Disappointing news, although this is the first time I've discussed this outside a select group of people for some time a few of us been concerned at the lack of progress from the BarCampUSA management team.
I guess the old adage about you cant pay too much for good project management skills because the clock will always keep on ticking rings true yet again.
Full refunds are being made so no one is really out of pocket but I personally invited a large number of you to participate and some of you have provided substantial amounts of time for the various areas.
It saddens me that the concept of a 'mega barcamp' isn't going to eventuate, at least not in Wisconsin, I still believe that with the right management team driving the project this concept can be revitalized, in another part of the world, at another time, and I look forward to being a part of it.
Regards,
Dean Collins
Cognation Pty Ltd
dean@cognation.net
+1-212-203-4357 Ph
> -----Original Message-----
> From: barcamp-usa@googlegroups.com [mailto:barcamp-usa@googlegroups.com]
> On Behalf Of Ken Rheingans
> Sent: Thursday, 22 March 2007 10:15 PM
> To: BarCamp USA
> Subject: BarCamp USA has been canceled
>
>
> I am sorry to announce that BarCamp USA has been canceled.
>
> While many of us were excited about the possibilities of the event it
> has become clear that we simply would not have the funds necessary to
> cover key expenses that were going to be due in May. (high speed
> broadband, event insurance, venue, etc.) In total, over $50,000 was
> going to be needed.
>
> Many of us here in Wisconsin recently hosted BarCamp Madison
> www.barcampmadison.com which was a great success with about 150 people
> in attendance. We are looking forward to hosting that event again in
> the future.
>
> If you purchased a ticket for BarCamp USA you should be getting a
> refund notice and credit applied to your card.
>
> There has been some discussion about a possible alternative event.
> Check www.barcampusa.com or the BarCamp USA general Google group for
> updates on that.
>
> If you have any questions check the BarCamp USA Google Group and/or
> send an email to me.
>
> Ken Rheingans
>
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query barcamp. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query barcamp. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, March 23, 2007
Thursday, March 25, 2010
BarCampNYC5 is go
The free tickets for BarCampNYC5, Sat & Sun - 17th-18th of April, have just been made available.
Register here - http://barcampnyc5.eventbrite.com/ - be quick though as they will get sold out soon.
The url for this years BarCamp is at http://barcamp.pbworks.com/BarCampNYC5
If you’ve never been to a BarCamp before check out these photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampnyc4 Or one of my many BarCamp blog posts e.g. http://blog.collins.net.pr/2007/11/barcamp-mobile-nyc2.html
If you come, be prepared to give a 30 minute talk.
If you come, be prepared to come for the full two days.
If you come, be prepared to fully participate.
If you come, remember this is an un-conference, what happens here happens because of your participation.
Cheers,Dean
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/deancollins
Linked In - http://www.linkedin.com/in/deancollins
Register here - http://barcampnyc5.eventbrite.com/ - be quick though as they will get sold out soon.
The url for this years BarCamp is at http://barcamp.pbworks.com/BarCampNYC5
If you’ve never been to a BarCamp before check out these photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampnyc4 Or one of my many BarCamp blog posts e.g. http://blog.collins.net.pr/2007/11/barcamp-mobile-nyc2.html
If you come, be prepared to give a 30 minute talk.
If you come, be prepared to come for the full two days.
If you come, be prepared to fully participate.
If you come, remember this is an un-conference, what happens here happens because of your participation.
Without a doubt BarCamps are still my favorite tech event of the year, I have never left a weekend where I didn’t learn about at least 3-4 things I had never heard of before. If you are smart, funny and prepared to be involved I hope to see you there.
If you are going here is my mugshot, be sure to come up and say hi.
Cheers,
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/deancollins
Linked In - http://www.linkedin.com/in/deancollins
Monday, February 11, 2008
BarCampNYC3
Hey All, Quick post about an amazing event that is happening here in NYC on March 15th and 16th.
BarCampNYC3 is in its 3rd year that we have held an un-conference locally here in New York. Generally around the 200-300 attendee mark, rsvps are essential.
More details and the event wiki are located here;
http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampNYC3
This is a two day event with a pyjama party sleepover onsite…..lol or a Red Bull fuelled 36 hours straight, so be prepared to learn, share and experience.
