{"id":1830,"date":"2011-11-06T19:07:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-06T19:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1830"},"modified":"2011-11-06T19:10:02","modified_gmt":"2011-11-06T19:10:02","slug":"why-i-go-to-barcamps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1830","title":{"rendered":"Why I go to barcamps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I went to <a href=\"http:\/\/nine.barcamplondon.org\/\">BarCamp London<\/a>. As always, it was a great weekend. <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve not been to something like this before, the idea is that it&#8217;s a conference where each attendee contributes a session. There&#8217;s no real theme &#8211; just talk about something interesting. <\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p><object width=\"450\" height=\"338\"><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"offsite=true&#038;lang=en-us&#038;page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Ftags%2Fbcl9%2Fshow%2F&#038;page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Ftags%2Fbcl9%2F&#038;tags=bcl9&#038;jump_to=&#038;start_index=\"><\/param><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/apps\/slideshow\/show.swf?v=109615\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/apps\/slideshow\/show.swf?v=109615\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" flashvars=\"offsite=true&#038;lang=en-us&#038;page_show_url=%2Fphotos%2Ftags%2Fbcl9%2Fshow%2F&#038;page_show_back_url=%2Fphotos%2Ftags%2Fbcl9%2F&#038;tags=bcl9&#038;jump_to=&#038;start_index=\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Some of the talks that I went to included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/bryns\/secure-coding-are-we-doing-it-wrong\">discussion on Secure Coding<\/a> &#8211; thought-provoking\n<\/li>\n<li>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/jackfranklin\/coffeescript-javascript-but-better\">overview of CoffeeScript<\/a> &#8211; a language that can be compiled into JavaScript &#8211; interesting as I&#8217;d not tried it before\n<\/li>\n<li>Dom&#8217;s experiences in starting an <a href=\"http:\/\/clicknmix.co.uk\/\">online sweet shop<\/a> &#8211; very funny\n<\/li>\n<li>Simon and Nat&#8217;s experiences in <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktdf\/\">turning lanyrd from a side project to a start-up<\/a> &#8211; fascinating to hear about pretty much the exact opposite of what I did (going the corporate route!) since we left Uni\n<\/li>\n<li>A demo of and discussion about an <a href=\"http:\/\/media-explorer.org\/\">open source project to create an open source media centre<\/a> &#8211; rethinking TV is an interest of mine\n<\/li>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktkk\/\">Q&#038;A with a couple of Wikipedians<\/a> &#8211; inspiring &#8211; I love the idea of Wikipedia but haven&#8217;t really felt comfortable to get involved before\n<\/li>\n<li>One fan&#8217;s interpretation of the Zelda series of games, in an attempt to make sense of them all with a single coherent timeline &#8211; mental but fun\n<\/li>\n<li>A developer from the BBC talking about <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktkz\/\">how their team does Agile<\/a> &#8211; interesting to see how it compares with us\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktmz\/\">&#8220;Two security geeks ranting&#8221;<\/a> &#8211; I can&#8217;t do this one justice &#8211; inspired, and possibly my favourite session of the weekend\n<\/li>\n<li>A hands-on, <a href=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/1337475\">code-heavy live demo<\/a> of how to hack with the Kinect &#8211; very cool\n<\/li>\n<li>A dry-run of some stand-up material by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lallyd\">@lallyd<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li>A demo of the new APIs and tools for <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktrr\/\">creating Firefox extensions<\/a> &#8211; looks a lot easier than the old ones!\n<\/li>\n<li>An overview of work being done for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/nuxnix\/mz-bcl920111029published\">Surrey Police using mobile apps and social media<\/a> &#8211; hadn&#8217;t heard of this &#8211; sounds promising<\/li>\n<li>A talk on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/alecmuffett\/sex-lies-and-instant-messenger-mk-ii\">how to do stuff anonymously on the web<\/a> &#8211; in an era of social media being used to disrupt oppressive regimes and whistle-blow corporate malpractice, this is important\n<\/li>\n<li>One person&#8217;s experience in improving their productivity, inspired by the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kanban\">Kanban system<\/a> &#8211; unusual\n<\/li>\n<li>A discussion about the importance of <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktry\/\">context when designing user interactions<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li>A presentation on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freebase.com\/\">Freebase open repository for structured data<\/a> and more generally about semantic web &#8211; I&#8217;ve used freebase before, so great to get some background\n<\/li>\n<li>A talk about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/simon\/ignite-silicon-valley-3-when-zeppelins-ruled-the-earth\">history of the Zeppelin<\/a> &#8211; bizarrely fascinating\n<\/li>\n<li>A talk about the <a href=\"http:\/\/longnow.org\/clock\/\">Clock of the Long Now<\/a> &#8211; lunacy\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To be fair, as a range of talks, a lot of them are quite geeky. But that says more about my choices than the range available. There were also talks on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktmf\/\">beginner&#8217;s guide to Absinthe<\/a> &#8211; including tasting\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/morenafiore\/italian-for-tichies\">Basic Italian for techies<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/bcl9grid.heroku.com\/l\/talks\/98\">&#8220;How to meet Polish female geeks?&#8221;<\/a> &#8211; no idea what that was about, but the title got people talking \ud83d\ude42\n<\/li>\n<li>How to <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktmd\/\">make your own jam<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktdk\/\">Sculpting using laser cutters<\/a>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktpk\/\">How to bake a better cake<\/a> &#8211; also including tasting!\n<\/li>\n<li>A crash course in <a href=\"http:\/\/lanyrd.com\/2011\/barcamp-london-9\/sktrt\/\">how to do cryptic crosswords<\/a> &#8211; I&#8217;d seen a bit of this talk at <a href=\"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1800\">Over The Air<\/a> &#8211; it was brilliant\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And loads, loads more. <\/p>\n<p>Why do I go to barcamps? Because it&#8217;s fascinating. It&#8217;s a way to get exposed to more new things, ideas and projects than you could normally cram into a weekend. And I love that it works because you get such a varied and interesting group of people into one place, and encourage them to share what they know. <\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve not been to a barcamp before, you should give it a go. And <a href=\"http:\/\/barcamplondon.org\/\">BarCamp London<\/a> is one of the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I went to BarCamp London. As always, it was a great weekend. If you&#8217;ve not been to something like this before, the idea is that it&#8217;s a conference where each attendee contributes a session. There&#8217;s no real theme &#8211; just talk about something interesting. You end up with an agenda made up of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[274,356,504],"class_list":["post-1830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-barcamp","tag-barcamplondon","tag-bcl9"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}