The FOWA conference and BarCamp in Miami this past weekend were a huge successes for the technology community. Half of our team headed down to Miami for the weekend to attend the events. The following are a few comments from Sterling Raphael, NFi President, and Derek Gallo, Chief Technical Offcer, recapping a few of the sessions and highlighting.

Derek writes,

The Future of Web Apps in Miami has past. I found the event a great opportunity to learn from some of the industry tops as well as socialize and network with industry peers. Gregg Pollack gave a good presentation on implementing REST web service architectures. He didn’t get into the details of how to implement a web service call. Instead, he explained how to do it the correct way. He gave examples of sites that have failed and others who have got it right such as the OpenSocial API. Every time Gregg speaks I feel like I come away with an exact understanding of what he talked about. He is very articulate and brings the points in well. Kathy Sierra is a unique speaker. She is engaging and isn’t shy to use her own style. She teaches valuable lessons .. So many developers forget that to a user, its not about the tool itself, but about what the tool can do for the user.

Some other things that were part of the general theme of FOWA Miami were the use of Open ID, oAuth and Google’s Social APIs. Nearly everyone touched on why we should adopt these and why we should all contribute back to the community and keep our advancements open. We at NFi have every intention to integrate with all three of these as well as contribute anything we develop that is worthwhile.

Sterling comments,

The FOWA event was both overwhelming, reassuring, and invigorating all at the same time! I say overwhelming because I realize that the Future of Web Apps involve some radical and fast-paced changes with which we must constantly stay in tune. I say reassuring because our company’s direction and focus is very close to what the “experts” advise. Why invigorating? Well, it is just exciting to be leading an exceptional team into an uncertain yet opportunistic market where we can truly make a positive difference to those we reach.

I was absolutely captivated with the presentation by Cal Henderson of Flickr. He spoke in detail on just about every operational procedure that makes Flickr flick! The content of his speech was very technical in nature, and incredibly engaging in its delivery. As Derek and I attended this session, we quickly realized that our development procedures at NFi Studios are pretty solid. And although we will always make room for improvement, we are definitely on the right track!

Besides just the main Future of Web Apps conference, the Miami community hosted BarCamp Miami. BarCamp is a community driven un-conference where anyone can choose to give a presentation or talk on whatever they feel and contribute to the overall knowledge of the community. BarCamp Miami was held on the day before the main conference day and was a free alternative to the FOWA workshops. BarCamp Orlando is scheduled for April – registration is open.

NFi would like to thank Carsonified for putting on a such a great conference in an amazing city. Read more about NFi’s Miami weekend on Derek Bender’s blog, Sterling’s blog and Derek Gallo’s blog.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Conferences, Development, Social Networks, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.