This is a sponsored event so as such there is no fee or charge to attend but BarCamp is an unconference so come prepared to add value.
The obligatory ‘facebook’ group-site is located here;
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10757577065
I know several people of my friends who reside in New York are already registered but for those of you that are maybe out of state this is a great chance to come and meet some really cool people, couch surfing requests and offers are located here http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampNYC3CouchShare
Just in case there are people who have never participated in an unconference before - check out my review on two other similar events.
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/mobilecampnyc.html
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/barcamp-mobile-nyc2.html
Would be great to see more of my friends at an event like this so hope you will consider coming along.
Regards,
Dean
Saturday, November 17, 2007
BarCamp Mobile NYC2
photo credit: doryexmachina
So MobileCamp NYC2 was held last Saturday in lower Manhattan with at least 200 people in attendance or about double last years event.
I wanted to hold off for a few days before blogging about it to collect my thoughts. I hope I don't offend anyone with my comments below but I've come away from this event with some very strong opinions that I'm sure not everyone will agree with but I'm happy to 'bet' money on these conclusions.
If you've been reading my blog for a while then you'll know that I've worked commercially on a number of different mobile projects and posted about my own personal interest in the mobile space regularly (search mobile posts) so i think I've got a fairly good grasp on whats going on.
I also think that I tend to concentrate on the more commercial aspects of startups and technology so I might be coming at problems from a different way.
So I've broken down my comments about the event into 3 parts;
-Developer Enthusiasm
-Carriers
-2D codes
So firstly the good news, Developer Enthusiasm for mobile computing and the positive value it can deliver to our daily lives through persistent full time communication/computing applications is really high. It's one of the things that sets the USA apart from other countries I've lived in (it's also something I'm going to blog about later this week - check out my post on the US dollar/exchange rate in a few days).
It's also amazing the physical output a single lone developer can deliver on as well. For example Peter Nofelt and his Mogoso Mobile Search application. This kid has a day job full time working in the financial space and no budget but is delivering better mobile search results than Yahoo etc because he has a real eye for perspective and for whats really important in a successful mobile application.
It never ceases to amaze me when I go to a barcamp or similar the amazing ideas and concepts individual developers come up with.
If you run a non IT business and want to find ways for IT to help your business, ignore your tech department and go and hang out at your local BarCamp for a weekend, you'll find 10 different ways you can take advantage of changes and help your business out.
Ok now for the not so good news;
- Carriers. There were more than a few carriers at the event, from the "trying to be progressive" Orange to the ....ex data service product manager from Nextel now off running a new startup so secretive that she got up to talk for 30 minutes but couldn't tell us anything about her new company AirArts .
Mary raised the point that new applications don't always deliver the end user customer numbers that they are often predicted to deliver...and the example she used was at CTIA last year everyone was all hyped up on Mobile TV being the guiding light and yet just 12 months later everyone is wondering what happened.
That if your application cant survive on 20% revenue (eg after the carrier takes their 50% and then the aggregator takes their 30%) then maybe your product wasn't meant to survive in the first place as it's not commercial enough.
What can I say but I was depressed after the session that Mary ran, the summary of her position on why mobile carriers aren't moving as efficiently as I want is that ...they want to bill you for services but they just don't want you to use much in the way of data.
(Now for those of you who haven't been to a barcamp please understand it is a very 2 way 'discussion'. You are meant to be honest and contribute freely to the point that one of the 'rules' of barcamp is that if you dont feel you are contributing to the discussion then the rule of two feet apply and you are meant to get up and walk out of the room).
Ok well my response to this one was easy, and I think might have shocked some first time attendees but afterwards a few people came up and said I was right on the money with "......carrier marketing/product development teams blow chunks".
My response to Mobile TV was, Yes Mobile TV is available on my handset (HTC 8525) but do you think I received a single email, letter, viral video or other informational contact from Cingular that it was available?
Nope.
That's a pretty piss poor sales endeavour for a technology that probably had more than several million dollars invested in the upfront technical implementation.
