Christo v2

I attended the first Facebook Developers Garage at the River Club Golf and Conference Centre (Liesbeek Parkway, Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa) last night. And I must admit that it was a very interesting event.

Let me see. The speakers were: Joey da Silva (moodia), Trever Kinnear (moodia), Grant Flemming (Fontera), Eben de Wit (Microsoft), Ernst Kuschke (24.com), Dave Morin (Facebook), Christine da Silva (AlterSage), Riaan Nolan (3am.co.za) and Mark Levitt (Chesscube.com). Hope I didn't leave anyone out.

Personally I thought the format of the event was excellent. Each presenter had about 10 minutes to talk about a specific topic related to Facebook software development. Some of the presenters used more time, but I didn't feel that any of them did not deserve the time they used.

Topics presented ranged from Facebook usage statistics, Microsoft's involvement with Facebook, marketing, development tips, development obstacles and a live Q&A video conference with Dave Morin, Facebook Senior Platform Manager (left his post of Manager, Creation & Collaboration at Apple).

I have a Facebook application development idea or two, that I've discussed with Hannes, so I'll post about those at a later stage. Something I found interesting is that South Africa has the 6th largest user population of Facebook. Something to think about!

All in all, I really enjoyed the event and will definitely attend the next one - if organized as well as this one. And thanks to the organizers for my (slightly too big) Facebook shirt. It looks cool. :)