The Future of Web Apps conference in London heads to what I think is a natural home for the event next week: the area around the Shoreditch area of London where so many tech companies are now located. And not just UK tech companies. I’m observing plenty of startups from continental Europe now either looking at, or actually locating themselves in this area because of the natural tech cluster and the UK’s business-friendly jurisdiction.
The reason I want to point this out is that clustering is really coming together in London. Tech companies have realised that the kind of innovation that happened in Silicon Valley came not from everyone going to events but from just hanging out in the same places and throwing around ideas, going for coffee, chatting over lunch. Don’t get me wrong, I think events have their place, and at TechCrunch we certainly like putting them on and bringing the community together, and so does FOWA founder Ryan Carson. But it’s great to see FOWA head to a natural place for its audience.
Looking at the roster of speakers, it’s looking pretty awesome. Naveed Anwar of PayPal, Eileen Burbidge of White Bear Yard, Anthony Casalena of Squarespace, Sebastien de Halleux of Playfish, Nick Halstead of TweetMeme, Cal Henderson (iamcal), Hilary Mason of bit.ly, Andy McLoughlin of Huddle, David Recordon of Facebook and many many others. I look forward to seing people there, and you can get tickets here.