And just to make sure I wasn't the only one who didn't receive something from the sales team at Cingular I asked the other 50 people in the room....1 guy said he saw something once - so 49 to 1 for no sales calls. Probably why you are on target for your 2% adoption rate.
Now for the next point about revenue share.
Everyone marvels at Doccomo i-mode and says that it's purely a Japanese 'phenomenon' with the successful adoption of broadband mobile data and a full and exciting ecosystem of content providers and application developers.
Bullshit.
The reason Doccomo is highly successful and the USA carriers are crying poor is because Doccomo isn't greedy and they made a smart commercial decision that all content providers/application developers get to keep 90% of all billing revenue (and I mean all, regardless of how big or small you are).
Yep you read that right, USA you keep 20-30% - Japan you keep 90%. And yet they wonder why the USA lags in mobile application and mobile content development.
When I was consulting to Traction Platform last year helping them expand into the USA I met with some people from Verizon and they asked...how come Australia is smaller and so far ahead in SMS marketing, my reply was well you make it so difficult and expensive to implement in the USA what do you expect. Their answer was well we need to cover costs, not understanding the laws of supply and demand lower barriers to entry and there will be more users to cover the costs....It's not rocket science I swear.
Ok Finally to 2D codes.
So this was the area of MobileCampNYC2 that I was most interested in participating in. last year it was SMS marketing and talking about the Traction Platform but this year it was the area I wanted to see most what was going on.
Some interesting sessions mainly from individuals but check out people like Brian House at http://www.knifeandfork.org/ who had 2 amazing projects (and makes a living from artistic commissions and commercial consulting).
Pretty much what I did see confirmed my understanding that 2d codes are a fractured market with many different open source and private versions.
QR codes as you already know is the leading open standard. Denso who developed the technology were smart in the in the 80's they released all rights to the technology and allowed anyone to adopt this technology without patents or licensing. (in fact check out smart companies like http://www.winksite.com/ that incorporate automatic encoding into their application).
It was good to understand why the various closed/private 2d code companies felt their way was better, mainly around size of the output code (check out www.cognation.net/contact as an example QR code with a very big vcf file) and the ability to operate with older mobile camera lens .
Totally understandable however the rep from Nextcode decided to push the limits...a lot, and basically said that QR codes would never work and that the only way for widespread adoption was to for everyone to come together and agree on a standard and that the sooner everyone gave up on QR codes the better.
His comments around the reason QR codes wouldn't succeed was there needed to be a central 'clearing house'. That Nextcode was the technology to move forward with and that without this revenue stream any 2d code was doomed to fail.
Unfortunately this is where I decided to poke the bear.
As some of you know I have a long history with the Asterisk open source technology.
One of the reasons this now fantastic software is one of the most widely adopted pieces of open source software is good stewardship. Digium whilst a commercial company has been masterfully guided through it's embryonic years by Mark Spencer and now during it's growth years by Danny Windham.
The reason Asterisk has bloomed when a number of similar closed and open source technologies have failed is that from the very beginning Mark Spencer stated Digium was NOT required in order to implement Asterisk.
Yes they made money if you purchased their cards but if you used a competitors card like Sangnoma then it would work just as well. (in fact probably less than half of the 60,000 Asterisk pabx's globally use Digium cards.
By giving up this 'choke point' Digium is now responsible for a far bigger pie.
I also provided the example of Salesforce.com and the statements made by Mark Benioff and the Sforce ecosystem 2 years ago where no one believe he/Salesforce was going to be just one small partner and that it was open for everyone to participate.
I'm not sure if Nextcode felt I was taking the mickey out of him and antagonising him or being serious, he suggested we take this offline but I didn't hear back from him...(offer is still there)...so I assume they are off to file another patent and spend more money suing other closed/private 2d bar code companies like ScanBuy (who were in the session but kept a low profile in the back).
My take on it is this, yes the older camera phones don't have the resolution required but wait 6-12 months. With an average replacement rate of handsets in the USA of 18 months, 80% of the market will have 2mb+ camera phones by the mid/end of 2008.
There was also a lengthy discussion about advertising agencies and QR marketing campaigns and ondeck readers versus post installation adoption rates but that is a discussion for another time - I'm always happy to come in and run 4 hour workshops for advertising agencies to understand why you don't need to wait.
