Sessions at Future of Web Apps London 2011 on Wednesday 5th October

The number one question I get asked is for advice as to how to pitch a tech blogger about a app/startup/idea. The answer is fairly complicated since every blogger is different. So instead I’ll proceed with a 40 minute lecture on the matter. And yes, I’ll cover the embargo nonsense. In detail. With curse words.

There are some amazing technologies in the browser these days. While these new technologies are making the web a more amazing place for the people who use it every day, they’re also making the web a much more enjoyable place for designers and developers. We’ll talk about how Carsonified uses HTML5 technologies, JavaScript, and some great tools and services to prototype and test new features in the browser.

Technology has, of course, changed the world – but its main power has been social, not commercial. Despite the best efforts of the industrial age, the general public now holds the cards. They can have any colour they like, including black. They can bring down newspapers, industries, and governments. They’re not going to take your shit any more.

So farewell and good riddance to “pile em high and sell em cheap”, saturation advertising, and consumption culture. It’s time to put people – and humanity – at the heart of business.

“The cloud” promises scalability, reliability, and easy management, but actually getting those benefits goes beyond simply deciding to use the cloud. Learn what you should consider when choosing a cloud platform and designing your application. We’ll talk about how to build web applications that can start small and grow seamlessly, stay up no matter what, and serve a global audience.

Learn essential strategies for getting to break-even and profitability faster and easier.

Robin will demonstrate the amazing potential that iOS devices (and even more so their apps) have to change the lives of users with disabilities. Find out why a camera is so vital for blind users, and how apps that cost a few pence are replacing specialist bits of kit costing thousands of pounds.

One of the most challenging aspects of operating a startup is assembling a team that’s truly able to build great products. Technical talent is scarce, demand is enormous, and the stakes are incredibly high. In this quick talk, I’ll discuss some tactics that will help you find, hire, and keep the kinds of people that will allow you to execute your company’s vision.

Learn how to write cleaner and faster JavaScript with CoffeeScript. We’ll also cover where this is leading in the future.

Finished building your awesome new app and ready to take your market by storm? Get ready for the real hard part: getting users. It’s a challenge that engineering can’t solve but with the right planning, user growth can be incorporated directly into your core product. How? Viral loops.

Social apps are all the rage. Quickly take your social apps from concept to high scale. Walk through the Facebook application development flow and deploy it to the Heroku cloud platform in a matter of minutes. Developers and designers will love the git-based workflow, polyglot language support, and scalability.

CSS has changed very little in the last decade. Its feature set has remained roughly the same since the day it was introduced. In this talk, I’ll introduce you to Sass, a major upgrade to CSS that you can start using today in your projects to make your CSS styling far more awesome.

In this session we’ll take a look at what’s the future of Mobile Web Apps. We’ll do an overview on the status of Mobile Web Applications, what are the main players and projects to keep an eye on and where we are going.

Running a Team of developers and designers isn’t easy. Learn how to use several key apps and principles to make your team operate like a well-oiled, happy machine.

Learn how to use this amazing trio to build powerful JavaScript apps