Carson Workshops Archive

If you are planning to make a bid for HeyAmigo, you have less than 24 hours left. The service is described as, "a service that matches advertisers with email newsletters, and vice versa". The auction is worth checking out as founder Ryan Carson has provided a lot of details on how the service works and the revenue model. The Carsonified team blogged the development process for HeyAmigo on their BareNakedApp blog.

From the auction regarding why they are selling, "We are a small team and we don’t have the man-power to have someone work full time as the product manager. Initially, we hoped we could run the app and maintain our current workload but we just got too busy and Amigo fell by the wayside. We still think it’s an amazing idea that, in the right hands, will make someone a lot of money. The idea of pay-per-click advertising in email still hasn’t been done yet and Amigo is a great start in that direction."

As of the time of this post, there have been no bidders so far. The current minimum price is $25,000 on the eBay auction. They are throwing in free shipping!

Also check out Carson’s "14 things I wish I knew before I built a web app" presentation from late 2006 — the tips still apply today.

Ok, so I am back from the Future of Web Apps conference held last week in San Francisco. It is great to be back on level ground! You can read all of my notes, and some audio files here. This post will summarize what I believe were the big topics of discussion across the presentations as well as outside the summit. I think Ryan, Gillian, Lisa and the whole gang from Carson Systems did a great job pulling everything together. It felt like a family atmosphere rather than just another conference at a big hotel facility. On the main coverage page, I have listed a few things I would like to see added to the next summit which will make the event even stronger. You can also check out my list of others who have coverage of the event.

The buzzwords seemed to remain far away from the summit. Words like "Web 2.0" were barely mentioned. And that's a good thing. The number one theme of the summit was about creating value. It is important that when we create new web apps, we create them with value. And as Ted from Dogster mentioned, it is about the value the customer sees, not the value we believe the app holds.

Many of the speakers talked about the importance of design. Jeff Veen had a good comment in this area, "Use design techniques to improve the data." It is important to always remember the goal. I think design should help us get to the goal, not move us further from it. Designing web applications is a different beast than creating a brochure web site. There seems to also be a lack of good CSS coders. I find that interesting because I enjoy it and would love to do more of it. I guess it comes from my HTMLCenter.com days.

Matt from WordPress talked about how lucky we are today. I think that sentiment could not be echoed enough. Never before has technology finally caught up with our minds. I am working on an Insight post about this that I hope will really explain my thoughts about this topic. I certainly thank my lucky stars that I am no longer a public accountant though the education and experience has certainly helped me.

And lastly, never be afraid to stand up and say, "I screwed up." People will respect you for telling them as soon as possible about the screw up. Sometimes they will even want to help you correct the issue. Waiting until they find out will generally make the person not trust you in the future. And with a new web app, trust is very important.

Ok, so we talked about some of the non-technical topics discussed. Now let's take a peek at the technical topics I thought were of interest.

Microformats

Tantek Çelik from Technorati discussed Microformats. For me, this was the greatest takeaway from the summit. I run HTMLCenter and so I think it is a great fit for us to add content around this topic. I have some experience around Microformats but it was great to hear that they are going to new levels. Clicking on a name gives you a vCard, a date gives you a calendar entry… c'mon this is great stuff!

Backup, backup, backup… and then backup again

Several of the presenters mentioned how they have lost data because of poor backup plans. Since people will rely on your application, backup should be on the top of the list. If I spend an hour on your site uploading pictures and creating a story, you better believe I expect it to be there next week, next month and next year. Oh yea, having a backup system in one location won't cut it.

Measurement

Over 70% of the speakers mentined measurement. As a former auditor, I can't stress enough the importance of a good analytics program. And I mean having a human create analysis that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the application. Not just pulling a top users/top pageviews report from WebTrends. In all of my discussions, companies state how important analytics and measurement is and in the same breath state that they don't do enough in this area.

Listen to your customers

This might seem like it is not technical, but alas, it is. You need to listen to your customers. Do customer service, handle the incoming calls to your support line, run surveys. And whatever they say (in aggregate), do it. At the end of the day, they are your bread and butter. Get out onto the front lines and what you hear will be different than what you see in a chart or a graph. Also, it gives a personal touch which people really enjoy. And create an easy way for people to contact you in the way that works for them.

Other themes:

• Putting the web app where the people are (mobile, handheld, gaming)
• Overfunding in the beginning can lead to problems
• APIs are important and will be even more important in the future

Again, I really enjoyed meeting everyone and learning more about where we are today for web apps. If you would like CenterNetworks to review your web application or attend your conference, please let me know.

Technorati Tags: futureofwebapps-sf06

Matt Mullenweg from WordPress was the last speaker and being the last is always hard. He seems to be good at presentations and really kept the audience engaged. Here are my notes from his presentation.

