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Faces of BarCamp

I mentioned this project in the post BarCampMilwaukee4 Portraits at MKEDH4 and here it is…. not quite done, but partly done…

Faces of BarCamp

Check out the Faces of BarCamp set on Flickr and let me know what you think…

You want details? Sure… At BarCampMilwaukee4 Sam Dodge and I set up a “Creative Commons Photo Studio” and tried to get portraits of everyone there, with the hope of (a) documenting all the people at the event and (b) providing icon/avatar images for anyone who wanted/needed one. It was a lot of fun for us, as we like taking photos, and we did it quick, quick, quick! We typically grabbed people, took one or two shots, and sent them on their way. We shot with my Nikon D40 with an old manual 50mm prime lens. It was all manual focus, so some are a little softer than I would like, but hey, I think they turned out ok. We had two speedlights with umbrellas, one off to the right up high, and one to the left sort of low… Here’s the set up as seen by the person being shot.

barcampmke4-3
Photo by Sam Dodge

Now here’s the bad new…. I somehow lost a bunch of photos. :( I swear I had them all copied and backed up, but somehow, there’s like 30 of them missing. I believe I can recover some from my memory cards, but I’m at a loss to find all of them. For this, I do apologize, and the only good news I can come up with is that I’m sure we’ll do this again at another event, so keep an eye out for the traveling “Creative Commons Photo Studio” soon!

Also, you should feel free to take the photo of yourself, and use it in any way you so desire, and you are granted full permission to do so… so don’t feel bound by the Creative Commons license it is published under. If you want details on all of this, just ask… And thanks for letting us take your picture!

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HelmetCam 2.0 at BarCampMilwaukee4

This is the initial run with the HelmetCam version 2.0 at BarCampMilwaukee4

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

This video is also available at blip.tv and Vimeo.

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BarCampMilwaukee4 Portraits at MKEDH4

Remember at BarCampMilwaukee4 when I took your photo? Well, I still need to edit all the shots, and I’ll be doing it at MilwaukeeDevHouse4 on Saturday, November 7th, 2009…

Oh yeah, you’re invited! MilwaukeeDevHouse is a hackathon-type event where we encourage you to come and work on something. Maybe some project you’ve had on the back burner for a while… maybe you need to upgrade your WordPress blog, test out some new Drupal modules, work on a Joomla theme, build a robot, or… edit 80+ photos. Hopefully I can also work on “The Faces of BarCamp” project as well…

facesofbc

Think of MilwaukeeDevHouse as a party where you can get some work done, but don’t have to. You can just hang out, socialize, and eat & drink if you like… it’s like a social network, but in real life. (You’re not limited to 140 characters, unless you want to be.) It’s a chance to learn something new and meet some new people. It’s full of “newness” or something!

Our pals at Bucketworks and Insomniac Development LLC will provide snacks and libations, and we thank them for that.

(P.S. I’ve been told this is a “pants optional” event, but I’m not sure what that means. Also, Time Lapse Bot will be there. Are these two things related!?!?)

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Open Source Jumble

I’m a fan of open source… I’m a user of open source… I’m still a believer in open source… but I don’t always use open source. So by The Book of Doug, I’m a sinner…

I own/admin at least 5 Linux servers, have a Linux netbook, use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Adium, jEdit, VLC, ffmpeg, Audacity, Apache HTTP Server, WordPress, Drupal, and on and on… I’ve also contributed to open source software projects, typically not with code (since I’m just a hacker) but with support, add-ons, and even monetarily. I’ve written and released applications, code, scripts, and various media (photos, video, audio/music, words) under open source and open content licenses.

Look… I use Mac OS X, and I know it’s not open source… I’m a sinner. Please forgive me. I do my best by installing and promoting open source software on Mac OS X. Every Mac I set up has the best open source software on it for the user that will use it.

It’s still not enough. Doug wants me to try harder.

I’ve also worked towards putting on things like BarCampMilwaukee, in fact, we just had the 4th one, but Doug wasn’t happy because of “Microsoft putting their dirty paws on events like BarCampMilwaukee4…”

I’m not sure what they did, other than helped feed everyone there. Like all other sponsors, they supported the event financially, and go no special treatment in return. No keynote, no booth, no 20 foot wide banner. I heard no reports of Larry Clarkin forcing anyone to install Windows or insulting Linux. If anything, Brennan pushed more Microsoft propaganda my way, and he doesn’t even work for Microsoft! And Doug, I’ve asked open source companies, including Red Hat, to sponsor BarCampMilwaukee in the past, and never got any response.

Oh yeah, back to Doug… I like Doug, I really do… His intentions seem honorable, but he seems frustrated, and is convinced that talking to people won’t change things. Still, he writes a blog post about it. Doug, don’t give up! Talk is cheap, but discussion has value! Try talking to people, not at them, and follow it all up with action, but be nice about it. Nobody likes a jerk talking at them, but plenty of people like a friend talking to them.

Now go open some source and bridge that open-closed divide!

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BarCampMilwaukee4 Time Lapse

Time Lapse Bot came to BarCampMilwaukee4 and took a picture every 15 seconds almost the entire time… here is the result… enjoy!

(This video is also available at blip.tv and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.)