User-centered design for the Web is just one of the tens of dozens of topics explored at this particular AJAXWorld – which in spite of its name is now as much about Rich Internet Applications and Web Development Frameworks as about merely AJAX per se. No other RIA-focused conference slices and dices the Web development and application space as boldly or as comprehensively: for 3 action-packed days the focus at The Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan will be on 16 core topics: RIAs, Enterprise Mashups, Silverlight, AIR/Flash/Flex, JavaFX, ASP.NET AJAX, Toolkits & Frameworks, Security, Reverse AJAX/AJAX Push, Social Applications, Web 2.0, Enterprise AJAX, SOA, theYahoo! Interface Library, and the iPhone.

After the resounding success of the first-ever iPhone technical sessions at AJAXWorld on the West coast in September ’07, a dedicated 2-day iPhone Developer Summit is in fact being held simultaneously with AJAXWorld in New York City – chaired by the editor-in-chief of iPhone Developer's Journal, Kevin Hoffman. Another indicator of the business and market-share power of superior user experience.

Anthony Franco, president of the aptly named EffectiveUI, sums up the inflexion point very succinctly. “Last year, the overall demand for RIAs outpaced the qualified supply chain,” he wrote in a recent article for AJAXWorld Magazine. “This trend will continue in 2008. While last year brought unprecedented growth in RIA adoption – especially by Fortune 500 companies – RIA adoption in 2008 brings a new onslaught of risks, rewards, challenges, and opportunities for companies of all sizes.”

In the end – quite aside from whether you call them RIAs or RIEs – what matters is not words or terminology but business and the realities of enterprise computing.  “RIAs are impacting the way that companies like eBay, Ford, Random House, Viacom, GE, Dow Jones, and NBC think about the Internet and desktop software, and are demonstrating how innovative thinking can completely change the way they do business,” says Franco, who joined the AJAXWorld speaker faculty this year for the first time. As president of EffectiveUI, he enjoys unique opportunities to see close-up how Fortune 500 companies are beginning to harness RIAs and leverage them to improve the user experience and boost the bottom line.