Sterling Raphael

The Future of Web Apps event in Miami was a great experience for me personally and the entire team at NFi Studios. Being founded as a more service driven company, in the past few years NFi Studios has shifted to a Web Application team, offering clients powerful online solutions. So when we found out about FOWA, we knew we had to be there.

The FOWA event was both overwhelming, reassuring, and invigorating all at the same time! I say overwhelming because I realize that the Future of Web Apps involve some radical and fast-paced changes with which we must constantly stay in tune. I say reassuring because our company’s direction and focus is very close to what the “experts” advise. Why invigorating? Well, it is just exciting to be leading an exceptional team into an uncertain yet opportunistic market where we can truly make a positive difference to those we reach.

Not knowing too much what to expect, it was good that BarCamp Miami was the first event, as we were involved in the first BarCamp Orlando. This was a great start for the event, as it gave everyone a chance to get settled in; discovering who was in attendance, the topics being discussed, and have an idea of what information we would all take away. As I posted in my previous blog (Social Graph at BarCamp Miami), my first session had to do with social graphing and the power of understanding the connections between the people online. As I realized later, this topic was more of an overall theme to the event.

Later at BarCamp I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin Marks of Google. Kevin is brilliant person who is incredibly personable and down to earth. He spoke at both BarCamp and FOWA regarding Google’s Social Graph and Open Social API’s. Both of these technologies create technological standards for web developers to produce applications that work across multiple online communities.

Matt Mullenweg was very insightful. His experience in overcoming what may seem to be a daunting amount of growth, both from technological and business perspectives. Derek Gallo and I soaked up all of the valuable success factors Matt described, as our product MemberFuse is approaching a much larger user base. We are confident our technical and operations game plan will make our product’s expansion a successful one.

I was absolutely captivated with the presentation by Cal Henderson of Flickr. He spoke in detail on just about every operational procedure that makes Flickr flick! The content of his speech was very technical in nature,and incredibly engaging in its delivery. As Derek and I also watched this session, it really confirmed that our development procedures at NFi Studios is pretty solid. And although we will always make room for improvement, we are definitely on the right track!

After a very loud and entertaining delivery by Gary Vaynerchuck on maintaining passion for your customers and community, we went to celebrate a great event at Miami’s famous Nikki Beach.

With a great time in Miami now in the past, I’m now hopping on a flight to San Diego to do it all again! I’m fortunate to be heading to the GSP West 08 (Graphing Social Patterns) in San Diego. This is a two day event going into even more detail on Social Graphing. Kevin Marks will again be speaking on behalf of Google. I’m sure we’ll be chatting again, as he had some great insight on our MemberFuse product and its implications for Associations and non-profits.

Will have more after GSP West 08!