Carsonified

We’re a privately held company based in the United Kingdom, in a beautiful town called Bath. We offer world-class events for the web industry based on our experience of building successful web apps, and our relationships with the industry’s most talented and exciting people.

Established in April 2005 by husband and wife, Ryan and Gill Carson, the company’s first product was web application DropSend. This was soon followed by the first of what was to become a successful series of web design and development workshops, delivered by the best in the industry - including Eric Meyer (CSS guru), Cal Henderson (Flickr Developer), Dan Cederholm (designer extraordinare) and many more.

Now Carsonified hosts a range of events, including leading web 2.0 conference the Future of Web Apps - which takes place each year in London (October) and Miami (February) - aimed at developers, entrepreneurs and anyone interested in how cutting edge technologies are changing the face of the web and business.

Future of Web Design (FOWD) is the leading event for web designers who want to stay up to date with the latest trends and techniques. It takes place annually in London (April) and New York (November).

Future of Mobile (FOWD) is a one-day event that delivers the latest thinking on the mobile web. Covering everything from the iPhone to Google Android, it takes place in London in November.

We continue to run smaller, more intimate workshops in London, the US and in our new Bath office - recently Start-Up Clinic, which provided an A-Z of how to build a small web-based business.

The latest event added to the Carsonified stable is Fuel, an affordable one-day event that focuses on powering your business with the best web technologies. Featuring speakers from forward-thinking, successful web companies, the first Fuel event takes place on June 13 in London. Tickets will be limited to just 250.

When we have the time, Carsonified likes to experiment with one-off, ad hoc projects. In December 07 the whole company took the week off from our laptops to conceive, plan and launch a brand new project - hugmymac.com - in which we all got busy with needle and thread to make limited edition covers for MacBookPros and iPhone.

We also initiated the Web App Charts - an industry poll to find out the web applications people were most passionate about. Find out the results at www.webappcharts.com

What’s next? Well, we also run Vitamin, an online resource for the design and development community. We publish weekly articles on the latest web themes, written by the biggest and best names in the business. In summer 2008 the site is going to have a massive overhaul. Sign up to the Carsonified newsletter to be kept up to date on this, and all our activities!.

The Team

• Joanne Andrews Queen of FOWA

  I have been a part of the Carsonified gang since May 07 and have been working in event management for 6 years. They are all getting to know my habits, which I have been told include humming tunelessly along to any song that’s playing and constantly complaining that I’m hungry. If you have seen the FOWD blog then you will notice that i get a bit carried away with exclamation marks after every sentence which is terrible grammar for an English graduate! I think it makes everything i say look really important!! :)

  I recently moved from our web design events to manage Future of Web Apps. My aim is to produce the best web application events in the industry - and to see as much of the world as I can before I get too old to get on a plane!

• Gillian Carson Co-Founder

  Gillian’s background is in the technology publishing industry where she worked for eight years. During that time she edited prominent UK web design magazine Create Online and global graphic design magazine Computer Arts.

• Ryan Carson Co-Founder

  Ryan is an entrepreneur and web advocate who has built two successful web applications; DropSend and Amigo. He also runs web events and workshops, worldwide, that inspire web designers and developers to build their own web applications.

• Will Filby Fisherman

  Will has over 10 years experience in building partnerships across the events industry, holding key Account roles at Newsquest Financial Media, Centaur and most recently with Gartner. If you are interested in sponsoring any of our events, he’s your man.

• Natasha Higgins Office Boss

  Natasha brings much needed order and sanity to the office. If you call us (+44 1225 324 980) she’ll be the happy voice that greets you. She’s also teaming up with Lisa to curate the Carsonified community and help with our events.

• Greg Ingham Chairman

  Greg began as a journalist in the early 80s. He launched trade paper CTW as Editor and then moved to Future Publishing as Publisher in 1988, becoming MD in 1993 and CEO in 1998. Future floated in June 1999. By the time he left in June 2006, the company had grown from 30-odd people and £2m sales to 1,600 and £225m. Ingham is chair of Eurogamer, the DTI Games Forum, a Trustee of the games industry charity ESC, chair of the Theatre Royal Bath and a non-exec of Bright Things plc. He is also chief executive of MediaClash - a diverse Bath-based media business which he jointly owns and runs with his wife, Jane Ingham. You can read more about MediaClash at mediaclash.co.uk

• Mel Kirk Community Manager

  Mel Kirk has been a Carsonite for a year and a half. Mel started her life as a child, during which time she managed to swallow a marble. As a fully grown human, she stopped swallowing marbles, started playing with web apps and bossing people around (in a friendly manner) to pull together FOWA. Recently Mel moved to her new role as Carsonified Community Manager.

• Mike Kus Senior Designer

  Mike joined Carsonified in May 2008 after working as a freelance designer in both web and print for a number of years. Beautifully designed websites are of the utmost importance to Carsonified and we look forward to Mike adding his expertise and creativity to the mix. You can see more of Mike’s work on his personal website The Things We Make.

• Lisa Price Vitamin Head Honcho

  Formerly editor of best-selling monthly web magazine .net, Lisa has worked in technology media for the last 8 years. She is leading the charge at our exciting site, Vitamin

• Tricia Wilks Bean Counter

  Tricia takes care of all bookkeeping, payments and accounting matters. She is in the office on Monday and Wednesday.

• Keir Whitaker Carson Workshops and FOM Head Honcho

  Keir is in charge of organising Carson Workshops and the Future of Mobile.
  Keir started his career as an IT support technician in an East London NHS organisation and progressed to the position of Web Services Manager for a large NHS Trust. He was instrumental in developing a secure intranet still in use today with over 2000 users.

  After leaving the NHS he freelanced as a PHP and Microsoft .Net programmer for over three years and worked on software projects for a wide range of clients from individuals to large corporate companies. He joined Carsonified in February 2008 and is passionate about web technologies and can often be found tinkering with APIs.