This year’s FOWA rocked! Here are just a few thoughts on the most memorable speakers.

Kevin Rose of Digg is a very pretty boy. If only his FOWA presentation was as good as his looks. Unfortunately, no. Felt rather deflated. I had more fun listening to Edwin Aoki of AOL. Me, I like being entertained.

Or educated; which is probably why my new hero is Kathy Sierra of JavaRanch. I’ve seen her name on a few Java books that are cluttering my flat, but not until FOWA had I any idea what a brilliant speaker she is. Kathy’s ‘I kick ass’ metaphor for keeping users engaged is certainly something else. Perhaps next year, she will get a two-hour slot.

Ceiling Cat only knows what Mark Zuckerberg was thinking when he left his hotel room for the fireside chat at FOWA. Perhaps: ‘this black North Face fleece will keep me nicely warm on the stage’. There was a lot ‘sharing’ talk yet general reluctance to say anything meaningful. Ryan Carson of Carsonified refrained from throwing any curve balls, but all we heard back was ‘blah, blah, blah’. It’s a shame that Facebook’s PR people forgot to brief Zuckerberg to pack a bit of humour and personality for his London trip.

And humour is what Ben Huh of icanhascheezeburger.com is all about. Not only he gives me 5 minutes of happiness every day, but also just like Paul Newman, he must’ve had his ego surgically removed. By the time I bumped into him on the show floor, he’s already lost his voice. The previous night, he held a meet-up for all LOLcats lovers, expected 30 people, 300 showed up. It was a pretty big bar tab, he said.

About Andy McLoughlin of Huddle.net - I’m going to cover this extensively for the Huddle blog, but just a few words: absolutely, fucking awesome. I felt inspired.