Future of Web Design Wrap Up
On Wednesday the 16th of April I caught the train from Edinburgh to London for Future of Web Design. Good times were had on all three days of the event and I met and spoke to a ton of great people including and in no particular order Tim Van Damme, Sarah Parmenter, Elliot Jay Stocks, Jason Cale, Ian Young, fellow Scots Cole Henley, Roan Lavery and Paul Farnell from Litmus, Rissingtonians Jon Hicks and Simon Clayson, Simon Collison, Greg Wood and the boys from Erskine Design, Francis Booth, Adam Broadway from GoodBarry, and the majority of the cast and crew from Carsonified, Mel Kirk, Joleen, Lisa Price and Keir Whitaker. Sorry for those that I have missed, drop me a line.
Day 1 and the ‘Before-Party’
The Welcome Party was held at Jewel in Covent Gardens and Media Temple’s free bar went down mighty well for the 5 hours that I was there, didn’t spend a penny! Must remember to never complain about (mt) downtime again.
Highlights of the before-party, as it became known, were having a whole bunch of great internet folks come up and introduce themselves including Jon Hicks and Elliot Jay Stocks as well as meeting a bunch of other cool folk. Falling down the stairs before I left, bad times, I wasn’t nearly drunk enough for it not to hurt!
Day 2 Conference
Up early on Day 2 to get out and find a hangover cure for breakfast before heading to the conference venue to meet Sarah Parmenter and Tim Van Damme who incidently had us sitting in row 1, center stage!
I’d love to dive deeper into the great speakers and their presentations but Jeremy Keith did a great job of live blogging the whole conference. I will note my favourite presentations from Andy Clark, Andy Budd, Elliot Jay Stocks, Jon Hicks, Paul Farnell and Daniel Burka.
Day 2 Impromptu After-Party
After the conference Tim and I caught up with Simon Clayson, Jason Cale and the entire Erskine Design crew and headed for dinner at Pizza Express before a short trip to Soho for Pub Standards with Cole Henley which was buzzing with industry types that had escaped the bustling official After Party including Andy Clarke, Daniel Burka, and Jina Bolton.
Day 3 Home Time
My third morning in London saw me sitting in my hotel lobby reply to emails from the previous 2 days. Fortunately the FOWD Workshops were being held at my hotel and there was plenty of people around to keep me company. I had a good chat with Keir Whitaker from Carsonified, Adam Broadway from Good Barry and Elliot Jay Stocks before heading back to Kings Cross to catch the 4pm train home.
All in all I had a fantastic time meeting everyone and can’t wait to do it again!
Downloads and Write Ups
The slides and MP3s from all of the conference presentations will be available to download on the Future of Web Design site if you are interested in them.
Other FOWD write-ups worth a read:
Looking forward to the next one!
