A good start this morning at the <a href="http://www.futureofwebapps.com/">Future of Web Apps Conference</a>. It began with Kathy Sierra talking about creating passionate users. The speakers ranged from Kevin Rose of digg, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress, Cal Henderson of Flickr, to Kevin Marks of Google who mostly spoke of opensocial and microformats among other things. And the event closed with a very motivational bit by <a href="http://www.aarp.org/community/faz/video/Gary_Vaynerchuk/56342"> Gary Vaynerchuk.</a>

Most of the speakers can be heard on <a href="http://futureofwebapps.com/2008/miami/pastevents.php">FOWA Miami site</a>.

Fowamiami08 will get you most of the relavent content out there.

Here are a few direct links:
<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/tag/fowamiami08">SlideShare</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/fowamiami08/">flickr</a>
<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/752145">... and if you must see a video filler.</a>

More content from the event will be posted since they didnt’ actually deliver the conference kit. I’ll update this post later with the full info. 

<embed src=’http://assets.aarp.org/aarp.org_/flash/community/flvshell_v3.swf’ FlashVars=’memberVideo=http://content.share.aarp.org/uploads1/video/streams/5/3/53/movie/1204815745251.mov.flv’ id=’video_play_500’ name=’video_play_500’ quality=’high’ bgcolor=’#ffffff’ width=’480’ height=’420’ allowFullScreen=true /><br/>Get <a href=’http://www.aarp.org/community/’>video codes</a> at <a style=’font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;color:#0066CC’ href=’http://www.aarp.org/community’>AARP.org</a>.

Things are still pretty rough around here, around this text in fact. But this web site is going to kick some serious butt, by the time we are done with it!

As someone once said: "Design is the art of gradually applying constraints until only one solution remains." There are lots of constrains when building an application. Both social networking application and the content management system are still clunky and hard to control. We’re finding that some of these limitations are helping us zero in on the design faster. What remains are the details. To quote Charles Eames : "The details are not the details. They make the design." And that’s where we are now.

This site’s usability is still improving on many levels; from better flow of content to clear navigation. We need to address many inconsistencies. The toughest part of all this is the gradual, iterative nature of this process. It’s hard enough to execute a design vision, but try keeping to the task at hand while the target design keeps moving. No doubt, this is much more frustrating to the developers then to the design team. But its also the exciting part of this approach. It’s not too often we get chance to work with an evolutionary product which will have much higher impact then the usual deliver-and-walk-away method that is so typical in the agency world.

What will hopefully keep the team going is both the negative (yet constructive) feedback on what we’re doing wrong and the support of those in the community who have been waiting for improvements like the ones we are making. Here is bigtoe6565 <a href="http://community.aarp.org/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=6&nav=messages&webtag=rp-computers&tid=11329">sharing the love</a>.

And that’s today’s rant, onto another meeting...

Let me create an aura of greatness by talking about my self in third person...

Faz was born. Then he grew up rather fast. In fact, he often wishes he was 5 again and could say dumb things which adults would pass up as cute and mildly funny.

At the ripe age of 12ish, he switched countries and language and a few other things including his shorts. Because puberty alone is not enough of a culture shock, he took on the name Faz — his real name being Farzad, which you shouldn’t try with out a pronunciation guide. Neither did his 7th grade classmates who enjoyed watching re-runs of Happy Days after school. Slightly shorter then the Fonz at the time, it seemed fitting to subtract a letter and call him Faz... and so it was.

A few milestones later, Faz found himself in college where he learned he was not really interested in mechanical engineering after all. With much consideration, and against his initial distaste for trendy black-rimmed eye-wear, he joined the creative class and got himself a degree in graphic/advertising design. The slash advertising part remains somewhat of a mystery to this day.

He began his career in less-then-common design arrangements. Working in newspaper production, preparing research presentations or designing something called the Wallboard™. He eventually gave in to the black t-shirt wearing crowd and worked for a more traditional design shop. — the attempt at humor in this write up is beginning to get a little less funny... but stay with me...

After starting his career designing for print, Faz began designing for the function driven online medium. Today, he enjoys the challenge of blending form and function to build an engaging experience and designing user interfaces. Throughout his design career he has worked for AOL, US Airways, Terrapin Systems, USWeb/CKS, Low + Associates Inc., Snyder Communication Inc. and Maryland Media Inc. Although he has returned to his roots, away from the design clichés, he still does drop names here and there.

Always keepin’ it real, he stays in touch with the current trends through vigilant observation of what everybody else is doing. This is almost a freakish obsession with him. Hearing him geek-out about the interaction of some random gadget is not uncommon.

To keep up with the youths, he instructs classes about subjects others seem to think he knows something about. Although the validity of this has not yet been fully proven.

Faz’s journey thru life takes him beyond the confines of the District. From diving out of a perfectly functional airplane (which happened), to a Futaleufu River whitewater adventure (not yet happened), to drunken political conversations with the locals in Galway (happened) or a 6 month tour of the pacific rim (only in his dreams!) ... adventures seem easy to find when he finally pulls away from the computer. Faz hopes to find himself on exotic trips, and away from the screen, more often.

Above was inspired by true events. No animals were injured during the testing of the humor. This however does not guarantee your satisfaction. And for that, we apologize.