{"id":244,"date":"2007-10-08T22:16:41","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T20:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/08\/fowa-expo-07-report\/"},"modified":"2007-12-15T21:01:22","modified_gmt":"2007-12-15T19:01:22","slug":"fowa-expo-07-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/08\/fowa-expo-07-report\/","title":{"rendered":"FOWA Expo 07 report"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FOWA Expo<\/a> was more business oriented then the previous one (Expo extension is for sponsor\u2019s stands on the entrance to the hall, where some interesting product\/service demos were held). A vast majority of talks were about lessons learned and dos and don\u2019ts when it comes to startups.<\/p>\n

On to presentations… or better yet, speakers<\/h2>\n

Super-optimistic Chief Performance Yahoo! Steve Sounders<\/strong><\/a>, the author of YSlow<\/a> for Firebug<\/a>, confirmed what Nate Koechley<\/a> first introduced at @media<\/a> this Spring about speeding-up web pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t fight the numbers and High Performance Web Sites<\/cite> surely whipped some shocking ones out. I already saw some of the graphs at YUI Blog<\/a> earlier, but many attendees were left surprised.<\/p>\n

Following the High Performance<\/cite> directions, any site can be 50% leaner within a few hours. Given the fact that the companies\/organizations invest considerable amounts of money into hardware infrastructure and\/or back-end development (for instance, a development of an advanced caching system), it is just silly to skip this first and the easiest step in optimizing site\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re ready to start making faster web pages, but don\u2019t know where to start, I encourage you to buy a book<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robin Christopherson<\/strong>, a Web Consultant at AbilityNet<\/a>, held pretty impressive demonstration about how visually challenged people use the internet. Listening to screen reader playing the endless strings of meaningful text was scary, but at the same time enlightening experience.<\/p>\n

The curiosity of the session was \u2013 it takes approx. 20 minutes for screen reader to start reading the main content on Amazon.co.uk<\/a>, because they simply didn\u2019t provide skip to main content<\/em> link.<\/p>\n

Daniel Burka<\/strong><\/a>, a lead creative behind Digg<\/a> and Pownce<\/a> was a true refreshment. His presentation about community feedback was honest and authentic. He was surprisingly patient to rivers of attendees, without a blink of celebrity pretending. Thanks to his feet standing firmly on the ground, we\u2019ve collected some pretty valuable tips & tricks during the informal discussions afterwards.<\/p>\n

Erika Hall<\/strong> from Mule Design<\/a> in her Copy is Interface<\/cite> gave a bunch of great examples of how careless choice of copy used on the site\u2019s interface can make a site either miss-interpreted or completely blunt. She also pointed out that without knowing your users\/audience, it\u2019s difficult to come with the right choice.<\/p>\n

The sweet desert of the second day was a survival\/essential startup session by Feedburner<\/a> co-founder Dick Costolo<\/strong>. He extended the presentation well over his minutes, but with a good reason and greatly approved by the crowd.<\/p>\n

Launch Late to Iterate Often<\/cite> provided a great insight in common pitfalls in the first year or so of a projects life-span. Pointers like Ask for money when you have it<\/q>, There\u2019s no such thing as a Standard Deal<\/q> and Flat Organization<\/q> are just a few of 14 selected bullets I wrote down; and there was even more… What\u2019s more important \u2013 he covered every thesis with a valid example.<\/p>\n

All in all, many bits collected and a few randoms I will hopefully post in the next couple of days. In a mean-time, check out the available presentations<\/a> at SlideShare<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three tracked, business oriented conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.maratz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}