You’ve no doubt heard of The Future of Web Apps conference put on in London (and now other parts of the world) by UK entrepreneur / geek Ryan Carson (pictured) of Carsonified . I’d argue that it was his first FOWA London conference in the UK in early 2005 which helped kick-start the Web 2.0 movement here. Well, a US firm called WebGuild has decided they quite like the FOWA brand name, and literally copied it . TechCrunch.com has the scoop on the story, where WebGuild seems to be using some very questionable promotion tactics, though they deny this. Carson himself has responded saying: “I don’t have any problems with people launching events that compete with ours – that would be ridiculous. What bothered me was the fact they were using the *exact* name of our conference. Of course we’re not going to try to trademark ‘The Future of’ but in such a small niche as ‘web apps’, it’s underhanded for these guys to be using our exact conference name.”
So there you have it. If someone tries to sell you a FOWA ticket in the US this year, check it’s from the Carsonified guys, not WebGuild.
