A quick talk on concepts of making web applications scale - non-technical as the crowd was mixed sales and marketing

1. Scaling
ideas and
principles.
Chris&an Heilmann
Launch 48, London, England, June 2010

2. It is very easy to
build things and put
them on the web.

3. Making them work
for a lot of people is
much harder.

4. You can
however do
things to
prepare
yourself for
the future.

5. The first thing to
remember is to
delegate to experts.

8. Not a good driver.

9. If you want to scale
as a business, don’t
try to be Pinky.

10. Instead,
partner with
experts do to
expert work
for you.

11. Pick a big goal

12. And then chunk it
up into parts you
should deal with.

13. And others that are
already services you
can use instead of
re-inventing them.

14. Hosting of your
product should not
be in one spot.

15. Separate your
product interface
and the data you
provide or store.

16. And pick
specialised services
and technologies
for each of them.

17. Amazon S3/EC2
Google App Engine
Joyent
Microsoft Azure
(...)

18. If you don’t get the
base right...

19. You don’t have a
chance to look into
the distance.

20. Data is your main
product.

21. If you make it easy
for people to reach,
store and enrich
data you have a
good start.

22. Have total
separation of
information and
display.

23. This allows you to
offer information in
a format that other
people can innovate
for you.

24. It also allows you to
build in parallel and
create a great
experience for your
end users.

25. Obvious things that
will keep you from
scaling:

26. 1) Maintaining your
own technical
infrastructure.

27. 2) Building a
monolithic product
rather than a
modular system.

28. 3) Lack of resources
and manpower.

29. The third issue is
easy to solve...

30. Do not re-invent the
wheel but research
what you can use
and pick and mix.

31. http://winterolympicsmedals.com

32. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/
2010/feb/11/winter-olympics-medals-by-country

35. YQL h>p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

36. YQL h>p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/
select {what} from {where}
where {condi&ons}

37. select * from csv where url="http://
spreadsheets.google.com/pub?
key=tpWDkIZMZleQaREf493v1Jw&output=
csv" and
columns="Year,City,Sport,Discipline,Countr
y,Event, Gender,Type" and Year="1924"

38. http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns

39. http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/wireframes/

40. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/

41. http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

42. Top tip - use the
web to build for the
web.

43. Use the web as your data
source.
CMS

44. Don’t build your
own login system!

45. For extra speed and
less resource
burning tweak the
interface.

46. h>p://developer.yahoo.com/performance/

47. h>p://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

48. Don’t fall into the
personnel trap!

49. Churn of technical
staff will slow down
your product and
cost you a lot.

50. Instead of relying
on one wizard to do
all the work, build a
team.

51. This means people
can get sick, can
leave and you will
still be around.

52. And it is a lot of
free PR for your
company - happy
techies tell others
to come.

53. Christian Heilmann
http://wait-till-i.com
Thanks!
http://developer-evangelism.com
http://twitter.com/codepo8