Stats on WordPress Downloads

• Version 1.2 – 822/day
• Version 1.5 – 2500/day
• Version 2.0 – 5115/day – 1.1 million total downloads

Some Misc. Matt Comments

• He removed Sourceforge because it took too many clicks to download
• Mmore eyes = better software
• Plugins are vital
• Apis are important, breaking them is worse than never having any at all
• Plugins vs core = no, core needs to be beefy, address 90%, let plugins handle the balance
• Do your own support — helped him to lern that multiblogs were really a need for about page
• What sucks now — should have provided an aggregation for plugins and themes
• If you want to succeed – be a painkiller not a vitamin

WordPress Lessons Learned

• all hosting sux
• no such thing as a 100% sla
• no such thing as redundant networks and power
• make backups constantly
• buy the cheapest hardware possible – IF – you can stay up when it goes down
• make it easy to contact you

What sucks at WordPress.com today

• no feature list
• no tutorials
• no documentation
• copywriting needs to be better 

Akismet – his new product – a spam tool that learns from each reported spam

• created a developer api
• 20+ implementations from ruby to lasso
• scalable business
• social software

What does Matt see for the future for web apps

• global
• personal
• useful
• humble – frame it for you not we

Final thoughts from Matt

• most importantly build for yourself
• working for someone else is dead
• never say can't
• never forget how lucky you are – and dont waste it

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 | WordPress | futureofwebapps-sf06 | Matt Mullenweg

Jeff Veen from Google spoke to the attendees about how to design better web application interfaces.

His opening comments were that a lack of the “web 2.0″ buzzword mentioned during the summit is a good thing. He also spoke for a few minutes about the fact that booms and busts are a cycle.

His presentation focused on three areas: Visual Design, Interaction Design and Information Architecture.

Visual Design

• Use visual design competency to build trust with users, empowering them to control their data
• Use design techniques to improve the data
• If you do a good job on the visual design, people will give you the benefit of the doubt

Jeff’s definition of information = data thats actionable. Ajax has changed things for interaction design.

Interaction Design – 4 Principles

• Discoverability – making finding stuff easy
• Recoverability  action should be without cost
• Context – a sense of time place and meaning (amazon checkout)
• Feedback – how the system responds -

Information Architecture

• Blending editorial control with participation
• Tagging is now creating an architecture
• It is now bottom up in some cases

Jeff’s presentation can be downloaded here: veen.com/nextgen.pdf

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 | Google | futureofwebappssf06 | futureofwebapps-sf06 | Jeff Veen

Ryan Carson, owner of Amigo and DropSend and also Summit organizer presented, “14 things I wish I’d known before building a web app”. I found his discussion to be clear and well presented. I am certain he could have spoke for 90-120 minutes about the items he listed. Here are the 14 items he presented:

1. Work with people in the same timezone (otherwise you will always be on the phone all day/night)
2. One user database (otherwise you will be in user hell)
3. One ecommerce system (same as #2)
4. Don’t have your coder do the xhtml/css (then he/she can’t focus on the programming)
5. Obsess about your website copy (whats impt to visitors )
6. Work with a top notch hardware partner
7. Don’t cut corners
8. Measure and measure more
9. You are not done when you launch
10. Tea-spoons  (what he was saying is that after you focus on all the big items, there will still be lots of loose ends)
11. Four tips merged into one - provide logos and details for the press, use a monthly csv for invoices, add an about us page, make contact easy
12. add tons of stuff to your faq and support pages
13. Be nice to your nasty customers
14. Tips from the pros – here Ryan provided some quotes from other speakers at the conference

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 | DropSend | futureofwebappssf06 | futureofwebapps-sf06 | Ryan Carson

Evan Williams, founder of Blogger and Oder, discussed the pros and cons of selling and funding and how to bring in a third-party to assist with the funding process. Most of his discussion was focused around his screw-ups from the Odeo process. I would have liked him to discuss what are the consequences of making mistakes. Here are some notes, they are limited as most of his discussion did not seem note-worthy.

Evan's Best Screw Ups from Building Odeo

1. Building for people not like ourselves
2. Not adjusting fast enough
3. Raising too much money too early
4. Not listening to my gut

And his best comment,dont talk. type., means that sometimes just sit down and start typing and eventually something will come out of it. Talking all the time without typing gets you nowhere.

Michael Arrington was the first presenter of the second day. Many people told me that he is very cocky and full of himself so I was expecting the worst. I thought his presentation was quite good and he does not hold back on his opinions which provided good value for the overall presentation. I recorded several of his comments in mp3 files which you can download below including his comments on the “Apple Incident” earlier this week. Oh yea, he also stated he would like to be Digg CEO.

Winners, Losers, and Companies to Watch

Winners: writely, grouper, skype, newroo, flickr, weblogs, myspace, bloglines, userplane, ksolo, blogger, del.icio.us

Very good bets: digg, facebook, youtube, photobucket, zoho, stumbleupon, popsugar, plentyoffish, netvibes

Ones to watch: jobster, riya, zillow, flock, sharpcast, rocketboom, 1-800-FREE411, odesk, secondlife, wordpress

What were they thinking: inform, gather, pubsub, browzar, jigsaw, squidoo

Winners – Shared Attributes

• passion for what thye are doing
• doing something extraordinary – purple cow
• removing serious friction
• great founder dynamics
• never raised big money
• perfect revenue model not required
• and launched with post on tc

Loser Attributes

• poor founder team choices
• lifestyle/ego entrep
• raised too much money/spent too much money
• over business planned
• forogt about scaling

Choosing Your Platform

• php
• ruby
• java
• .net

Client Platform

– net, ajax, flash, xul, adobe apollo (his fave)

Saturated and Unsatured Markets

• social networks
• social bookmarks
• video
• photos
• blogging platforms
• feedreaders

Big Potential for Success in the Near Term

• platforms
• desktop apps
• office efficiency
• cloud storage
• identity
• developer tools
• market destruction – i.e. 1-800-FREE411
• enterprise