FOWA Dublin 2009
11 Mar 2009
fowa fowad 2009 dublin
One of the biggest web events came down to Ireland last Friday. Future of Web Apps is a conference for web developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. Also, great opportunity to get together, discuss, and make new connections. I quickly hooked up with Rachel and Aoife and also bumped into lot of people I know (how come so many 'em?).
One of the most striking talks was the one given by Robin Christopherson of AbilityNet, a charity organisation for accessibility aware web development. Robin himself being blind gave us a sample of his everyday computer use. Walking in his shoes was almost a nightmare to me – web sites constantly interrupting speech synthesis, missing or misleading ALTs, obtrusive JavaScript, and ever-preventing CAPTCHAs. You wouldn't want to go through it. On the other hand there are well written web sites. And to my great surprise Google Maps was one of them. Instead of simply presenting map a list of instructions is presented, like 5 minutes walk north from train station, 200 yards down the street. Also, video text was invaluable when watching video scenes without dialogues – here some fight scene was presented and we were told to close our eyes. I join Robin in his plea for accessible web applications. Plus 10% potential customers extra, now think about it!
Emma Persky gave us a speech on Domain Specific Languages (or should I rather say s/Languages/Frameworks/) built on top of Ruby. Interesting speech, but by far not enough technical. Which is kinda funny as vast majority of designers complained they didn't understand a word from it ;-) Surely I will google for more from Emma.
During the break Microsoft showcased their Surface concept computer. Surface is strange. It is definitely an impressive technology and I have deep respect to engineers responsible. The thing is it's just too weird in a way I believe is common to all Microsoft products – operating it requires so much attention that one can't just focus on getting the job done. Also, due to input method limitation developers are not targeted here.
After the break Simon Willison of Django gave us deeply shocking insight in state of web apps security. Let me sum it up for you: WE'RE SCREWED. We're so seriously fucked that almost beyond repair. And if you think he was exaggerating, let me rephrase it: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WEB APPS SECURITY. MOSTLY. Aside of well known XSS, SQL-I, and CSRF attacks, he outlined new CSRF-Login and Clickjacking attack vectors. To solve the situation a radical steps must be taken. This may include complete protocols rewrite or emerging of new language/framework/stack.
Finally, outstanding speech by David Hinemeier Hansson of Rails and 37Signals. He's given us some strong opinions on building successful web apps and running sustainable business. It was a series of bumper-sticker slides, many of which were contrary to popular beliefs. (Would you turn down an offer by world-class potential customer, say IBM?). It was a good closing talk and I learned a lot from it. Thus, Folksr (coming soon!) is undergoing series of major changes. To be completely honest David, you were second. My girlfriend gave me the very same advices a month ago, plus she's got me shiny new graphic design. Oh, and she's pretty. So you loose, buddy ;-)
Aftwerwards, we headed to Longstone Pub to have a chat and few pints, and oh, Aoife was hungry :-D
Earlier during the conference Ryan Carson announced that FOWA is looking for sponsors to cover drinks in Dandelion pub. He was more than successful and we ended up boozing on Google's. It was great craic, no doubt about it, when we later hooked up with Dave and his mates. As if you don't know asking a barmaid for phone number is soooooooo last century! Now they ask for Twitter username, LOL. Stefano deserved to be given special credit for absolutely unrivalled joyfulness that night – man, I've no clue whatcha smokin but it must be something good. As if that was not enough we moved to some rather posh-looking place full of unrealistic creatures (no one you could call ordinary guy/gal) dancing to house music with live percussion background. Few pints later we called it a night. A good one.
