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OconomoPhotoWalk

I’ve been using Flickr for a few years now, as well as publishing ocono.com but a loose binding occurred in January 2007 when the Oconomowoc Group on Flickr was born.

It took quite some time, but it looks like we’ll actually have a real life event. We’ve scheduled a photowalk for Sunday, November 18th, 2007. We plan to meet at 10AM at the gazebo on Fowler Lake, and then do a walk around the lake, taking many photos. Join us, it’ll be a fun time, and you’ll get to walk past my house. I might even tell you which one it is.

River West #1

Maybe we’ll see some photos of Oconomowoc that aren’t taken by myself or the few other members who regularly post. I’m even bringing the kids along, and each will have a camera with them to capture things from the “kid point of view.”

Gabe Wollenburg (friend of ocono.com) managed to get some press in the local papers about the event, so who knows? We might have some newcomers show up. If all goes well, we can try to do this more often, maybe every month or so, until we run out of cool places in Oconomowoc to walk around and snap pictures of. (Like that will happen!)





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DrupalCampWisconsin

Well, it’s as official as it’s gonna get… Or maybe we’ll officially announce it at this week’s Web414 Meeting, but DrupalCampWisconsin is scheduled.

DrupalCampWisconsin
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
10AM – 10PM
Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE)

DrupalCampWisconsin

There’s a page on BarCamp.org with more info: http://barcamp.org/DrupalCampWI and we’ll be adding it to a number of other sites in the coming weeks.

This is going to be much smaller than an event like BarCampMilwaukee2, since it is a 1-day event, with a specific focus, which is of course, Drupal.

If you are interested in attending, please add your name to the wiki page. If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please get in touch with me.

(Oh, the above image is only the “official” logo if no one else bothers to create one, or I get a bit more feedback on it.)




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Radio BarCamp

At BarCampMilwaukee2 we had FRS radios, and I fear we had way too much fun with them, I mean, in addition to actually using them for their intended purpose, to communicate effectively within the space we had available to us.

Last year I had thought that FRS radios would come in handy as an ad-hoc public address system. Well, we had a real PA this year, so we used the radios as needed, and for finding each other, and for screwing around. Actually, they were quite useful, as we were in a building with doors that were occasionally locked and you often needed someone to let you in, or when you just had to know where Ashe was.

Come In BarCamp

While out on the Photo Walk session (aka mil[photo]waukee) and scaling the roof of a certain fortress, we were able to alert Gabe that he should come outside and wave to us.

Hey Gabe!

Yay for radios and geeks who are nerds when it comes to using them. I even hear that Gabe plans to return my radio at the next Web414 Meeting…

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The Eee PC (and it’s friends)

I have not yet gotten an Asus Eee PC, but at this point, I still plan to. The budget for this year allows for it, but right now I’m sitting tight watching all the fun the folks who do have an Eee PC are having. I figure by the time I have one, there will be tutorials all over the web on how to tweak, customize, and hack the thing.

In other news, I saw that the Everex TC2502 Green gPC is available at Wal-Mart for $200. It runs Ubuntu, has OpenOffice, and other open source apps, as well as a focus on connecting to the net and using online apps from Google and others. See a trend here? Is the network finally the computer? Could this be the beginning of the end for Windows?

And what about those Mac people, wait… I am still one of those Mac people! I do love the user experience of using a Mac, and as a creative professional, I can’t imagine a better platform. But… From a consumer standpoint, meaning “running a machine for consuming, not creating” I’m set to go with something besides a Mac. I can’t justify the cost of a Mac laptop, but an Asus Eee PC for $400 or a Nokia N800 for $250, yeah, totally doable. I’d still push it to the limits of what the machine can do, but I wouldn’t try to complete a big client project with it.

My big fear now is that the Eee PC’s will sell out, and I’ll have to wait. As I said, I’d still really like to get one before 2008. I think it’s worth waiting a few weeks to see what happens… Will they release a new model? Will they run out? Will they appear in stores? Heck if I know…


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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.