In London

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In London

Posted on 21 February 2007 by miss rogue

I’m currently at the Future of Web Apps in London…great show btw! I think it’s even better than the one in San Francisco (and I really enjoyed that one). Good job, team Carson Systems! My talk went well and several people who I really admire gave me good reviews. I think my ‘meat and potatoes’ approach to this presentation, rather than the ‘aspire to inspire’ approach was much better and the presentation is one to build on for my future talks.

We had a brilliant time at BarCampLondon2, thanks to Ian Forrester, Natalie Downe and Jason Cartwright for squeezing us in. Bummer we didn’t get to town early enough to do the full two days + late night werewolf session. Monday was for polishing up my presentation and taking Tad around London, where he fell in love with Camden Town. He is now the proud owner of a couple of pairs of chain pants, stripey cuffs and several Chemical Romance t-shirts and hoodies.

After my talk yesterday morning, sat through many amazing presentations: favourites included the last.fm guys, a charming Dutch startup, soocial (amazingly funny presentation – the guy should be a standup comic), Bradley’s overview of the cool things they are doing with Brickhouse and the DIGG/OpenID announcement by Kevin Rose. However, everyone was great. Loads of awesome information and good presenters and a really great, receptive audience.

Had a great OpenID dinner last night with a bunch of really amazing and smart folks, including Jonathan Rochelle of Google Docs & Spreadsheets. No matter how much I grilled him could I find a crack in the Gexterior. I don’t think they are evil after all, just big and a little removed from the grassroots…but they are receptive. We tried to feed Jonathan enough wine to get him to commit to implementing Microformats and OpenID, but he woke up this morning with the sober idea to just bring it to Google and advocate for it inside. He did seem pretty jazzed about the possibilities, so I’ll live with that.

Today is another awesome day…unfortunately we slept in a bit, but were able to catch Khoi Vinh and Simon Willison. Khoi had some amazing quotes, such as, “Although most users are intermediates, most features have the expert in mind.” His work on the New York Times website was pretty great and very sound when it comes to UI. Simon’s presentation on OpenID was fun and engaging and I hope someone podcasted it. He explained all of the angles well, even the icky stuff like phishing.

Now I’m off to see Chris on a panel about European vs. American startups.

I think it’s ’sold out’, but Ian is also throwing a geek dinner in our honour tonight, which I’m pretty hyped about. And tomorrow, Chris and I deliver a workshop where we are doing a ‘Community Mashpit’…and supposedly it is the most popular workshop offered. We have a full house and several people asking if we can “sneak them in”. Friday, we are off to Paris to meet with all sorts of interesting people…

15 Comments For This Post

kolyiken Says:
February 21st, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Nice black and white pdf. Missed the real one.

We are developing a brand new CMS for an educational portal (very far away from you, in Argentina).

The basic community and fun approach is roughly the same. How is that compared with the cash needed to run the whole show?

Love London too. Remember a St Martin in the Field candlelight concert, five years ago. So long, so clear.

Keep it up,
Kolyiken
Simon de Haan Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:18 am
soocial booys certainly are charming – thanks tara
alan Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:42 am
wow, thanks for sharing that presentation – nice giveaway to the folks that couldn’t make it to London. got me all motivated again – thanks for that!
Andy Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:06 am
Having missed both the conference and the geek dinner, I’m obviously furious, but many thanks for posting the PDF – an interesting read indeed!
Julian Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 am
It was great chatting with you Tara on Sunday evening at the pub after BarCamp London, and really enjoyed your presentation at FOWA. I’m impressed you don’t have a TV — we’ve not gone that far but do just watch rented movies

I wonder, did you ever make it to Kinetica, that museum my wife Olga suggested?

cheers then,

J
Amit Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Great to meet you Tara, see you again soon.
Riccardo "Bru" Cambiassi Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Hi there,
was great to meet you and Chris at the BarCamp and then at the geekdinner.
Believe it or not, even after years of hardcore engagement in social geekytude, meeting people like you still makes my day.
Got lot of inspiration, hope to see you soon, maybe at Citizen Space
Warren Henning Says:
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:19 am
Tara, without having seen your talk (heh), I think your new style of giving presentations is far better, especially if you’re just viewing the slides after the fact without hearing the actual talk. I’m glad you plan to adopt this model in the future.
Vero Says:
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:28 am
“He is now the proud owner of a couple of pairs of chain pants, stripey cuffs and several Chemical Romance t-shirts and hoodies.”

For Tad’s sake, I’ll hope that by “pants” you mean trousers, as the British meaning of pants is underwear… And that might chafe a bit!

Wasn’t aware you were in the UK, otherwise I probably would’ve attempted making my way to London for your talk. I’ve been a fairly silent HorsePigCow reader, but it’s certainly been an inspiration in the new fresher approach I’m taking to the startup my husband and I founded last year.

