FOWA Dublin
Posted on 09. Mar, 2009 by Chris McQueen in Events, News
Phew! That was a hairy landing! I have just returned from the Future of Web Applications event in Dublin and I can be completely honest in revealing that it was excellent. FOWA is an event run by the team over at Carsonified, and credit where it is due, they all did a brilliant job!
Kicking us off was Carsonified’s founder, Ryan Carson, revealing his lessons learned from the aquistion of DropSend.com… and it did exactly what it said on the tin -14 tips to help any young and energetic entrepreneur prevent catastrophic meltdown!
Perhaps the most revealing and inspiring talk with regards to good design was presented by Eoghan McCabe and Des Traynor from Contrast. A two-headed presentation (at lightening pace) discussed how many conventions born out of unimaginative web design had transferred to the design of web applications. This raised a very interesting question – why aren’t web application designers taking advice from software application designers since common to both is the creation of successful applications?
A subject very close to my heart -that of an accessible web for all- was discussed in (a notably accessible manner) by Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet, a charitable UK organisation dedicated to helping disabled adults and children use computers and the internet. This particular presentation focused on how the ill implementation of Captchas (those boxes containing the funky lettering used for sign-ups that are intended to prevent spam) actually renders screen reading software useless.
All in all – an excellent, and incredibly well organised day! Top marks to Carsonified!