Finally a quick thank you for the organisers Indira, Ritwik, Andy, Alexis, David, Jose etc. Without you their would be no meeting of the minds and exchanges of ideas so to you my biggest thanks.
Looking forward to peoples comments, I'm sure there will be more than a few for this post.
Cheers,
Dean
So MobileCamp NYC2 was held last Saturday in lower Manhattan with at least 200 people in attendance or about double last years event.
I wanted to hold off for a few days before blogging about it to collect my thoughts. I hope I don't offend anyone with my comments below but I've come away from this event with some very strong opinions that I'm sure not everyone will agree with but I'm happy to 'bet' money on these conclusions.
If you've been reading my blog for a while then you'll know that I've worked commercially on a number of different mobile projects and posted about my own personal interest in the mobile space regularly (search mobile posts) so i think I've got a fairly good grasp on whats going on.
I also think that I tend to concentrate on the more commercial aspects of startups and technology so I might be coming at problems from a different way.
So I've broken down my comments about the event into 3 parts;
-Developer Enthusiasm
-Carriers
-2D codes
So firstly the good news, Developer Enthusiasm for mobile computing and the positive value it can deliver to our daily lives through persistent full time communication/computing applications is really high. It's one of the things that sets the USA apart from other countries I've lived in (it's also something I'm going to blog about later this week - check out my post on the US dollar/exchange rate in a few days).
It's also amazing the physical output a single lone developer can deliver on as well. For example Peter Nofelt and his Mogoso Mobile Search application. This kid has a day job full time working in the financial space and no budget but is delivering better mobile search results than Yahoo etc because he has a real eye for perspective and for whats really important in a successful mobile application.
It never ceases to amaze me when I go to a barcamp or similar the amazing ideas and concepts individual developers come up with.
If you run a non IT business and want to find ways for IT to help your business, ignore your tech department and go and hang out at your local BarCamp for a weekend, you'll find 10 different ways you can take advantage of changes and help your business out.
Ok now for the not so good news;
- Carriers. There were more than a few carriers at the event, from the "trying to be progressive" Orange to the ....ex data service product manager from Nextel now off running a new startup so secretive that she got up to talk for 30 minutes but couldn't tell us anything about her new company AirArts .
Mary raised the point that new applications don't always deliver the end user customer numbers that they are often predicted to deliver...and the example she used was at CTIA last year everyone was all hyped up on Mobile TV being the guiding light and yet just 12 months later everyone is wondering what happened.
That if your application cant survive on 20% revenue (eg after the carrier takes their 50% and then the aggregator takes their 30%) then maybe your product wasn't meant to survive in the first place as it's not commercial enough.
What can I say but I was depressed after the session that Mary ran, the summary of her position on why mobile carriers aren't moving as efficiently as I want is that ...they want to bill you for services but they just don't want you to use much in the way of data.
(Now for those of you who haven't been to a barcamp please understand it is a very 2 way 'discussion'. You are meant to be honest and contribute freely to the point that one of the 'rules' of barcamp is that if you dont feel you are contributing to the discussion then the rule of two feet apply and you are meant to get up and walk out of the room).
Ok well my response to this one was easy, and I think might have shocked some first time attendees but afterwards a few people came up and said I was right on the money with "......carrier marketing/product development teams blow chunks".
My response to Mobile TV was, Yes Mobile TV is available on my handset (HTC 8525) but do you think I received a single email, letter, viral video or other informational contact from Cingular that it was available?
Nope.
That's a pretty piss poor sales endeavour for a technology that probably had more than several million dollars invested in the upfront technical implementation.
And just to make sure I wasn't the only one who didn't receive something from the sales team at Cingular I asked the other 50 people in the room....1 guy said he saw something once - so 49 to 1 for no sales calls. Probably why you are on target for your 2% adoption rate.
Now for the next point about revenue share.
Everyone marvels at Doccomo i-mode and says that it's purely a Japanese 'phenomenon' with the successful adoption of broadband mobile data and a full and exciting ecosystem of content providers and application developers.
Bullshit.
