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FOWD08 Thoughts

Last year I attended, and wrote about the first Future of Web Design conference. Although a lot of people complained about the number of “product pitch” presentations I still had an incredible time, especially as it was my first conference. Hanging out with Ben and Matt was great and I even got the chance to have a quick chat with Malarkey.

Seeing as I had such a good time at the event in 2007, I didn’t need much convincing to pick up a ticket to FOWD08. I was sure that it would be much better than the first and luckily the folks at Carsonified did not disappoint!

Thankfully Jeremy Keith live blogged the whole day which means I don’t have to bore you with lifeless accounts of each session. Jeremy does a much better job than I could as each of his posts is full of detail and extremely well written.

My Highlights

Though the whole of the event was a great success, it was actually the last two presentations of the day which impressed me the most.

I always find that if you are aware of a speakers work, you read their blog, have seen their work, follow them on Twitter etc, you are always prepared for a good presentation. For instance, when I saw Andy Clarke, Jon Hicks and Dan Cederholm for the first time I was expecting good stuff from them and obviously they didn’t let me down.

The fun comes when you have no pre-conceived opinions of the speaker that you are about to watch. They have a blank slate to build on, and it is always inspiring to watch new people speak.

Presenting the first of the last two sessions was Paul Farnell from Litmus with his talk on Unconventional Ways to Promote Your Site (get the slides 600kb PDF). Paul had a very smooth presentation style, a stack of cleanly designed slides and some excellent points. Paul pointed out some interesting ways to indirectly promote your site by adding value and driving useful and relevant traffic. The main thing that appealed to me was the idea of “Satellites”, small self contained tools which compliment your main site. This is something I have definitely taken on board and will hopefully be able to use some time in the future.

Last but by no means least Daniel Burka wrapped up a great day of speaking with his talk on Evolving the User Experience (Iteration & You). Again, I had no idea who Daniel was before he explained but it just so happens he is a designer at Digg and Pownce. Daniel presented with such pace and enthusiasm that I was simply glued to each of his words. The other reason I really liked this session was because I was able to relate nearly every point to a project I have been working on at work, so I was able to get some real value from it.

Regrets

Though I had a truly brilliant time at FOWD this year, as I got on the train to return home I felt a nagging sense of regret.

I was really hoping to meet loads of new people, and in the end I just didn’t manage it. I did have a good chat with Rob Enslin who I sat next to throughout the day, I managed to pounce on Daniel Burka (pun intended) as he left the cloak room to congratulate him on a brilliant presentation and also said a quick “hello” to Rachel Andrew (who I met at Refresh Thames Valley) as I left the venue. Not all was lost then, I just wish I would have done more.

I probably don’t have anyone to blame for this but myself, I am fairly shy before I am able to pluck up courage and break the ice but I also have this theory that, because everyone is interested in the web in someway, and we all have that in common, it somehow cancels itself out, meaning that we need to find something else in common, before we get chatting.

I don’t know whether Carsonified could do anything about this, maybe some place for lonely web designers to go and meet up? I think it would be hard to do without being patronising but it’s something I will mention on the feedback form.

See You Next Year!

With all that being said, if Carsonified put on Future of Web Design London 2009, I will certainly buy a ticket, and this time I will try not to miss the early bird price! See you there!

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