At first, I wanted to expand each of the below points but once I came back and re-read them I liked the succinctness of it all.

I have a few more post-FOWA projects in the works and hope to have those posted by 3/20/09.

For those who don't know, FOWA stands for Future Of Web Apps. You can see more about these events at Carsonified.com's FOWA section. Now without further aideu, the top 10 things I picked up at FOWA Miami '09.

1. Your content should not be an afterthought

2. Do not blindly equate time with value

   • 2 weeks of intern work generated enough (~$1 million) to pay for the entire intern program at Fog Creek Software
   • There is a 10 to 1 productivity ratio between good programmers and the suck

3. Schedule meetings after/during lunch

   • Make them fast
   • Try to remember the last meeting that you got something done that couldn't have been done in an email or through another communication channel
   • The reason people are shocked when they leave a productive meetings is because it is not the norm

4. The browser is about to become our biggest friend

   • Canvas
   • Fast Javascript

5. Orient everything around talent

6. Have a corporate blog

   • Be as open as possible
     1. People are less and less trusting of any other communication
     2. They can now, more than ever, smell the BS
   • See blog.digg.com for a good example

7. Ignore the competition

   • Focus on the customer instead
   • I've heard this point time and time again
   • Chasing your competitors doesn't add much value to your customers.

8. Stop glorifying failure

   1. It seems only in tech and startups that failure is looked at with smiles
   2. Stop doing it. No one else does and for good reason

9. Find the by products of your product

   • Oil's byproduct is gas, rubber
   • Software's is wisdom/information, use that

10. People don't mind paying for great products

    • There are different consumers
    • People will pay if the product delivers