Thanks for writing such great content and have a good time in Paris!

Vero
miss rogue Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 1:35 am
My pleasure!
miss rogue Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Nice to meet you, too Julian! Say hi to Olga!

Sorry, but we didn’t get to the museum…we took Tad to Camden Town, then we had to work on our workshop and I had to polish up my presentation.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. Next time, for sure! And I’ll be using your app!
miss rogue Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 1:41 am
That would be awesome! We look forward to hosting you!
miss rogue Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 1:43 am
LOL. Yeah, I thought about that, too. I know those slides with photos and 3 words don’t mean much without the context of the presenation.
miss rogue Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 1:44 am
LOL. That’s hilarious! I’ll have to clarify.

Maybe next time? Thanks so much!
Kelly Says:
February 24th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Hey!

Cheers for the Community Workshop. Was good (and entertaining, even if we didn’t manage the mashups).

http://suebeedoo.livejournal.com/profile is the livejournal account of my friend who is doing a PhD in “PhD in online communities/Internet psychology/the behavioural implications of computer-mediated-communication” as she puts it. Feel free to drop her a line I’ll tell her to do likewise.

Keep Safe.

3 Trackbacks For This Post

Argolon » Geek Dinners, BarCamps and Coworking Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:21 am
[...] I attended my first UK Geek Dinner last night after FoWA. Guests of honour were Tara Hunt and Chris Messina. I only chatted to Chris for a short while towards the end of the night and the bulk of the conversation was about BarCamp. I told him how important I thought BarCamps have been for the creation of a vibrant tech community in Ireland. I also wanted to thank him and Tantek and the others for starting something that I think is a true revolution. Who would have thought last summer that we would have two under our belts with three future ones decided. Chris was very happy to hear about EduCamp too. [...]
Centopeia » Fostering Online Communities by Tara Hunt Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
[...] Disclaimer: the following notes are my personal notes from Tara Hunt presentation on FOWA – Future of Web Apps which took place in London, last week. For better and more accurate information, you should also have a look at her presentation slides. [...]
cubicgarden.com... Says:
March 25th, 2007 at 8:06 am
[...] Tara and Chris had arrived and were enjoying chatting to people. After making an announcement on the PA system and sorting out stickers (big thanks to Sarah Forrester and Sheila for going around and collecting money instead of me by myself). Before you know it the food came out and like Sarah Blow we need to make it clear that a dinner isn’t really a dinner. More a finger buffet. Quoting from Sarah Blow,As you have probably gathered to do a proper sit down meal for 80 people at £15.00 per head which is about the minimum you could do it for in London would come to around £1500 plus wine… there aren’t all that many companies that would be willing to do that which is why we try to keep the cost down to something sensible to make it accessible to companies and people. That way everyone benefits from it. Apologies to those people who thought that they were going to get a complete full blown meal for nothing! We really can’t afford to do that! I’ll remember to put up the proviso on the details about the event regarding food etc. The reason beind the name London Girl Geek Dinners was all because it started off as sit down meals and people paid their own way for dinner, but as the events have got larger it’s virtually impossible to do that without mammoth organisation!I think the problem we had this time around was that we had lots of new people from the Future of webapps. So a lot of people expected a full meal or something for 5 pounds! Like Sarah said, not in London you don’t. On the other hand some people commented to Sarah (my wife) that if they knew it was like this aka pub meetup with social geeks. They would have come ages ago. So yes, some about information about geekdinners is certainly needed, along with some eventwax intergreation?Once we got to actual talk which agreed was later that expected due to myself trying to sort out the food. Tara was great, I did record it (part 1 and 2) using my Sanyo (Kosso recorded it with his own special equipment) but its so dark and I really should find a open/free video editor to clean it up a little. Although, we did have a full Dj rig complete with Microphone, the levels were messed up and it came out a little distorted. What didn’t help was the chatter in the background from people who didnt realise they should be quiet while Tara and Chris talked. Sarah once again was very good at telling people to be quiet but in the end as the questions started, we were really fighting to hear Tara. Its a shame because Taras talk was very interesting specially in the light of the whole Mike Arrington outburst earlier in the day. I also wanted to ask Chris and Tara if they would ever move to Europe? But it wasn’t to be.The rest of the night flew by and I was actually very impressed with the new venue. I’m sure Geekdinners will be back there again. Yes the toilets could be better and we could do with some more chairs or sofas but with a capacity of 120+ its not bad at all. They serve all types of beer and even let us stay quite late without pushing us out the door. Its not wheelchair accessible I’m sorry to say Sarah Blow, otherwise I would have recommended it. Once your upstairs its all flat, so with some help you could carry someone upstairs first.Huge thanks to Chris Messina and Tara Hunt for talking and making the night ever-so enjoyable. I’m also very pleased to have met you guys and I look forward to spending some more time with you guys in San Francisco in early April. Posted by ianforrester at Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:25 [...]