www.nickhodge.com

Bar­Camp Sydney is on again. This is our 5^th Bar­Camp Sydney and as we are in the midst of the GFC and a reces­sion we’ve decided that this Bar­Camp is the Reces­sion Edi­tion or “the Bar­Camp we had to have” (to para­phrase Keat­ing from 1990). 

In keep­ing with the Reces­sion theme of Bar­Camp there are a few changes to this year’s Bar­Camp. Firstly a new venue, whilst we loved UNSW it was quite expens­ive. Thank­fully the Aus­tralian Tech­no­logy Park (ATP) Innov­a­tions Centre is giv­ing us access to the space for free! Yay!

Secondly, we need to spread the load of the cost of run­ning Bar­Camp across more people so we are ask­ing for indi­vidual spon­sor­ship as well as our tra­di­tional cor­por­ate spon­sor­ship. So what do you get for your indi­vidual spon­sor­ship? Noth­ing really, just the warm fuzzy feel­ing that you get from help­ing run this fant­astic com­munity event. Hope­fully there will still be T-Shirts but that will depend on how much money we raise in spon­sor­ship. How­ever, if you are a cor­por­ate and would like to spon­sor the event please con­tact us ASAP.

Finally, we have a new idea for a few of the ses­sions — the Think Tank room. The Think Tank room is a small room with no pro­jector and no tech — just enough room for a small group of people dis­cuss­ing ideas. And what bet­ter ideas to dis­cuss than ideas about the future. As a res­ult of the recent Future­Sum­mit atten­ded by a few of the local twit­ter­ati, @liubinskas has sug­ges­ted we keep the ideas com­ing with a Future­Camp! There will be a real Future­Camp later in the year but we can start the future dis­cus­sion right here at Bar­Camp Sydney.

There will be more details forth­com­ing about the venue, the logist­ics and how you can register and spon­sor, but for right now please block out Sat­urday June 27 for Bar­Camp Sydney and put your think­ing hats on to present a rip­per of a session.

Keep up to date at the Bar­CampSydney Blog or this email list.

Thanks to Jodie Miners for driv­ing this Bar­camp. Com­munity is fun

We will be there.

Will you?

15^th Novem­ber 2008. Sydney, Aus­tralia.

Five things I saw today that I liked:

1. Mark Pesce’s Python BlueS­can­ner
   
   
2. Liam and Alex’s Present­a­tion on Lua in Garry’s Mod (hence missed Anna Liu’s present­a­tion)
   
   
3. http://goodbarry.com/  We’re going to see more of this little applic­a­tion.
4. The expert­ise of those who have gone down the VC path: the depth of shar­ing was great
5. LOLCODE in UR BarCampSydney2 (at the end of the day to liven up the day)
   

The num­ber of ses­sions seemed a little less geeky this time; and being on the “wrong” side of the UTS build­ing stopped people con­greg­at­ing around the lounges. Lounges and wire­less are good for con­ver­sa­tion. Well un-organised again.

The deep con­ver­sa­tion around Ven­ture Cap­ital, Star­tups etc were eye open­ing — and con­nec­ted some of the stuff on online advert­ising I learnt at the Award­Craft ses­sion at DDB yesterday.

Eye­balls, eye­balls, eye­balls. Know your mon­et­isa­tion strategy. Get­ting com­munit­ies (demo­graph­ics are dead) to your site and know­ing who they are and what they are inter­ested in is the thing.

On the money-side, the eco­nomy around online ads are massive. As fin­an­cial industry ads have made a sig­ni­fic­ant % of this sec­tor, it is going to be inter­est­ing to see the impact on this side of the busi­ness over the next 6 months as the credit crunch hits the US markets.

What a geek week. Face to Face present­a­tions to 120 people, focus­ing on this new world of “online”. Some­where around 6,700+ views of http://thegeekstories.com/ videos.

Ran into some old Apple friends (hi Tom!) and shared the joys of Frank­arr mov­ing into the US.

Tim, an old friend whom I owe much, a key share­holder in Next­Byte sold out to FoneZone. Con­grat­u­la­tions, and enjoy the rest, Tim. I am jeal­ous! Tim, an occa­sional com­menter here will now have time to become a real geek.

Telstra’s Geor­gia Lee says To grow a small busi­ness, it helps to be a Geek. In fact, Geor­gia is look­ing for Geek Stor­ies. Been there, doing that Geor­gia. Call me. We’ll do lunch.

Politi­cians just don’t get Wiki­pe­dia, and the trace­ab­il­ity of edit­ing on the inter­net — where people no know if you are a dog. Of course the PM doesn’t need to ask our pub­lic ser­vants from edit­ing Wikipedia.

Cleaned up some slack paper­work­ing on my behalf; and have some more to get through (I owe some people prizes: wait­ing on them to come in so I can send them out!). Paper­work has never, and will never be, my strong point.

Ques­tions from the week I am going to let settle in my brain, and answer next week. Tomor­row: BarCampSydney2. No videos, no laptop. Just pop­ping in with Liam to soak up the geek world.

One day, Liam will cre­ate his own geek empire. And he’ll sell it. And I can then retire. And join Tim.

Tan­gler and Cylo: Aus­tralian tech­no­logy com­pan­ies go large at BarCampSydney.

Joel Pobar: I have this quiet pas­sion for dynamic lan­guages. Meet­ing Joel Pobar made me real­ise how little I know. There is another, longer story here. Watch this space! 

Video, http://www.on10.net/Blogs/nhodge/the-geek-stories-barcampsydney/

Behind-the-Scenes: http://www.on10.net/Blogs/nhodge/the-geek-stories-behind-the-scenes-of-barcampsydney/

Thanks to Liam for his help on Sat­urday.

Not all the video I cap­tured today will be used On10.net

So, rather than dis­card the bits: I’ve uploaded them to YouTube.

Fol­low the tag “Bar­CampSydney” or just look at this playlist.

My favour­ite: Geeks in Star­tups are Hot

fixed playl­ist URL, thanks mountainash

OK, this a little cheeky. I never got the “pro­gram­ming in XML” thing of Cold­fu­sion. Give me PHP any­day. Photo from Barcampsydney

Flickr feed of images.

This weekend’s fun: Bar­Camp Sydney

In the UK they may trans­late this to Pub­camp — but that would be the com­pletely wrong interpretation.

Liam is com­ing along too — so you will see us with the new video cam­era (named Flash­heart) in hand get­ting geek stor­ies from participants.