March 9, 2009
FOWA Dublin 2009 Review
Three of us from SmartCube went to FOWA on friday and really enjoyed it. The day started Well with Ryan Carson giving tips for new businesses based on his experience. One or two points were surprizing, such as the fact that putting free on your site can put users off! Among the highlights were Simon Willison, Morgan McKeagney, Contrast and, at the pinnacle was David Heinemeier Hansson.
Simon’s talk about internet security was very interesting, and certainly gives one food for thought. It can be all too easy to forget about security. Thanks to Chris here we noticed that we were allowing people the potential to enter javascript on our SwiftStore app.
The guys from contrast, Eoghan McCage and Des Traynor, were very entertaining and informative too. I found that maybe they crammed a lot of information into their presentation which might have been too much, but their point was interesting. They really communicated a sense of energy to the room and gave off a feeling that they were passionate about their point.
Morgan’s talk was short and hit well. IQ Content are now offering a €10,000 prize for the best business plan for a web app. I really liked the thread of argument about U2 and the Blades (you had to be there).
Unfortunately for the IQContent prize, the day ended on David Heinemeier Hansson berating business plans and the like with his talk. David’s style is very direct and I would imagine does not allow for much gray areas in his views 
While many of the people talked about applications, David was also interested in the creation of paying businesses. Some of his points definitely gelled with our experience here at SmartCube. I would definitely go out of my way to see him talk again.
I had mixed feelings about some of the other talkers. Emma Persky’s talk really just annoyed me. The thrust of it was that if you are using the wrong tool then use another. Emma was using Ruby on Rails but needed to get more visceral with the code. She then decided to use Ruby… what about any other language?!!!?? Is the programmer’s choice between Ruby on Rails or Ruby?!?? What about Java, .Net, php etc? What about using more than one language? Blaine Cook’s talk just kind of meandered. Robin Christopherson gave an interesting talk about accessibility issues with web applications. He used a screen reader which was very distracting when it came over the PA.
All in all, fair play to Ryan Carson and the Carsonified gang for arranging an excellent day.
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