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BarCamp ReCap at Web414

At the October 2010 Web414 Meeting we did a little BarCamp ReCap, discussing how BarCampMilwaukee5 went, and how we can make it better next time.

Here are some of my notes:

  • T-shirts: Start the process sooner… make it a design competition, get more people involved in the design process.
  • Sponsor logos should be printed and placed on the wall during the event. (Do a better job of thanking sponsors as well.)
  • Bucketworks really needs a PA system for announcements. /cc: Darrick Hartman
  • Get the coffee flowing earlier.
  • Try to have donuts, muffins, bagels… morning food for when people arrive.
  • Start BarCamp earlier.
  • End BarCamp later.
  • Hold sessions before lunch. (The intros went really fast this time, unlike other years… timed intros is the way to go!)
  • Registration/Check-in: review the process. Printed papers? Print them earlier? Electronic check-in? Self check-in?
  • Vote with fire /cc: Matt Gauger
  • Pre-printed sessions sheets.
  • Pre-printed name tags (with tags you designated on the web site.)
  • 45 minutes seemed a good length for sessions. It allows for moving between room and a little bit of spillover.
  • Lightning Talks were good… I wish more people would have participated. (Maybe we need to add alcohol like other cities do?)
  • Have tables in the open area that match session room numbers for spillover conversations. (Birds of a Feather spaces/meetings?)
  • Good recording gear in each room (audio/video) /cc: Matt Gauger and Chris Larkee
  • Technology built into each space/room to make certain things easier.
  • Move to Open Atrium for organizing. /cc: James Carlson
  • Look at other cities, Chicago, Nashville, etc.. how do they do it? How do we do it?
  • Videoconferencing station to interact with people who are not there.
  • Kitchen needs and best practices. /cc: Jen Larkee
  • Examine fuse box to determine load/wiring. /cc: Chris Larkee and Jen Larkee
  • Each session room should have a sheet of paper posted with the name of the session. This will help people who wander in late and don’t know what session is taking place.

Also, MilwaukeeDevHouse5 will be used to focus on thinking up new ways to do things better, and then making those ideas come true. Join us at Bucketworks on Friday, December 3rd, 2010, from 5pm to Midnight, and bring your ideas!

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Referring to…

Tim Bray writes about Referral Information Loss as it relates to links from Twitter clients (and in the comments, other pieces of software) and in the end says:

If someone follows a link in one of my tweets, I think whoever owns that URL is owed the information that they came from http://twitter.com/timbray.

As a person who uses the web, I don’t think Tim is “owed” that information at all. I think it’s my choice. When using a browser, I make no efforts to hide the referer when I browse the web (and there are many ways to do so, and many reasons to do so) because I tend to believe that it should be a personal choice. If you don’t want your browser to share that information, you have the power to control it.

The main issue he’s interested in, is that with Twitter clients that send a URL to a browser to display, there perhaps should be referer information, but isn’t. I agree that it would be nice to have, but it should also be controllable, the same way it is in a browser. In fact, I can see that Twitter might even find it useful (maybe even “monetizable” if that’s a word) to somehow pass on that referer info, as well as user agent, and other relevant info.

Of course Tim, much like myself, is a publisher on the web. A single person, a blogger, probably just looking for data for data’s sake. Neither of us are larger corporations looking to market to you and sell you the latest piece of crap (besides our ideas.) For me it’s more of a “wow, someone followed that link to get to my site!” rather than “wow, how can I make money off of this person who followed that link to get to my site!”

So I’m marking referer data as NICE TO HAVE but not REQUIRED.

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Skull & Crossbones (and dots!)

Skull & Crossbones (and dots!)

Oh yeah… the license…

Normally I say something like “consider it cc:by” because an Attribution license works just fine by me… but this time, I used a piece of art that was released into the Public Domain (see skull and crossbones large and the legal page for that site.)

OK, so if one piece of this total artwork is in the Public Domain, how do I license the whole piece? Can I use an Attribution license? Should I, or do I need to release it into the Public Domain? Do I use CC0? Now I need to read the CC0 FAQ…

For all the work Creative Commons has done to make licensing easier, I still think there’s a long way to go…

(Also, if you have a pile of money lying around, consider donating it to them.)

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Your HTML5 Moment of Zen

@raster: @Arlen that reminds me... we need that HTML5 missle launching application... @Arlen: @raster One issue left to solve: It launches, targets and explodes fine. But there's no Flash.

Well played sir… well played. #

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BarCampMilwaukee5 – Hacking an Audience Response System

This is the “Hacking an Audience Response System” session from BarCampMilwaukee5 which took place on October 2nd/3rd, 2010 at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Travis Goodspeed was the presenter for this session. You can find him at travisgoodspeed.blogspot.com, and on Twitter as @travisgoodspeed

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. I’ll add in more BarCamp stuff as I get it all edited and published.