RasterWeb!

So I thought, what can I do for a BarCamp session that would definitely overload my plate… A Mash Pit!

At BarCampMilwaukee, we will have a session on what a mashup is, just going over the basics, showing some examples, talking about APIs, and brainstorming ideas, but for those who aren’t into sleep, we’ll start at 11 PM and see what we can crank out before the sun rises.

We are prefixing with “Mini” because it may only be a few hours or so, depending on whatever else is going on at BarCampMilwaukee. I’m still hoping a bunch of code monkeys I’ve emailed plan to come, because while just me sitting at a table doing this alone would still be very cool, and result in some killer app, I’m sure I could use the input and assistance of others… :)

I’m a fan of the “just works” concept (I mean, I use Mac OS X instead of Windows, right?) but A warning for the bazaar nails it.

I’m seeing it from a different perspective though, one of a media creator. Just yesterday I had to deal with the fact that people don’t care about their rights or freedoms, as long as it will work. We’ve had this discussion in the videoblogging community, where most are advocates of creators rights. What does this mean? It means we encourage people to put their video (audio, text, etc.) online where they can maintain their rights over it as the creator. Some people just don’t care about that. They just want what they create to get online in the quickest and simplest fashion possible. YouTube and MySpace are often the conduits for this “I want it now and I want it to work” mentaility. Neither give enough control over the content to those who created it.

It’s also been noted that often times the attitude of “I want it now and I want it to work” is taken by younger people, the under 30 crowd, who haven’t yet got a long term view, or a sense of history with the things they create. This may be true, I see it in other things as well, and I often am not sure how much of my view is shaped by the length of time I’ve been involved in the things I care about, versus just my strong opinions on certain subjects.

It’s been at least a week since I rambled on about BarCampMilwaukee, so it’s time for an update.

The BarCampMilwaukee.com site is growing, but honestly I think it’s getting a bit confusing. Hopefully it makes sense to people not familiar with BarCamps and/or wikis, but if we need to refactor, then we will…

We had a planning meeting last week, and got a tour of Bucketworks. It became clear that Bucketworks will be an awesome venue for BarCampMilwaukee. We certainly are not limited by space constraints. Our biggest concern about Bucketworks is the bandwidth. We still don’t have a definite solution, but we will consider asking people that are not leading a session to refrain from using excessive bandwidth if possible. (Meaning, don’t download Linux ISO’s Saturday afternoon!)

The next planning meeting is Sunday, August 27th, 2006. Stop by if you can and help us out. (Also listed at Upcoming.org) Share your ideas, and get a look at Bucketworks.

There is no doubt in the minds of the people planning it that this will be an amazing event, and probably Milwaukee’s first “un-conference” as well. Please spread the word about it, and make plans now to be there!