Posts Tagged ‘barcamp’

Kids at barcamp

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

I’ve been a fan of barcamps for a while, and have been going to any that I can for at least ten years.

In recent years, I’ve encouraged my kids to come along with me, and in the spirit of barcamp, to think of something they could bring to share or talk about.

Grace did a talk about her experiences being taught ICT at primary school at Barcamp Berkshire in 2013.

Grace did a demo of how kids are taught to do sums in school today at Barcamp Bournemouth in 2014.

Faith did a talk about owls (and chatbots) at Barcamp Southampton in 2016.

Last Saturday, it was Barcamp Southampton again, and Faith decided to run a session.

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This time, she chose to do a ukulele lesson.

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We borrowed a car boot-full of ukuleles from Hampshire Music Service. (We owe them a big thanks!)

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She set up the room with a ukulele on every seat for everyone who came to her session.

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And she’d made a few PowerPoint slides with finger patterns on to help get people started.

Before too long, she had a bunch of adults (who’d never played ukulele before!) strumming along, leading us all as we echoed her strumming patterns. We sounded okay by the end!

I was super proud of her. There is no way I’d have been brave enough to try it when I was her age.

And, like her sister, it was a more creative and fun idea for a talk than the usual stand-in-front-of-slides-and-talk sessions that I always do.


Owlbot: Faith’s first chatbot (and barcamp)

Sunday, November 13th, 2016

For her talk at Barcamp Southampton yesterday, Faith did a presentation on owls, together with a chatbot she trained to answer questions about owls.

I’ve brought Grace to a couple of barcamps with me before: Barcamp Berkshire and Barcamp Bournemouth. But this was Faith’s first time.

She decided that she wanted to do a talk on owls. That wasn’t a big surprise… she’s a little bit obsessed with owls.

Some of Faith's owls

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Taking a kid to a barcamp… again

Saturday, May 10th, 2014

Last year, Grace tagged along with me to Barcamp Berkshire. She gave a talk, and it went pretty well.

I guess she must’ve enjoyed it, because today she came along with me to Barcamp Bournemouth.

I’ll write a post about what she talked about later, as it was actually pretty interesting. First, I want to get the shameless proud dad post out of the way. 🙂

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Taking a kid to a barcamp

Monday, June 17th, 2013
Computing at my school (from an 8 year old). Delighted to see this talk at  a Barcamp! #bcb13

Last weekend was Barcamp Berkshire. Barcamps are something I’ve explained before. In short, they’re conferences where each attendee contributes a session on any topic they want. This makes for an unplanned and eclectic mix of talks, presentations and discussions representing the wide range of hobbies, skills and experiences of the people who happen to be attending.

It’s not particularly new that I went to a barcamp, as I’ve been going to things like this for many years.

What was new was that this time, I brought Grace.

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Why I go to barcamps

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

Last week, I went to BarCamp London. As always, it was a great weekend.

If you’ve not been to something like this before, the idea is that it’s a conference where each attendee contributes a session. There’s no real theme – just talk about something interesting.

You end up with an agenda made up of the interests, hobbies and skills of the random collection of people who managed to get a ticket. It makes for a more varied and eclectic agenda then you get from a traditionally organised conference.

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HomeCamp 2

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Saturday 25th April saw the return of HomeCamp. HomeCamp started last year as the brainchild of Chris Dalby, aiming to bring together a growing community of people interested in “green” hacking and technologies.

I’ve had this post sat in draft for weeks now, meaning to come back and turn them into proper notes. As it’s been a few weeks now and I still haven’t, I thought I might as well post my rough notes as I took them on the day. Apologies that they’re a little sketchy!

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BathCamp evenings

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

bathcamp T-shirt

In September last year, a barcamp was held in Bath. It was called, somewhat predictably but not unreasonably, “bathcamp“. 🙂

I blogged about it at the time, but in short it was a fascinating weekend that brought together a great group of people.

But it didn’t end there.

There will be another bathcamp event, but the organiser Mike Ellis had the very neat idea to keep the momentum going in between the full barcamp weekends with a series of monthly evening meetups.

The first Wednesday of every month, BathCamp becomes an evening event at Revolution in Bath. It works really well, keeping the sense of community going in between the full barcamps. Many turn up early, in time to have a drink and something to eat in the bar downstairs. You get a group of people all sat together, but it’s very welcoming and friendly. You can sit next to anyone there, and get involved the conversation – not always the case with every geeky meetup I go to.

At about 8pm-ish, everyone goes upstairs for an informal presentation on some tech topic of interest. Then there is a break where everyone gets themselves a drink, and talk and bounce around ideas about the presentation.

Then another (generally somewhat related) presentation from a second speaker, and another chance to talk about the topic with everyone else there. These bits make a difference – sometimes these events can drift into “turn up, listen to talk, go home”. But so far, the Bathcamp meetups have been a long way from that.

The talks so far…

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HomeCamp

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Yesterday was HomeCamp:

…an unconference about using technology to monitor and automate the home for greener resource use and to save costs. This is about low energy devices and servers, reducing your electricity bills, monitoring your mouse traps, home automation, monitoring your water usage, using solar power…

Fifty or so people came together at Imperial College to talk about how we can reduce our energy usage.

The format was different to other barcamps and unconferences I’ve been to – rather than separate rooms, most of the time was spent with everyone together in a single room. And the talks flowed on from each other – it felt more like a single day-long conversation than a series of separate presentations.

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