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.