The reason Doccomo is highly successful and the USA carriers are crying poor is because Doccomo isn't greedy and they made a smart commercial decision that all content providers/application developers get to keep 90% of all billing revenue (and I mean all, regardless of how big or small you are).
Yep you read that right, USA you keep 20-30% - Japan you keep 90%. And yet they wonder why the USA lags in mobile application and mobile content development.
When I was consulting to Traction Platform last year helping them expand into the USA I met with some people from Verizon and they asked...how come Australia is smaller and so far ahead in SMS marketing, my reply was well you make it so difficult and expensive to implement in the USA what do you expect. Their answer was well we need to cover costs, not understanding the laws of supply and demand lower barriers to entry and there will be more users to cover the costs....It's not rocket science I swear.
Ok Finally to 2D codes.
So this was the area of MobileCampNYC2 that I was most interested in participating in. last year it was SMS marketing and talking about the Traction Platform but this year it was the area I wanted to see most what was going on.
Some interesting sessions mainly from individuals but check out people like Brian House at http://www.knifeandfork.org/ who had 2 amazing projects (and makes a living from artistic commissions and commercial consulting).
Pretty much what I did see confirmed my understanding that 2d codes are a fractured market with many different open source and private versions.
QR codes as you already know is the leading open standard. Denso who developed the technology were smart in the in the 80's they released all rights to the technology and allowed anyone to adopt this technology without patents or licensing. (in fact check out smart companies like http://www.winksite.com/ that incorporate automatic encoding into their application).
It was good to understand why the various closed/private 2d code companies felt their way was better, mainly around size of the output code (check out www.cognation.net/contact as an example QR code with a very big vcf file) and the ability to operate with older mobile camera lens .
Totally understandable however the rep from Nextcode decided to push the limits...a lot, and basically said that QR codes would never work and that the only way for widespread adoption was to for everyone to come together and agree on a standard and that the sooner everyone gave up on QR codes the better.
His comments around the reason QR codes wouldn't succeed was there needed to be a central 'clearing house'. That Nextcode was the technology to move forward with and that without this revenue stream any 2d code was doomed to fail.
Unfortunately this is where I decided to poke the bear.
As some of you know I have a long history with the Asterisk open source technology.
One of the reasons this now fantastic software is one of the most widely adopted pieces of open source software is good stewardship. Digium whilst a commercial company has been masterfully guided through it's embryonic years by Mark Spencer and now during it's growth years by Danny Windham.
The reason Asterisk has bloomed when a number of similar closed and open source technologies have failed is that from the very beginning Mark Spencer stated Digium was NOT required in order to implement Asterisk.
Yes they made money if you purchased their cards but if you used a competitors card like Sangnoma then it would work just as well. (in fact probably less than half of the 60,000 Asterisk pabx's globally use Digium cards.
By giving up this 'choke point' Digium is now responsible for a far bigger pie.
I also provided the example of Salesforce.com and the statements made by Mark Benioff and the Sforce ecosystem 2 years ago where no one believe he/Salesforce was going to be just one small partner and that it was open for everyone to participate.
I'm not sure if Nextcode felt I was taking the mickey out of him and antagonising him or being serious, he suggested we take this offline but I didn't hear back from him...(offer is still there)...so I assume they are off to file another patent and spend more money suing other closed/private 2d bar code companies like ScanBuy (who were in the session but kept a low profile in the back).
My take on it is this, yes the older camera phones don't have the resolution required but wait 6-12 months. With an average replacement rate of handsets in the USA of 18 months, 80% of the market will have 2mb+ camera phones by the mid/end of 2008.
There was also a lengthy discussion about advertising agencies and QR marketing campaigns and ondeck readers versus post installation adoption rates but that is a discussion for another time - I'm always happy to come in and run 4 hour workshops for advertising agencies to understand why you don't need to wait.
Finally a quick thank you for the organisers Indira, Ritwik, Andy, Alexis, David, Jose etc. Without you their would be no meeting of the minds and exchanges of ideas so to you my biggest thanks.
Looking forward to peoples comments, I'm sure there will be more than a few for this post.
Cheers,
Dean
Monday, October 02, 2006
BarCampNYC2
.1.jpg)
So I had the amazing experience of attending my first BarCampNYC2 this weekend.
