Save $50 off your pass by entering promo code THINKVITAMIN when booking your pass. Only 9 left! Buy your tickets now »

Did you know Carsonified, the team behind Think Vitamin, also run a number of web industry events? In a couple of weeks we head off to Florida for the third Future of Web Apps Miami.

It’s going to be a great three days (February 22nd – 24th) and will feature great speakers, in depth workshops and free University sessions all delivered by leading industry figures. Here’s a quick round up of what’s happening:

Companies speaking at FOWA Miami 2010 include:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• FreshBooks
• Opera
• Mint.com
• Mozilla
• jQuery
• Reddit
• KISSmetrics

Topics at FOWA Miami 2010 include:

• HTML5
• Advanced JavaScript
• API’s
• Online marketing that works
• Funding strategies for startups
• Web app branding
• Functional languages
• Measuring your apps success
• How to build a successful web app business

Speakers at FOWA Miami include:

• John Resig (jQuery & Mozilla)
• Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV)
• Molly Holzschlag (Opera)
• Tara Hunt (Author of The Whuffie Factor)
• Alex Payne (Twitter)
• Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures)
• Mike McDermott (FreshBooks)

As well as in depth workshops and speaker presentations there will be plenty of opportunities to meet fellow web developers and entrepreneurs at the Future of Web Apps beach party at the beautiful Nikki Beach.

You can register, pick up your badge, hang out with some of our partners, enjoy a free BBQ, play games on the beach and as the sun sets the party will begin. Just be sure to keep a clear head for the conference day.

Save $50 off your pass by entering promo code THINKVITAMIN when booking your pass. Buy your tickets now »

I’m really excited to announce our very first Think Vitamin Online Conference!

Please join us and Andy Clarke, Ethan Marcotte, Matthew Smith, and Jina Bolton for the CSS3 Online Conference.

Speakers

• Ethan Marcotte (Happy Cog, @beep and Unstoppable Robot Ninja)
• Matthew Smith (SquaredEye and @SquaredEye)
• Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense and @malarkey)
• Jina Bolton (Sushi and Robots)

What You’ll Learn

1. CSS3 Animations: Transforms and Transitions
   Learn how to translate, scale and rotate DOM elements, transition smoothly between CSS properties and animate elements utilising key frames.
2. Typography in CSS3: @font-face, font embedding, licensing fonts and columns
   Utilising the @font-face construct for font embedding along with practical solutions were licensed fonts are concerned. Also covering the splitting of a single element’s content into multiple columns.
3. CSS3 Best Practice: Graceful Degradation, browser-specific prefixes and more
   How best to implement CSS3 right now, the considerations relating to browser support and the use of vendor-specific properties.
4. Visual effects with CSS3: RGBa, box-shadow, box-sizing, border-radius, border-image and multiple background images
   Understand how to effectively use CSS3 properties to create compelling site designs faster and more efficiently than before.

Buy your ticket here.

Why Attend?

1. Learn how you can use the new features of CSS3
2. Re-watch the presentations after the conference as many times as you like
3. Ask the speakers your questions – live!
4. No travel costs
5. No time out of the office
6. Simply login with your browser

When

• San Francisco: 9am – 1:30pm
• London: 5pm – 9:30pm
• Sydney: 4am – 8:30am (Tuesday March 23)

Hope you can make it!

We know a ton of you would like to attend Future of Web Apps, Future of Web Design or Stack Overflow Dev Days but you live too far away or it’s too expensive.

To help you out, we’re going to run an online conference for you. It’s going to be $150 for a five-hour in-depth conference, taught by the web’s most talented designers and developers.

Highlights …

• You can ask the speakers your questions
• No travel costs
• No time out of the office
• Simply login with your browser
• You can re-watch the presentations after the conference
  as many times as you like

What Topics Do YOU Want?

To decide the topic of the 1st conference, we’re going to conduct a poll. Whatever topic gets the most votes wins.

We’d love to hear from you! Thanks :)

If you’d like to be notified when tickets go on sale (there will be a limited amount of 10% off early-bird tickets) please sign up to the Think Vitamin Newsletter (at the bottom of this page). Thanks again!

If you can’t see the form below, please fill it out here.

