I recently had the good fortune of attending the Future of Web Apps 2009 Miami conference. This was my first Carsonified event and I was very impressed. The caliber of the roster of speakers was incredible. They were all "presenters" in the best sense of the word. No one read from their decks.In fact, most of them couldn't read from their decks if they wanted to, as their decks tended to be images with a couple words as opposed to a set of bullet points. They all knew their audience and knew how to deliver their content.

Not only were the speakers great, but their content was germane.The agenda was quite diverse and managed to appeal to developer, designers and marketing people all at once, which is no easy task.

Ryan Carson acted as host/MC through the entirety.He was trustworthy, and competent and likeable.It was interesting because,later, during a talk on Brand 2.0 by Alex Hunter from Virgin, there was a discussion of the value of tying a face to a brand – aka Sir Richard Branson and Virgin – and he called out Ryan Carson himself of a great example of tying person (Ryan) to brand (Carsonified). Funny, because we are trying to do that with Mix Online, giving a face and voice to the members of the team. Although do I lose points because my gravatar isn’t a photo?But if you really need to see my mug, it is out there.

The venue itself was gorgeous, in a performance hall with box seats, etc. Check it out:

(photo by seanosh – he’s got a bunch of great shots from the event)

There was wireless in the venue and there was constant twittering. Go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=fowa to see.Amazing how Twitter and conferences are now almost impossible to separate. Hey – I got this in 2007 – here’s the proof if you don’t believe me. Speaking Twitter at conferences, Hans, Tim and I have a new version of Flotzam cooking for MIX09 right now that's gonna be rad.

I got a lot out of all the speakers. (BTW, Obie Fernandez has a great write up of notes.) I even got a chance to speak myself and did a 20 minute lunch session on jQuery and tooling for designers -- more about soon!

Two points really jumped out at me that were emphasized by multiple speakers:

• Randomization Kills Productivity. We as developers and designers need to be able to get “in the zone” to get anything done.Like 4 hour stretches of intense focus. Random meetings, interruptions, ambient noise all prevent that.We must protect our time!Say no to meetings; say no to distraction.
• Design Matters. Okay, I’m preaching to the choir here, but still, it was great that this message was hammered again and again by speaker after speaker. UI and design matter. Making things beautiful matters. Focusing on experience matters.And this isn’t just for the sake of aesthetics; it makes business sense.

Overall, a great conference.

Next up for me on the conference train: first, SxSW Interactive. I'll be on a panel about Microformats there with Tantek Celik, Leah Culver (Six Apart Ltd), Glenn Jones (Madgex) and Jeremy Keith (Clearleft Ltd).Then, MIX09, of course! If you're going to be at either one and want to meet up, give me a shout.

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