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BarCamp Planning

I am writing this post because I promised I would, and dammit, I keep my word!

But seriously, go read what Crystal has to say in her post: Ten Steps to Organizing a BarCamp. Below are just my own notes from helping to organize BarCampMilwaukee2. (Please note I said helping to organizing. It’s definitely a team effort, and none of us could have done it alone, so build a good team!)

We found a mailing list essential. This was the way ideas got out there and discussed. We wanted to keep things in the open, so almost all conversation through email was public, and anyone could join the list. If someone had something to offer, we wanted them to be able to without feeling like they had to join some secret club.

We met in person a number of times. Typically we’d do in-person discussions and try to make decisions. Again, these meeting were public and announced on the mailing list. Afterwards, we posted the results to the mailing list and web site for people to comment on. Through this process we hoped no one was feeling left out due to missing meetings. We felt that if you made the effort to make your voice be heard, someone would listen.

We had a great core group for BarCampMilwaukee2, so tasks got broken up pretty well. Shirt art and ordering, table-renting, projector-finding, mailing list managing, web site building, food/beverage shopping, meal planning, sponsor-wrangling, money co-ordinating… Luckily no single person got stuck doing all of those things. In some cases people did more than one task, but they usually had help, or backup as well.

Community building is a big part of BarCamp, and we definitely did that this time around, through the process of planning, as well as the event itself. Personally, this is one of the main reasons I am involved with BarCamp, to build community, meet new people, make connections – even if they are not directly involving me – I find it amazing that Person X and Person Y, whom I both knew prior to BarCamp, now seem to be great friends and hang out together, that’s the coolest part. Robots and promoting technology are cool, but for me it’s all about community.

A big thanks goes out to our sponsors and participants, we’ll see you again in the Fall of 2008.

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Asus Eee PC… Tomorrow?

Ok, if the local Best Buy has an Asus Eee PC tomorrow, I’ll get one. I’ve done a whole lot of reading this week, and for the price, and what you get, it’s a good match for what I need.

As I mentioned, I want a very portable device, that does not cost too much, and lets me connect to the net and do basic things. Even if I pay $400 for an Eee PC, a new MacBook would cost more than twice that, be more than twice as heavy, and probably break. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iMac, and all the other Macs around me, but I’m comfortable with Linux, and a portable internet appliance is just what I need. If Apple could make an under $500 small laptop (think Mac-mini + iBook) they’d probably sell a zillion of them, but until then, Asus is the one to watch.

Still, there are questions… If the system gets mucked-up, can you do a reinstall? Can it do it over the net somehow? Does it come with install disks? It has no optical drive, so would you need a USB optical drive? Could you backup the entire system to a USB device or SD card for re-install? What can you install on the Eee PC? On the internal storage versus an SD card or USB stick? Apache? MySQL? PHP? Is gcc on there? Can you easily add it? Many of these questions don’t have answers yet, but might in the next week or so.

I ended up calling Best Buy yesterday and asking about the Eee PC, and they suggested calling back on the 1st or 2nd, since Thursday and Friday are when new shipments come in. I’d prefer to just go buy one rather than order online, but if that’s not an option (I’ve read somewhere that Best Buy may not be selling them now?) I’ll figure something else out…


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Hot Water

It’s been a while since I recorded. This one is called “Hot Water” and has a guitary intro and extro. You should be able to hear it right on this page, using the embedded player below.

You can grab it from Ourmedia or the Internet Archive, and it’s got a Creative Commons Attribution License. (If you need something else, get in touch with me.)


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Asus Eee PC

I’m interested in the Asus Eee PC. Very interested. In fact, if I can get one before the end of the year for around $300, I probably will.

Since the iBook died, and the Wallstreet is pretty much useless, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like (and what I need) in a mobile computing device. Since I manage servers, and really need to access the net at various unknown times, and on occasion need something to take with me, I first looked at the Nokia 770. I saw this device when it was released, but didn’t really look too closely because of the price. Once the N800 came out, the 770 dropped in price and I looked a bit more closely. Technology moves fast, so when the N810 came out, the price on the N800 dropped and I considered that over the 770. I still think they are great devices, and I’m a big Nokia fan, but I’m not sure any of these would suit my needs.

Asus Eee PC

At BarCampMilwaukee2 I had heard Matt and Blake talk about the Asus Eee PC. Once I looked at it, it looked sweet! Since Matt and I are both victims of Apple lack of quality in building laptops that last, it seems we are both looking at the Eee PC as a small, cheap alternative to a traditional laptop.

Yes, I did say cheap. While I’d love a MacBook or MacBook Pro, I cannot easily justify the cost. I work on desktop machines most of the time, probably 95% of the time, but for that 5% where I would really like to be mobile, I can justify $200-$500. That amount won’t even get a used/reliable Mac laptop.

I’m still waiting for reviews to roll in, but so far, things are looking good. This may be the first new non-Apple computer I’ve bought in the last 10 years or so.


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BarCampMilwaukee2: Success!

Well, somehow we pulled off another BarCamp in Milwaukee, and now BarCampMilwaukee2 is over.

A huge thanks goes out to the people and the sponsors who made it happen, without them, there would have been no BarCampMilwaukee2. Will we do it again? Oh yes… In fact, we had a session yesterday for the planning of BarCampMadison2, and if all goes well, that will happen in the Spring of 2008. There was a guy there from Green Bay who is also interested in doing one up there. We are also (tentatively) planning a DrupalCamp for January of 2008. It would be a much smaller and focused one day event. We’re pretty sure we can do this at a relatively low cost, and if it works, we can look at doing other *Camps. I tossed out the idea of KidCamp and at least a few people liked the sound of that. (The idea being, kids are often more creative than adults so so what can we learn from them?)

Clint, Zon, and The Illustrious Bean

All in all, it was a great time, and many new connections were made. We even launched a web site at ihatetreehouses.info (Story coming soon on that one!)

You want photos? Oh yes, Flickr has many with the tag barcampmilwaukee2. (We convinced most people to use Creative Commons licenses with their images.)

I was going to call this post “BarCampMilwaukee2 is over” but really, it’s not. There is follow-up to do and take-away to discuss. As time allows, I’ll be posting more on specific session and ideas and things that happened, so stay tuned.