Editors note: Interested in web apps? Join us in Florida for Future of Web Apps Miami 2010. Enter promo code FOWANEWYEAR to receive $50 off your ticket (code valid for 40 tickets)

Earlier this week I linked up a number of the great articles I read over the holiday period. Included in that list was this video from Chris Pirillo. If you use Twitter, attend tech conferences and have 10 minutes to spare then please have a watch.

I can’t help but agree with a lot of what Chris says. There’s no question that Twitter is a great “backchannel” at events and to a certain degree a barometer of what attendees are enjoying and what they are not.

Checking Twitter for feedback is often the first thing speakers do when they come off stage, smiles and more often downbeat faces follow. A quick tweet, perhaps in jest, lacks any real context and I think this is one of the main issues. Was it the talk, do they disagree, was it technically wrong or do they just not like the presenter. It’s hard to know with certainty when the feedback is 140 characters or less.

Twitter becomes the show

Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher, wrote a very open and enlightening blog post on her experiences at last years New York Web 2.0 Expo. In it she describes how the addition of audience participation via the live Twitter stream influenced her presentation in a very negative way. She remarks:

The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience to pay attention the backchannel. So even audience members who want to focus on the content get distracted. Most folks can’t multitask that well.

I experienced a similar situation last year at an event in London. Although the live Twitter stream was moderated, unlike in Danah’s case, I still found myself paying more attention to the “tweets” than the speaker. Often the audience laughed at new tweets, much to the amazement of the speaker who was in the throws of delivering a very important and serious point. It became distracting for both speaker and audience.

Equally had the speaker turned round and seen a screen full of personal or non complimentary remarks I am sure their talk would have been affected negatively.

Without question there’s a time and a place for Twitter streams. At Future of Web Apps London 2009 the live hashtag stream during the “Kevin and Gary” show became part of the show and worked really well. However I believe that it wouldn’t have worked so well during Kevin’s keynote. Context is key.

Your thoughts

This is just my opinion and please feel free to disagree. I am sure many of you will and that’s great. What do you think? Is Twitter the answer or should conference organisers offer up more in depth ways of providing feedback during and after and event? Let us know.

BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW AND SAVE $50

As regular readers will know the company behind Think Vitamin, Carsonified, runs a series of events in the UK, Ireland and the USA for web designers, web developers and web entrepreneurs including The Future of Web Apps and The Future of Web Design.

Here at Carsonified we have recently been thinking about how to promote our upcoming Future of Web Apps Miami event. This year we thought we would try something a little different.

Instead of spending the remaining $2000 of our marketing budget on banner ads we thought we would offer the loyal readers of Think Vitamin a one time special gift.

Let us put $50 towards your pass

If you enter the promotional code “FOWANEWYEAR” when booking Carsonified will put $50 towards your ticket. This offer applies to both the “conference” and “workshop + conference” pass. The code will work 40 times and is valid for a week starting today.

We hope you enjoy the saving and that it brings a bit of new year cheer to the cold and dark (at least here in the UK) January days.

BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW AND SAVE $50

Are you a FOWA newbie?

If you haven’t been to a Future of Web Apps event before what can you expect? The Future of Web Apps Miami is a three day event including tutorials, workshops, networking and inspiration for web application developers and entrepreneurs, taught by leading figures at the cutting edge of todays web.

Here’s who’s speaking:

• Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV)
• Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures)
• Tara Hunt (Horse Pig Cow)
• Molly Holzschlag (Opera)
• John Resig (Mozilla and jQuery)
• Alex Payne (Twitter)
• Steve Huffman (Reddit)
• Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)
• Neil Patel (KISSmetrics)
• Kevin Hale (Wufoo)
• Alex Hunter
• Aaron Patzer (Mint.com)
• Dion Almaer (Palm)

Topics include:

• JavaScript & JQuery
• HTML 5
• Online Marketing
• Funding Strategies
• Measuring Success
• Web App Branding
• Functional Languages
• How to Build a Web App Business from A-Z
• How to build Facebook Connect into Your App

And finally…

Check out our highlight reel from Future of Web Apps London 2009. Expect more of the same in Miami.

I’m SUPER excited to announce the launch of FOWA Miami 2010. We’ve worked extremely hard on bringing you the best speakers in the industry while also focusing on essential topics that will help your web app succeed.

