2 important points that i managed to pick up from Blaine Cook:

1. Build online communities around existing offline ones – dont try and creat new ones.
2. small niche communities can be powerful and really engage the user.

Can’t add much except to say that next year I think that some of the speakers should spend more time at the start outlining where they were going with their speaches, as this annoyed me this time round.

Thanks Gareth. Yeah, I think those speeches that worked had more traditional presenting styles – outlining where they were going, building on solid points etc. I don’t think the “free, rambling discourse” mode of presenting works very well at a conference.

Basically, it’s as I remember the event. I agree with you about your hero worship point, but at the same time I guess that can act as a catalyst for some developers, especially younger ones, to just go for it an get a project or company up off the ground.

Which, at the end of the day is what an event like FOWA is all about.

DC: True, if it gets people passionate about technology I’m all for it, I’m just not going to indulge them in heated debate about why their framework/language beats X – It’s time much better spent actually writing code etc. Anyway – the “my dad can beat up your dad” debate is much more interesting. :)