FOWA Miami 08

So today, a leap year day, I had the pleasure of attending FOWA Miami and it was very fun!
"where the pioneers of the cutting edge web meet"

Ok I buy that tag line. It was full of energy, ideas and inspirational testimonies of start up woes and success. As a software developer I was intrigued by the speakers sharing their experiences of dealing with issues day to day developing and promoting their ideas. It sounded very much like my own shop and how we are dealing with similar issues and growing pains of making decisions that have effects which may be known or unknown. It was educational and fun and I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested.
So the day started with Kathy Sierra speaking on Creating Passionate Users. She is brilliant and a very good speaker. I thought she gave the best presentation that made me think about my site and answering the provocations that are important to building community sites.
Such questions as:

1. How to create passionate users?
2. How to add human elements to your site?
3. Getting through the mind to the brain.
4. How do you observe the user?
5. Do you have a 'WTF?' button so users can tell you they don't like something.
6. How do you "Touch" your users.

She definitely inspired my team to think about what experience users may have on the site.

The next speaker was Matt Mullenweg from WordPress. Matt had some informative points about site architecture and scalability. I agree with him on the essential issue that when your site starts serving a large number of users the best thing to do is give the users features that they can decide how to best use. So to relate to my site, large lists dont work. Rather, build features that allow the user to choose what works for them. Allow the user to define how they will organize their information on your site thus enabling the user to create their own experience. This is valuable knowledge because instead of saying this is how the user will use the site. You say this feature will allow the user to choose an experience that makes sense to them. This approach says create building blocks and not cookie cutter experiences. Remember, each user is unique!

I feel that these two lessons were really the essence of FOWA and the other presenters had much to say but on the aspect of the future of cutting edge social web, these two lessons speak volumes.
So I feel that the lessons learned are:

1. Create user value first - users must find that it solves a problem
   
2. Allow users to experience the value in their own way
3. social web is about building relationships that matter in various ways
   
4. keep it simple enough that users can intuitively use and relate
5. execution - time is of the essence

Charge!!