This was my first attendance at a Carson Summit conference, in its second year this two day affair promised to bring together a collective of world renowned speakers, to share information and ideas about building tomorrows web applications..

The event was in the upmarket surroundings of Kensington, around 600 delegates arrived in the rain for the two days fun, seminars and power networking!

The alternative title of the event should have been: ‘ways of bridging interaction between on and off line world‘.

The programme was definitely more catered for the business point of view, rather than getting down and dirty with web code. This is probably going to be saved for the Future of Web Design conference this April, which I will be attending.

Most the the speakers gave advice on start up businesses, online communities and communication.

Probably my favourite speaker was Khoi Vinh who just made an exceptional case for web design being simple and clear. With the experience he has used on the New York Times site.

Here are my notes..

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First was Mike Arrington of Techcrunch:

He focused on what to focus on for a new web application:

1. have a good idea

- invent a market
- destroy a market
- remove friction

2. have a business plan
3. have a revenue model - bandwidth charges - youtube $1m a month!
4. build it cheap, test the waters - don build full blown site from start..
5. avoid high burn rate - don’t hire everyone from the start..

>> stay hungry like you did the first 6 months.. as long as you can

example: youtube
>> they threw away their original business model, and flaunted intentralonl copyright law

>> however they had so much growth the money poured into cover burn rate
>> first to market this type of media
>> they removed frictions by provided a much needed service 65,000 videos uploaded a day

now thousands of flash enabled video sites, but weren’t the first, and thats the important factor.

case studies:

mybloglog.com > viral marketing for blogs
amiest.com > do to music industry what digg did to news industry > vote for content and music tracks, the more popular the price of track goes up.

attributes of winners
- passion for what they are doing
- doing something extraordinary

losers
- poor founder/team choices
- lifestyle ego entrepreneurs
- raised too much money
- spending too much money
- forgot about scaling
- had to try too hard at marketing

the buzz factor
- solve a real problem
- dont be 200th video sharing platform
- dont have a blog, start one now! - comment on people leaving comments..
- if buzz isnt happening, rethink your product (not your marketing)

> every successful entrepreneur says best time is in early days > when weren’t making money, but making the best work.

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Edwin Aoki - The changing face of online communities

- we must make sure that the tools and services we can build can be used safely and effectively
- most users don’t care/ don’t care about the implications of being online, they don’t often think about or consider:

> security
> spam
> social effects

the applications must be accessible to all, including:
- the usually, audibly or motion impaired
- older generations
- people of developing and emerging nations

the future is in the balance

mashups vs. accessibility
- power and ease of use
- social benefits and commercial interests
- online and off line interactions

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Tara Hunt - fostering/building online communities

A virtual community is:
1 - personal homepage/profile
2 - personal content creation
3 - ability to interact with ‘friends’ and share content

succession of users of community based sites
visitor -> customer -> community member

benefits of community
- heightened customer loyalty
- self policing
- amplified word of mouth > by love of using the product
- better feedback
- stronger and more interesting filters of content

3 levels of community
1 - lightweight social processes
2 - collaborative
3 - high end

high end social networking
lostpedia.com
couchsurfing.com

social networking case study
- create fun and freedom
- keep the dialogue going - personal use of product, answer customer emails personally
- experimental approach to development

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All in all a great conference, even if it was just for the networking!

The Saturday night party out priced everyone who fancied meeting up in London. A place more suitable for Prince Harry’s friends, with sign by cloakroom “no dancing in this venue”..

However, a more suitable bar was found and fellow geeks reveled in the news of digg.com supporting openid, netvibes API’s and

Further resources:
Photo sets on flickr
Slide Presentations on Slideshare

bookmarks taken home from FOWA
programmableweb.com > mashups
aws.amazon.com > ec3 and mech turk
mybloglog.com
secondlife.com > where online and off line lives gets a bit murky
openid.com > Mine is: jimcallender.openid.com
ixda.org > interaction design organisation
jyte.com > social networking site supporting openID
wesabe.com > acheive career aims
mobilemonday.org.uk > mobile networking group in London

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