For those of you not familiar with BarCamp check out their 'global event wiki' and go along to the next one in your city as they are relatively global. (also check out these 10 tips for getting the most from BarCamp)
Lots of Flickr photos here
It was a 2 day event from Saturday morning to Sunday evening where approx 180-200 people from New York and the surrounding area got together to have an "un-conference" about technology.
There are no specific agendas and most important the event is free being fully funded by local Sponsoring Companies (yes Cognation did kick in) however a big shoutout has to go to Microsoft who provided the venue, lets face it, any company who would let 200 geeks sleep over in their offices for a weekend cant be all bad, and I have to point out that apart from 1 session they kept a very low profile. Barcamp is everyone's event.
It's a two day self managed, self organized, self driven geekfest.
Where 30 minutes before it starts there are no agendas and it's not only suggested but actually required you get up and walk out of a session if you are not interested.
Everyone participates and often some of the best advice or experiential information comes from people in the 'audience' if you could call them that than people who are leading the sessions.
The sessions leant towards software development (with some amazingly cutting edge development techniques being displayed).
There was a general skew towards a younger group of people, I'm guessing that the average age was 22-24? However age certainly wasn't a reflection of experience or potential, check out the Session Page above to get an idea on what was being discussed, these people are the future of IT development, and let me tell you it was very bright indeed.
These guys, and quite a few girls, are pushing the envelop of technology further than most of us even think is possible.
Special mention has to go out to Dennis Crowley the founder of Dodgeball (sold it to Google) for his session on Pervasive Games (massive urban games). It made me realize that this is an area I think I want to pursue on a commercial basis, I've thought about it in the past (read my post on Mogi Mogi) but it's an area where I think I can develop some real value.
Not to downplay the rest of the sessions, I learnt at least 3 or 4 new things in every session and I learnt about two whole technologies I didn't even know existed Json and Amazon Mechanical Turk. Some of the implementations of "ruby on rails" / web mashups / web delivered interactive content / social networking that these people are implementing is amazing.
I saw at least 3 business concepts over the weekend that I would be prepared to put my money where my mouth is and fund.
I don't think I can succinctly capture enough in one post my experiences but it's basically changed my mind about the depth of talent out there.
Yes some of it needs a little structure and yes some need a lesson about how coming up with great technology or a business idea, doesn't a successfully ROI make'th', but the enthusiasm and excitement was unstoppable. Besides they might even teach some of us older people whats really possible.
Cheers,
Dean
Sunday, May 20, 2007
MobileCampNYC
One of the best things about living in New York or more and more "Silicon Alley" is the amount of really cool technology conferences that are on.
On Saturday i got to share some time with about 100 or so amazing people at http://barcamp.org/MobileCampNYC
So here's my take - mobile application development is really moving along, there were some things coming out of the NYU ITP class that made my head spin (even if I'm not sure they grasped all the commercial aspects of what they were working on), almost makes me want to go and enroll in a few classes there.
Was also surprised by Nokia's attitude to embedded web servers in the handsets themselves (specifically S60's), especially that exposed API's for all hardware and built in applications address book-numbers dialed etc) As for why having a web server on your handset is so cool I'm going to skip for this post as it's a full post on it's own.
So here is the issue as I see it;
Everything sucks and is doomed for commercial failure....for the moment.
The issue at the moment is all these applications are handset specific OR carrier specific, talk about niche markets - not only are you targetting the 'bleeding edge' users (not necessarily but more about that another time) but you are tageting this small fraction of users that 'happen' to be using the brand (and sometimes model - eg Nokia's webserver application only works on the Series 3 version of the S60) so you build the worlds coolest mobile application that can only be used by 3% of users who class themselves as bleeding edge AND you only get to build it on the 10% of them who are using the model of handset your application is designed for.
The same issue with Physical World Hyperlink applications...get a freaking standard and stick to it - there is no point if I have one application for a marketing campaign, then another for my amazon upc app, then another for my subway "e-money" app.
Having said all that.... It's still very cool. - this situation will change in the blink of an eye but for the moment it's time to watch and learn without necessarily giving up your day job.
Anyway thats my thoughts - always interested in people challenging my take.
