[FOWA]: Roundup Day 1

 Day 1 of FOWA conference is over. It was an interesting day which was surprisingly strenuous for not having started before 10am… :)

You can find pictures on Flickr, some videos here and there was a great abstract of today here but unfortunately it looks as if Andy somehow messed up his blog entry this evening and lost a lot of the contents.

My highlights were the (re)discovery of Cappuccino, the insight in the potential of Jabber and about scaling projects. Interestingly, the session about the funding of startups at FOWA University ((re)discovery of Cappuccino, the insight in the potential of Jabber and about scaling projects. Interestingly, the session about the funding of startups at FOWA University (PDF) which I visited in lunch break talked about exactly the same stuff as I just learned a few days ago at venturelab. Well, good to know the truth just seems to be the truth when it comes to this matter :)

Also great to watch were the five pitches of the “winners” of Techcrunch UK elevator pitch. Textbased online strategy game ERepublik convinced the jury the most and outran RaffleIt, diary.com, iPlatform, and PhoneFromHere. I liked the honest reviews of their pitches. Main factors according to the jury: show your product, don’t beat around the bush, come to the point, be short and if you can, show some success evidence (like a always rising user statistic).

Disappointments of the day: Kevin Rose wasn’t really helpful (but I heard he had a cold) and WiFi at my hotel and also at FOWA sucks. Is it so difficult to put up reliable internet connection nowadays?

Looking forward to day two! Stay tuned for some liveblogging!