02.13.08
FB Developer Garage Cape Town 2 Rocked
Last night was the sequel to the first FB Developer Garage Cape Town that was held in October 2007.
This event was driven by FormFunction a recently launched digital consultancy already making great headway in the Social Media App sphere in South Africa.
Held at the Leslie Social Sciences Building at the UCT Upper Campus, it proved a really nice location and served the purpose for this event. Smooth registration, great FB swag, sponsored drinks from Joyent, food supplied by Butlers and of course a t-shirt to all attendees proved ingredients for a great evening.
In general the event was really well put together and everything turned out great despite the last minute drop-off by two of the night’s speakers . The turn-out compared to the first event was a bit lower. There was a confirmation total of just under 90 guests and by my last count it was around 40 people that were at the event. However the people that were there, were definitely there for networking, finding new business and learning new tips and tricks from other developers. It was great to see all the networking going on, which really does make one feel that you belong to a little community.
The format: This time there were 8 speakers in total (of which 2 unfortunately dropped out last minute) and each had about 20 minutes to present their topic. 4 speakers pre-break and 4 speakers post, thereafter a communal Q&A to speakers.
The speakers on the night: Chris Mills: MC - FormFunction, Christine da Silva: Importance of Usability of Facebook Applications - AlterSage, Tim Lambrechts: The process of managing a Facebook Application client - WiredCommunications, Joey da Silva: Developer Tips for Managing client expectations - FormFunction, Jacques Marneweck: Introduction to Memcache - PowerTrip, Steven Bayhack & Grant Fleming: Facebook Application Monetization - TextStream.
The topics were really well presented, and compared to the last one you can see that a lot more time had been spent around the platform and getting to know the tricks of the trade. The Q&A session also really drilled down to the nitty-gritty, with questions ranging from the sustainability of applications to initial launch and buy-in and a few questions about information scraping and security.
It was really enjoyable and we look forward to the next one, which I believe will be closer to September, so keep watching the CT Dev group on FB.
As per the last event, I’m sure that FormFunction will make the presentations available to all those interested. I’m sure all attendees will be duly notified via the FB group.
Well done again! Looking forward to the next one!