Companies Speaking:

• Twitter
• Reddit
• Mint.com
• jQuery
• Palm Pre
• FreshBooks
• Opera
• PayPal

Speakers:

• Alex Payne (Platform Lead of Twitter)
• Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures)
• John Resig (Creator of jQuery)
• Steve Huffman (Founder of Reddit)
• Mike McDerment (FreshBooks)
• Tara Hunt (Author of The Whuffie Factor)
• Dion Almaer (Head of Palm Developer Community)
• Aaron Patzer (CEO and Founder of Mint.com)
• Molly Holzschlag (Opera)
• Alex Hunter (Launched Virgin.com)

Workshops:

1. Building a Web App A-Z
2. Converting Free Users to Paid Customers
3. How to build Facebook Connect + openID into Your App
4. How to use A/B Testing, Analytics and Goal Measurement in your Web App
5. How to use HTML 5 to Enhance Your Web App
6. Q/A with Fred Wilson
7. Kick ass Marketing Techniques
8. How to use jQuery to Improve Your Web App

Conference Sessions:

1. The 10 Golden Principles for Successful Web Apps
2. Speedy, Stable, and Secure: Better Web Applications Through Functional Languages
3. Your Social Media Strategy Won’t Save You
4. Advanced JavaScript to Improve Your Web App
5. Kick Ass Marketing Techniques
6. What You Need to be Measuring and How to Do It
7. Marketing Metrics and the Systems You Need to Measure Them
8. Open Source Libraries to Fuel Your App
9. How HTML 5 is Going to Completely Change your Web App
10. How to Take Your Start-up to the Next Level

Dates:

Feb 22 – 24, 2010

• Day 1: Beach Party, BBQ, Drinks and Free Workshops
• Day 2: Conference
• Day 3: Workshops

Save 47%

There’s only 20 Super Early Bird tickets at 47% off, so be quick (only 440 seats total, so the show will definitely sell out early).

Hope you can make it! :)

As you all probably know, we also run a conference called The Future of Web Apps. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that the event in London next week is about to sell out. There’s only about 45 seats left.

You can check out the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

The tickets will probably be gone by Friday, and it’s the best show we’ve ever done.

You’ll Learn …

• How to Build a Web App from A-Z
• How to Take Your Users from One to a Million
• How to Improve your Web App with HTML 5
• Unleashing Full Object-Oriented Capability
• The Future of Agile: Merb + Ruby on Rails
• How to Build with Facebook Connect and add Social Context to Your Website
• Copywriting Fundamentals for the Web
• Kick-Ass Online Marketing Techniques
• How to Manage the Growth of your Web App
• How to Increase the Accessibility of Your Web App

Awesome Speakers …

• Twitter
• PayPal
• Facebook
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Kevin Rose
• FreshBooks
• Six Apart
• And more …

First Live Appearance by Gary Vaynerchuk

We are also delighted to be hosting Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV. He will be in town for his first ever UK appearance and will be riffing on why it’s time you all start “Crushing It” as well as giving advice on why now is the time to turn your ideas into a business. He’s one of the most inspiring speakers we’ve ever seen and you shouldn’t miss him.

The Kevin and Gary Show

The conference will end with “The Kevin and Gary Show”, a one time only show for FOWA attendees. Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuk will bring their take on the web, marketing, wine, beer and who knows what else in this one off live event from the FOWA stage. Who knows, they might even invite you to join them on the sofa and share in the fun.

Huge Party Hosted by PayPal

We’re going to have a rocking huge party on the first night and it’s one you don’t want to miss. There’s going to be free alcohol, great music and tons of fun to be had.

Hope you can join us! Feel free to checkout the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

Prior to joining Carsonified I used to attend a couple of web related events each year. By the end of 2010 I will have racked up 20 events including conferences, workshops, meet ups and other assorted geek gatherings.

Attending a conference is a lot of fun but it’s important to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves. It’s easy to be unprepared and having learnt the hard way here are a few of my “web conference survival tips”.

