I’m off to Future of Web Apps tomorrow. It’s (I think) my fourth year, but I could well have miscounted, what with getting old and all. Unfortunately, I can’t make it up until late on Thursday, but the schedule on Friday looks better anyway, so better that way round I guess.
FOWA is usually a good one to go to – a kind of chalk to the cheese that are standard museum/HE get-togethers. Wheras the latter tend to be fairly cautious, slightly academic affairs, FOWA is usually stuffed to the hilt with VC-funded 17 year-olds just waiting to be bought by Google or for the next bubble to explode and dash their dreams on the rocks of inevitability.
Having got the bitterness out of the way (I’m fookin 35 ffs, and STILL don’t have any VC funding 🙂 ), I usually come away from FOWA with a fair amount of enthusiasm for the world of web apps and what they have to offer. To be honest, right now I could do with some of that enthusiasm – I’m slightly feeling that the stuff we’re seeing right now is all pretty transient, non-game-changing stuff; technology that is funded just because somebody somewhere needs to fund something, and not because useful things are actually being built.
It’s stuff like sw0p (by my new friend and BathCamp helper extraordinaire, Darren Beale) that is getting me excited right now: web apps that solve real problems like “shit, we throw away a lot of stuff” rather than “hey, another twitter AIR app…”.
If I’m perfectly honest (and REALLY not wanting to do the media thing and fan the flames of fear..), it all feels a bit pre-burst right now. But I’ll let you all know on Friday once I’ve heard and schmoozed and mingled.
see you on Thursday.. somewhere in FOWA heaven.. (oh sod it, I’m just there to find out a lot more, and do more interviews for various clients, should be fun though.)
You’re 35??!!
Aye, right.
And I’m the sugar plum fairy…
I know @Silversprite, what with my youthful complexion and all, it’s sometimes hard to tell. But true.
Thanks for the shout out Mike.