The past two days I attended Carson Workshop’s "The Future of Web Apps" presented at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and I must say it was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in years! Every one of the speakers was excellent each providing invaluable insight, and the energy level was just electric!
I really liked the venure too; an ~800 seat auditorium where the entire single-track conference was held. It had so much better feel than getting stuffed into lots of little breakout rooms at a hotel or a convention center.
Not everything was perfect, i.e. not enough networking opportunities, flaky WiFi, and no exhibit hall, but at $2951 for two days the event was otherwise so incredible that I feel really bad2 even mentioning any negatives! OTOH, Ryan Carson was made fully aware of those problems by people other than me and I get the sense that next time it will be corrected.
Lastly, Ryan announced plans to publish online the audio ala T.E.D. for each presentation which the presenter the agrees, which Ryan definitely encouraged! That’s a very "Creative Commons" approach, and oh so right for a Web 2.0 conference (or any other future conference, for that matter.)
Maybe I had such a good time because I was burned out on 12+ years of Microsoft-oriented conferences and just needed something new.
Whatever the case; Bravo Carson, you definitely made a fan! If you get a chance to attend one of there future conferences on a subject of interest to you, don’t hesitate, don’t think about it; just do it! I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
Footnotes
- The $295 price was also so very in line with the ethos of "Web 2.0"; created high value for little money, and benefitting from the goodwill that creates. I so totally feel like they practice what they preach at Carson!
- Of course if it had been a Microsoft TechEd for $1000+ I was have been totally pissy about any lack of perfection, but not at $295 for the quality that Carson delivered!