Before You Leave

• If packing a laptop consider a smaller Netbook. I recently bought a Dell Mini 10v and thanks to a friend in the know I now have a fully functional “Hackintosh”. It’s lightweight, has decent battery life and above all is small, compact and cheap. Mac Book Pro users will be pleased to note that they don’t burn your things after prolonged use!
• Take plenty of business cards. Be sure to include your Twitter name and your best promo photo, these will make you much more memorable. Even better is personal shwag, these badges and card bags from Sam Brown spring to mind.
• Prepare your “elevator pitch“. It’s harder than you think to explain what you do quickly and succinctly. Being able to clearly state what you do to new people will start conversations.
• Plan for bad wi-fi provision. If you have a 3G dongle pop it in your bag and make sure it is topped up with credit.
• Always pack a small note pad and pen. I like Field Notes as they fit nicely in your shirt or jeans pocket.
• Let your Twitter friends know you are going. Consider popping a link to the event announcing you will be there in your e-mail signature.
• Create a Twitter search for the event and subscribe to it in your RSS reader. Here’s the one I use to track our FOWD events. This will also help you learn more about other attendees and activities happening around the event such as BarCamps and meetups.
• Learn about the speakers by reading their latest blog posts. Should you meet them before they have given their talk you will have something to chat about.
• Got a product or service then don’t forget the fliers.
• Pack headache tablets!

At the Event

• Pick up a local taxi firm card from your hotel. This will prove invaluable.
• Keep an eye on your Twitter search for non official meetups. For example at dConstruct the Fountain Head was “the” place to be prior to the pre-party.
• If there’s a pre-party don’t go too mad. Remember that if you need to justify your attendance to your boss a clear head will help.
• Remember to charge your laptop and mobile phone when you get back to your hotel. It’s easy to forget when you get back from your social activities.
• Take a bag to the conference. You will pick up brochures, t-shirts and other assorted goodies. There’s nothing worse than having to hold all your schwag.
• Check to see if drinks are allowed into the auditorium. You don’t want to finish your “Vente extra foam caramel skinny soy latte” (retail price £4.99) in a rush as your favourite speaker is on the stage and you can’t get in.
• Take water into the auditorium (hidden in your bag). Older venues, especially in the UK, do not have air conditioning and it can get hot.
• If you are using an iPhone reduce the brightness, turn off Bluetooth and turn off the volume. The first two will prolong your battery, the last one will keep your neighbours happy.
• Try and collate the main take away points for each talk. Should you need to write up the conference for your team or boss this will make it easy. Also bring back brochures and goodies for those who couldn’t attend, naturally keep the best items for yourself.

Post Event

• Go through your pile of business cards and contact the people you met, and were interested in, and re-introduce yourself. This makes a follow up e-mail in the future much easier.
• Connect with the people you met on LinkedIn and other relevant social networks.
• Compare experiences with other attendees. It’s always interesting to read other people’s account of the event. I use a Google Blog Search to track the event, follow up blog posts and photos.

These are just a few of my tips, feel free to add yours in the comments.

As you all know, we run events for web designers and developers. However, students and young entrepreneurs usually can’t afford to attend. With that in mind, Keir had the idea of running a free two-day event that would feature talks and discussions aimed to help young webpreneurs kick-ass and feel inspired. (We’ve compiled a quick video for you all.)

Well, Carsonified Summer Camp ‘09 just finished and it was an absolute blast :) Our lovely campers where @mattdempseycom, @veritech, @robday, @ffffelix, @gpirie, @rossbearman, @erakor and @jamesproud. Thanks to our speakers as well: @mrjoe and @jonathanhowell

I’d like to thank Trista for organizing the event – she did an amazing job. Also, a huge thanks to Sun Startup Essentials for buying the food and drinks :)

The Video

In this edition of “Event News” we offer you the chance to save up to 50% of FOWA 2 day conference passes, announce new cities for the upcoming Stack Overflow Dev Days series of conferences, reveal new speakers and details of the new uber-cool workshop venue for Future of Web Apps London and give you the chance to take to stand side by side with some of the UK’s biggest names in web design in our FOWD Tour “Call for Speakers”. Read on to find out more.

Future of Web Apps 2009 Summer Sale

To celebrate summer finally hitting the UK shores we are having a Future of Web Apps 2009 summer bonanza on 2 day conference passes.

• 10 seats at 50% off (save £167.50)
• 20 seats at 25% off (save £83.75)
• 30 seats at 10% off (save £33.50)

If you’re not quick enough to grab one of the first 10 there is still a chance to save some pennies as the sale will continue with the further 50 discounted passes.

Details of the summer sale will be announced via Twitter (http://twitter.com/carsonified/).

