talk and I am still not sure if it has to be an app that works with salesforce.com or any app, he scanned my badge, so no doubt I’ll be hearing from them. Interesting, but prob of little use to us at the mo. Of more interest, was the Amazon Web Services, more on that later.
Innovation, the future and why nothing is ever simple by Simon Wardley
Very good talk by Simon, pretty hard going and academic – but great none the less. His hypothesis is comparing the web industry to the electricity industry – did you know people used to run their own electricity generators before the national grid came along? He compared this to the mythical ‘Cloud’ (we heard a lot about the ‘Cloud’) – the upshot was, as technologies become saturated and mature, they become boring services that others build on and fade into ubiquity.
How to decrease the environmental impact of your app by Gavin Starks, AMEE
Another excellent presentation, but unfortunately one that was woefully attended. Pretty much 90% of the room left to go and learn about how to increase their online presence. One delegate noted that this will pale into insignificance when the world is on fire – fair point. I’d recommend checking out this video too. One of the best bits was to add environmental impact as one of the metrics of your web app – clever idea. A sobering thought that in a few years, the impact on the environment from web servers will eclipse that of the airline industry! One of the benefits given for hosting within a cloud environment was that the companies that provide these services utilise their servers at around 60-75%, whereas most single instance web servers run at around 5-15%. AMEE provide an API to the worlds energy data.
Video coming soon
Work/life balance or Blood, sweat and tears: Which is the startup way? By Jason Calacanis Mahalo.com and Tom Nixon, Nixon McInnes
A head to head talk on the same subject from two differing points of view. Jason Calacanis is well known in the blogosphere for his outspoken views on how to run a successful startup, and for using a formula to work out which of his staff are the most productive and sacking the rest. Tom Nixon had a much more cuddly approach to work life balance, and everyone in the room knew who they would prefer to work for!
The important bits of cloud computing by Tony Lucas XCalibre and Jeff Barr, Amazon Web Services
Another of these head to head talks, less controversial this one. XCalibre use the cloud and Amazon run one. I’ve used Amazons excellent A3 server hosting before – dirt cheap and you can scale it from one server to 10,000 at the flip of a switch – if you ever find yourself with a web app that popular, see me, I have Jeff’s card.
The Future of Entrepreneurship by Julie Meyer, Ariadne Capital
Bit dull this one – all about venture capital funding of your start up.
How to survive outside of Silicon Valley by Michael Galpert, Aviary and Andy McLoughlin, Huddle
The last of these head to head talks – Aviary is based in New York and Huddle here in London. What I got from this is, you can run a successful web start up in London, but the Valley has better weather. Check out the video though, Andy gave details of loads of London based web community groups and MeetUp’s they may be of interest. They like a drink.
To Borg or not to Borg by Gavin Bell, Nature Publishing Group
A good presentation that suffered a bit from being in the grave yard slot. The slides are great it was all about IA and user centric design. A bit indulgent, but some good messages at the end.
Adobe AIR Competition Finals
Interesting to see what people could come up with using AIR in a few days. Adobe AIR uses proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems.
No video
Fireside chat with special guest, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg
The big event, pretty good insight into how he runs the business and his plans for world domination – could have had more questions on the recent controversy around the new layout, and how to keep your developers onside while you grow and adapt your community.