Is Future of Web Apps worth the money?

(Image by h3idi.harman)

Update: You can get a 15% discount on FOWA tickets with the following code - 15DISC.

Recently I made a promise to myself that I would start attending more events once again. When I first started my own business (just over 3 years ago) I regularly attended popular meetups like Open Coffee, Internet Peeps dinners and others. They were a great way of meeting tech peers and getting new business, particularly for start-ups. Once you’re more established and picking up clients regularly it’s easy to fall into the routine of working hard and not getting out enough. I made the decision a few weeks ago and at my first event in a while met someone from a very large publishing group who we’re now in talks with for various opportunities, which goes to show how valuable these meetups can be.

I started talking about this with other developers and entrepreneurs and the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) came up as the next big one to attend. Almost at the same time all of the group mentioned the price as a substantial stumbling block; unless you’re a student, the cheapest ticket cost to attend the conference is a whopping £351.33. And that’s just for one day, with no workshops (which probably hold the most value). There is a great line up of speakers but that’s a reasonable amount of money, particularly for small teams, single developers or boot strapped companies.

So I thought I’d contact Ryan Carson (of Carsonified fame and FOWA founder) to find out what he thought. As you might expect, I got a couple of very nice and honest replies:

Thanks for the honest feedback. I appreciate it.

Have you considered a 1-Day pass as an alternative?

Can you please let me know what you believe *would* make it worth the cost?

As it happens, the 1-Day pass is something I had considered since it would mean not taking much time off from client work and keep the cost at the lower end of the scale. I also had a few ideas about what would make the cost worthwhile and suggested these to Ryan:

• A slight price reduction for teams of 5 or less (or similar).
• A deal on attending single workshops for conference pass holders.
• Providing videos free of charge for conference pass holders (so they can see the track talks they can’t attend). Note: This is already part of the deal when you pay for a ticket, although it’s not clear on the FOWA website.

These suggestions went down well and, who knows, feedback like this might result in a change. I’d particularly like to see deals for smaller teams who are boot strapping their start-up, although I appreciate that might be difficult to police. If nothing changes it’s good to see genuine feedback taken seriously. As a result, it’s likely I will attend FOWA. I’ll let you know if it’s worth the money…

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