Stack Overflow

In May we announced “Stack Overflow Dev Days“, a series of 1-day conferences in five different US cities for programmers for only $99. The original five cities of San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington DC and London UK have now been joined by new dates in Boston, Austin, Los Angeles, Cambridge UK and Amsterdam. Five cities (San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Washington DC and London UK) are entirely sold out and tickets are selling fast for the remaining five. As Joel Spolsky (Co-founder of Stack Overflow) says:

“The conference is for programmers. The conversation is going to be hard core. Speakers are going to be writing code.”

Topics include:

• Android
• Objective C and iPhone development
• Google App Engine
• Python
• jQuery
• ASP.NET MVC
• FogBugz 7.0
• Mercurial and Distributed Version Control

Further info and booking here: http://stackoverflow.carsonified.com/

Future of Web Apps London – New Speakers and Workshop Venue

Over the last few weeks we have completed the line up of speakers and workshop presenters for the Future of Web Apps London. Recently announced speakers include Bruce Lawson (Opera), Lynne D Johnson (Fast Company magazine), David Prager (Revision3) and our amiable business track host from last years event Simon Wardley (Canonical).

We are also pleased to announce that we will be hosting this years workshops at Wallace Space St. Pancras. It’s right up our street, centrally located and has an endless supply on Innocent Smoothies, cookies, snacks, coffee and wi-fi for all workshop attendees.

• Copywriting Fundamentals for the Web (Relly Annett-Baker – Poppy Copy)
• Kick-ass Online Marketing Techniques (Alex Hunter – Virgin)
• How to Build a Web App from A-Z (Mike McDerment – Freshbooks)
• How to build Facebook Connect + openID into your Site (Dave Morin – Facebook)
• Building Web Apps Using Atlas (Francisco Tolmasky – 280 North)
• Setting up Your Web App – Powerful Alternatives to LAMP (Chris Lea – Virb)
• Site Building with Drupal (Addison Berry – Lullabot)
• How to Build Accessible Web Apps (Philip Strain – Ecliptic)

Further info and booking here: http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/london/

Future of Web Design Tour Call for Speakers

Following on from our recent FOWA Tour we are back on the road in September with the Future of Web Design Tour. During September the FOWD Tour 2009 will hit four UK cities to bring you 2 FREE hour long web design tutorials per event, an afternoon of great talks from some of the UK’s best known web designers as well as a quick fire speed networking session. Tickets are only £59 (+VAT), student tickets for £19 (+VAT) are also available.

Who, where and when:

Belfast – 2nd Sept 2009

• Andy Clarke (AM: Extreme Typography Makeover: Malarkey Edition – PM: Method In My Modness)
• Drew McLellan (AM: Making Your Content Discoverable with Microformats – PM: Cost Effective Web Development)
• Chris Murphy and Niklas Persson (PM: A picture is worth a thousand words)

Bristol – 9th Sept 2009

• Elliot Jay Stocks (AM: The Perfect Portfolio – PM: The Importance of Beauty in Absolutely Everything)
• Bruce Lawson (AM: How to build a HTML5 Web site – PM: The Future of HMTL5)
• Paul Boag (PM: The Battlefield of Design – Designers vs Clients)

Glasgow – 14th Sept 2009

• Drew McLellan (AM: Making Your Content Discoverable with Microformats – PM: Cost Effective Web Development)
• Andy Allan (AM: Getting Started with Adobe Air)
• Patrick Lauke (PM: Keyboard Access Essentials)
• Steve Pearce (PM: TBC)

Leeds – 16th Sept 2009

• Paul Annett (AM: Oooh, That’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design) – PM: Top 50 Rookie Mistakes and How to Avoid Them)
• Simon Collison (AM: Developing Your Ultimate Package – PM: Bauhaus Ideology and the Future of Web Design)
• Brendan Dawes (PM: Useless. Pointless. Beautiful.)

Like the FOWA Tour we would like to give you the opportunity to join us on the FOWD stage. We have kept open one afternoon session in each city, if you have a great idea for a talk about the “Future of Web Design” head on over to our online “Call for Speakers” form (http://bit.ly/YuGHA) and let us know. We will be announcing the chosen talks in the first week of August.

Further info and booking here: http://events.carsonified.com/fowd/2009/tour/

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterjlambert/97671748/