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BarCampMadison4: Time Lapse Video

Time Lapse Bot was at BarCampMadison4 (aka MadCamp) on August 27, 2011, and I forgot to put this together until this week. You may notice I used the same music as last time. Well, so goes it. Enjoy the video!

This video is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License. The music titled “Freedom (Techno Plano Mix) ” is from Gurdonark via ccMixter and has a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License. You can also find this video at Vimeo… Enjoy!

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Semantic Web

BarCampMadison This is a session by Dustin Cote from MadCamp (aka BarCampMadison the 4th) titled “Semantic Web / Web 3.0”

Dustin mentioned that you can see the Semantic Web Meetup site for the slides.

You can also download an MP3 file if you’d like. (And for our freedom loving friends, enjoy an Ogg file.)

Also, if you want to get all of the audio automagically downloaded podcasting style, subscribe to the feed.

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MadCamp ReCap: Sessions

Duct Tape Crafts

(This post is Part 2 of my MadCamp ReCap. See the first post as well. In this one I’ll cover all of the sessions I attended)

How to make duct tape crafts
The first session I attended was led by Quinn, the 9 year old daughter of Andy Lester. She showed us how to make a pen and some duct tape into a flower. So in a room of 9 adults, none of us could make one as awesome as hers. This was a fun session, and would be perfect for KidsCamp at BarCampMilwaukee6.

Egg-Bot
Photo by tronathan

Introduction to the Egg-Bot
Hmmm, I don’t know that I can review this session, as I was the one who led it. I basically gave an Egg-Bot demo, and talked about what it does, and what I’ve learned, and showed some designs I’ve printed, and I threw some eggs. I then attempted to print a Bendyworks logo, and an Athmapolis logo. I guess this session went well, people seemed interested, but hey, who doesn’t love an Egg-Bot!?

Jason asks... What's Next?

How I made a CNC laser with junk from the basement
I got to know Jason earlier this year, and he may be Beaver Dam’s most prolific maker. (But hey, it’s Beaver Dam.) Anyway, I think I helped convince him to attend, and even lead a session at his first BarCamp. He walked us through building a CNC laser device out of scrap (mostly old CD/DVD drives) and some parts that had to be bought. Great session! I love hearing makers talk about their projects.

Greg Tracy

Twilio Magic – building phone apps with a simple web service API
I actually only attended a few minutes of this session, which almost didn’t happen until I pointed out to Greg that the flyer mentioned a Twilio session. Well, I caught some crap from Greg because I cut out of this session to hit up the Hackerspaces talk going on 10 feet behind me. (To be fair, I finally got around to digging into Twilio the day after MadCamp, and I’ve already written some fun sample code.) Anyway, I’m familiar with Greg’s Twilio projects, and we even used one during the day, the MadCamp Notifier. (Note that the photo above is not from MadCamp, but a photo I took of Greg at BarCampMilwaukee5 last year.)

Chris from Sector67

An Introduction to Hackerspaces, Makerspaces, and Coworking
This one was interesting. It was so interesting I left the Twilio session (sorry Greg!) because I was pulled in by what I was hearing. My disclaimer: I’m a member of Milwaukee Makerspace, but I am not an officer, or a founder, or in charge of anything. Anyway, the Sector67 guys led this, and talked about how they run their space. I brought up a few points about how Milwaukee Makerspace does things (or at least how I understand they are done) and I sort of felt like there was a little tension about the differences between how the two places operate. In talking to other later, people were not surprised, stating that almost every space will operate differently, and often one space will thing they are doing it exactly the right way. :) I’m really hoping that at BarCampMilwaukee6 we can have a talk with people from Milwaukee Makerspace, Sector67, Pumping Station: One, and Twin Cities Maker, since all groups will have people present. I should probably propose this to all of those folks. It could be a great learning experience.

