RasterWeb!

What exactly qualifies someone as an “expert?”

Here are a few definitions I found:

• A person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully…
• An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge…
• One who knows no more than you about a given subject, but has their information arranged more neatly and uses slides…

Personally I like that last one. ;)

The question comes up due to BarCampMilwaukee. As I’ve been trying to get people to pick something they are passionate about, people often get excited, mention something, and then say something like “Well, I’m not the expert on that!”

But the whole point is, you are an expert at your own experiences! At one of our meetings, someone talked about learning Linux, but thought that since others knew more about Linux, that someone else should lead session. This is somewhat backwards. If this person had 1 month of experience using Linux, then that 1 month of experience is their expertise. Sure, they may not have installed Linux 100 times, but maybe someone else in the session has, and has forgotten what it is like to be a newbie, and can share what they know, and hear the frustrations of a newbie. That’s my idea anyway…

I see this happen again and again. People think they aren’t experts, but I think that’s just because of how people define what an “expert” is. The whole idea of BarCamp is that you don’t go to see some “expert” lecture for an hour, you come to share what you know, learn from others, and all walk away knowing a bit more that we did when we got there.

I found an unopened Farallon iPrint in a junkbox at the office… (It’s a LocalTalk-ethernet bridge.) I’m thinking I’ll be able to do something wacky, like put a really old Mac online. Now I just need to dig through the basement junkpile and find a pre-ethernet PowerBook and see what I can come up with.

See? I knew saving almost every Mac part I’ve come across in the last 10 years would pay off!

(Hmmm, come to think of it, I used to have a LocalTalk-ethernet bridge somewhere… I think it might be in the garage…)

Bob said something like this in an email:

At or after BarCampMilwaukee, we should plot the number of Campers registered vs time to see what the signup curve looks like.

As soon as I read this I thought – we got people coming from various parts of Wisconsin, probably some folks from Illinois, and even a bunch of hardcore geeks from Iowa – we should map this stuff out using the Yahoo! or Google maps API, and see what it looks like. But wait, we also have Scott from Iowa proposing a session called “Online Maps, Mapping Tools & Geohacking” and a Mini-Mash Pit planned. Maybe we can even combine what we learn in the Microformats and Online Photo Sharing sessions…

Revolutionary idea? Not really, just a neat idea, but it’s one of those things where you take the bits and pieces and see what a group of creative people can come up with. Bob’s comment helps illustrate what we hope to have happen at BarCampMilwaukee, smart people thrown together, and neat things happening as a result.

And then there were 50… We are up to 50 campers signed-up on the wiki page, and we’ve got 4 sponsors so far: C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions, MailLaunderer, Digital Bootcamp, and CA.

Activity has really picked up since the newspaper article hit, and we’ve got just three weeks left to finalize all plans and make BarCampMilwaukee a reality.

The Yahoo! Group has been key in planning all of this, and I’m sure many of the members look forward to finally meeting face to face at BarCamp. One of the more interesting things to come out of it, is that Saturday’s lunch will be a potluck meal, with people supplying the food. We felt this would help enhance the community aspect of the whole thing, and allow for socializing early on. It should also help keep costs down, so sponsorship isn’t as much of a concern.

We’ve come a long way since my original BarCampMilwaukee post which helped get the whole thing started. I thought for sure we’d get some folks from the Ruby and Java communites interested, but so far there has been almost no interest from them. Luckily, the Drupal community will be there, and even Jeremie Miller (of Jabber/XMPP fame) will be coming… all the way from Iowa!

So if you haven’t yet signed-up, go to BarCampMilwaukee.com and do it today. (Or just keep reading this blog, where you’ll see about 100 more posts on the subject…)

I heard about Senuti long ago, and even copied the .dmg to my iPod, but I never used it until recently.

The explanation I heard/read was that it lets you copy files from your iPod to your iTunes library, the reverse of the normal process. (Hence, the name: “senuti” is “itunes” backwards.)

I don’t have much use for moving the songs from iPod to iTunes, but what Senuti actually does, that is very useful to me, is act as a remote control, allowing you to connect an iPod to a Mac, and use Senuti to contol what is played, without having to copy it to the host Mac. This is perfect! I can take my iPod to the office, and plug it into the iMac and listen to my music and podcasts without having to deal with one more iTunes library.

Once I figured this remote control thing out, I emailed the author a big thanks for the work he’s done, and made a small donation. Hooray for Senuti!