Tag: bucketworks

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PhotoCampMilwaukee… almost here!

I’ve been buried with work for the past few weeks, and this has crept up on me… but we are less than a month away from our very first PhotoCamp here in Milwaukee.

We’ve got a website at PhotoCampMilwaukee.org where we’ve been publishing profiles of people who will be attending, with the hopes that you can get to know about some of your fellow campers, even before the event starts.

And if you’re still a little cloudy, the About page explains things:

PhotoCampMilwaukee is a BarCamp-like event fully focused on photography. It’s an ad-hoc “un-conference” where people who love photography can get together and teach what they know, and learn what they don’t. It’s about sharing in an open environment. Everyone has experience to share, and getting everyone together in one place, for a full day, seems like a great way to do it.

We’ve got a great bunch of sponsors helping us make this event happen, including:

And if you’re interested in sponsoring, or otherwise supporting PhotoCamp, just get in touch with me.

The Britek

If you love photography, and are within driving distance, please join us on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin… We’ll see you there!






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Bucketworks Radio Commercial

Occasionally at Z2 Marketing, I engineer radio commercials. If you still listen to commercial radio, you may have heard one of them!

Well yesterday I was communicating with Jenn from Bucketworks, and we somehow came up with an idea to create a radio commercial for Bucketworks. Gabe agreed to be the voice, and Dana from Z2 Marketing re-wrote Gabe’s script, which was loosely based on my idea, which was way too long (but very amusing) so the results is below…

I love the fact that an idea can go from concept to completion within just a few hours. Granted, it helps when you have all the facilities at your disposal, and people willing to help. When creative people work together, good things can happen.

You can download an MP3 of this commercial, or an alternate version with no background music.

If you do a podcast, or a radio show, we’d love for you to play it. Thanks!





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Web414: Creativity Challenges

Creativity Challenges

For the Web414 March 2009 Meeting we’ll be discussing Creativity Challenges on the web.

Have you taken part in National Novel Writing Month, or the RPM Challenge (record an entire album in a month) or maybe taken a photo every single day for a year for the 365 Days Project?

These are challenges (not contests) and there isn’t a winner or a loser (unless you beat yourself up about not finishing) but if all goes well, attempting to “meet the challenge” will force you to be creative when it’s so easy not to be. It’s too simple to come home from work, plop down on the couch and consume the latest piece of “entertainment” that someone else created, but if you like writing, making music, or photography, why not step it up and see what you can really do by giving yourself a challenge to be met?

It can be difficult… most of the people I know involved in these challenges have day jobs, friends and family, and other responsibilities. And often, things just “get in the way” or go haywire and you just can’t do it. Equipment breaks, computers crash, files get lost. I saw a post in the RPM Challenge forums from a guy who said he couldn’t finish due to the fact that he had to get divorced. Life can get in the way of things, and that’s all part of the challenge.

If everything goes right, you complete the challenge, you’re proud of what you’ve created, and hopefully you’ve learned something in the process, had some fun, and make plans to continue creating things and being creative.

If discussing this further sounds interesting, please stop by Bucketworks Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 7pm and join in…

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MilwaukeeDevHouse3 happened!

Hey, we did it…. another MilwaukeeDevHouse event.

Bucketworks hosted about 30 to 40 people throughout the night, and besides such craziness as “ghost riding the whip” and “knitting” we all survived unharmed.

We had a project board that listed what people were working on (note: photo needed!) and we had food and drink and what not to keep us going. The event was sponsored by Paladin Web Services, and addition food/drink was provided by 2XL Networks, SmallSharpTools.com and Ashe Dryden.

MilwaukeeDevHouse3

My own personal project was not as successful as I had hoped. I did succeed in getting gPhoto working on the Eee PC with a Nikon D70, as well as a Nikon D300, but my own Nikon D40 did not work, due to it being a newer model, so I spent much of my time trying to get a newer version of gPhoto installed… to no avail.

Besides my setbacks, I had a good time, and met some cool people. It was a great atmosphere to just hang out and chill, as well as get some work done.

We’d like to do it again, and if you’d like to make it happen, get it touch with me about sponsoring the next MilwaukeeDevHouse event.









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MilwaukeeDevHouse3… almost!

It’s almost time for MilwaukeeDevHouse3… it’s happening Friday, November 21st, 2008 at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin…

So what is a DevHouse? It’s a hackathon event that combines serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere…

People show up and either have an idea of a project they want to work on, or look for ideas, or other people to work on things with… But it’s not all serious work. It’s a party atmosphere, so you can hang out and just chill with other folks, discuss whatever, do whatever…

Since it’ll be at Bucketworks, you should also be able to use the FabLab to build something (maybe a desk?) or just create some art… (I’m actually going to be working on getting the screen printing machine up and running for part of the night.)

The main project I want to work on is exploring gPhoto, which can be used to control over 1000 cameras via connecting to a Linux computer with a USB cable. I want to use my Eee PC as an intervalometer, but also see what we can do at Bucketworks using the software and digital cameras…

So come down to MilwaukeeDevHouse3 at Bucketworks. It’s a free event, put on by Web414 and sponsored by Paladin Web Services. Food and drink and hacking and geeks… what could be better?

(Update: I got gPhoto running on Mac OS X… oh, and on the Eee PC too, it was much easier than I thought it would be.)