Joe from Sector67

Introduction to 3D Printing (MakerBot/RepRap)
This one was simply awesome. I’ve been in love with the MakerBot for some time now, and wanted more info. Joe from Sector67 gave a great overview of 3D printing, and also talked about (and had present) a RepRap machine. We saw a bunch of samples that had been printed, and at some point Chris did get the MakerBot talking to the laptop he had and we got some printing done. It sounds like Joe and at least one printer might also make it to BarCampMilwaukee6 as well, so get ready for more 3D printing fun.

DSC_4760
Photo by Clint Thayer

Lightning Talks
The Lightning Talks, just like last year, were a lot of fun. I just wish more people would do it! I think if you didn’t lead a session, you should jump at the chance to do a Lightning Talk. If they didn’t stop me, I’d probably do 5 of them. Seriously. It’s just 5 minutes, talk on any subject, I tend to go pretty fast, so I hope it’s not boring. (I did the Time Lapse Bot again, and showed the raw footage from earlier in the day.) I have some favorites, but I also have an audio recording of them all to publish, so I’ll wait until I do that before I get into those…

So that was MadCamp (aka BarCampMadison the 4th.) I enjoyed it, and I await the next one. In the meantime, BarCampMilwaukee6 is coming up soooooon.

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MadCamp ReCap

BarCampMadison

MadCamp (BarCampMadison the 4th) happened on August 27th, 2011 and this is my review…

First off, I will shout out a big thanks to Greg Tracy, Phillip Crawford, Steve Faulkner, and anyone else who helped organize the event and made it happen.

The Name:
Now, you’ll see me using things like “MadCamp” and “BarCampMadison the 4th” but they are the same thing. At some point there was talk about changing the name from the nerdy “BarCamp” to the less-nerdy “MadCamp” but I don’t think the transition was ever 100% complete. barcampmadison.org is the domain, and that’s what the logo says, but MadCamp is what it was called. (I wouldn’t even bring this up, except to avoid confusion, and the fact that I work in the branding industry. But what’s in a name, eh?)

MadCamp Lobby

The Venue:
Urban Land Interests provided space in the US Bank Building right on the Capitol Square in Madison. It’s easy to get to, you can park around the corner all day for $3, and there’s an amazing view of the Capital. That’s the good stuff… the not as good stuff is that the sessions were spread out among 3 floors. The ground floor lobby served as the common area, with 2 session rooms, and there were 2 more session rooms on the 8th floor (in the Murfie office) and 2 more on the 9th floor (which was the main area for BarCampMadison3.) But hey, thanks to Twilio and Greg’s MadCamp Notifier, there was a bit of assistance with session notification.

My Junk:
As usual, I brought too much crap, including The Photo Booth (photos are here) and the latest revision of the Time Lapse Bot (video to come) and I brought A/V equipment, much of which failed during the event. Still, I managed to record a few sessions.

The Intros:
For each BarCampMilwaukee, we’ve always had Introductions, where each person says who they are, what they are interested in, etc. Last year we gave people about 20 seconds to do their intro, and timed it. (You can watch it here, btw.) For MadCamp, there were no intros. but instead they created a Camper Wall, which worked like this: When you registered, you got your photo taken, which was then printed on a photo printer, and then attached to a printout on the wall with your info. It was cool to be able to browse the wall and see the people there, and be able to find them easily. Using a photo from that day was brilliant. I love avatars and 5 year old head-shots as much as the next geek, but seeing a recent (that day!) photo on the wall made it easy to identify people. Still, I really am a fan of having everyone introduce themselves.

In Part 2 you can read about the sessions I attended: MadCamp ReCap: Sessions.

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Audio Channel

Functional Programming

BarCampMadison This is a session by Dan from MadCamp (aka BarCampMadison the 4th) titled “Functional Programming: Why Should You Care?”

You can also download an MP3 file if you’d like. (And for our freedom loving friends, enjoy an Ogg file.)

Also, if you want to get all of the audio automagically downloaded podcasting style, subscribe to the feed.