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. If you are interesting in running a webserver on your handset apparently the apache crew have a mobile server under the code "racoon" that is gaining some good traction.
Monday, February 19, 2007
New York Googleplex offices
If you've never heard of www.Digg.com it's the ultimate time waster, but also one of the sites I check every day for an update on whats going on.
Having said that, an interesting article was posted that I also wanted to 're-post' my comments here as well.
A Tour of Googleplex East
A visual tour of Google's NYC HQ, complete with the requisite massage room, candy machine, and funky cafeteria.
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/A_Tour_of_Googleplex_East
Well my comments about Google and their New York facilities were this.
Yeh well all I know is that when the New York tech community needed a company to step up to the plate and donate some office space for a weekend in order to run BarcampNYC2 Google said no. (http://barcamp.org if you've never heard of the events).
For 3 weeks google were uhmming and ahhing about letting us run the event there but came back with 'insurance' concerns.At the end of the day you know who came though - Microsoft. Yep you heard it Microsoft.
They allowed 200 people all the facilties and access we needed for 36 hours to run a great event. And to be honest at the end of the event when we were running through the list of people to say thanks to Microsoft got the biggest cheers from 200 open source/ hacking/ anti microsoft people you have ever heard.Yep Gopogle do no evil bit you on the ass that weekend.
Cheers,
Dean
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/barcampnyc2.html
Probably not going to make a difference but I just wanted to post here as a way of showing thanks to Microsoft for makign this happen, oh and in case anyone from Google reads this....there's always next year.
Cheers,
Dean
Having said that, an interesting article was posted that I also wanted to 're-post' my comments here as well.
A Tour of Googleplex East
A visual tour of Google's NYC HQ, complete with the requisite massage room, candy machine, and funky cafeteria.
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/A_Tour_of_Googleplex_East
Well my comments about Google and their New York facilities were this.
Yeh well all I know is that when the New York tech community needed a company to step up to the plate and donate some office space for a weekend in order to run BarcampNYC2 Google said no. (http://barcamp.org if you've never heard of the events).
For 3 weeks google were uhmming and ahhing about letting us run the event there but came back with 'insurance' concerns.At the end of the day you know who came though - Microsoft. Yep you heard it Microsoft.
They allowed 200 people all the facilties and access we needed for 36 hours to run a great event. And to be honest at the end of the event when we were running through the list of people to say thanks to Microsoft got the biggest cheers from 200 open source/ hacking/ anti microsoft people you have ever heard.Yep Gopogle do no evil bit you on the ass that weekend.
Cheers,
Dean
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/barcampnyc2.html
Probably not going to make a difference but I just wanted to post here as a way of showing thanks to Microsoft for makign this happen, oh and in case anyone from Google reads this....there's always next year.
Cheers,
Dean
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Joint BarcampNYC4 sessions?
Anyone reading this going to http://barcamp.org/BarCampNYC4 on the 30th/31st?
I’m wanting to start chatting with anyone planning on talking about the following topics so we can hook up and maybe do joint presentations.
- Asterisk ( see www.Cognation.net.net/asterisk )
- Twitter Tools ( see www.MyTwitterButler.com )
- XMPP chat applications (see www.LivebaseballChat.com / www.LiveChatConcepts.com )
I know we cant plan for every but basically just trying to pre-solve the wall duplication problem that always occurs on the first day.
Cheers,
Dean
Friday, May 01, 2009
BarCampNYC4 tickets available now!!!
#barcampnyc4 tickets are now available http://barcampnyc4.eventbrite.com/ May 30-31st at NYU's ITP!
Check out http://bit.ly/barcampnyc4 if you dont know what barcamp is.
Be there or..... dont be a geek.
Cheers,
Dean
Check out http://bit.ly/barcampnyc4 if you dont know what barcamp is.
Be there or..... dont be a geek.
Cheers,
Dean
Saturday, February 21, 2009
#m4change - Android observations
I was at Mobile Barcamp for Social Change today.
Was an interesting day, less tech than I would have liked – lots of dogooders running around saying lets change the world….without any solutions – lol, I say that with love :)
……But seriously techie barcamps are organized way better – At BarcampNYC people who want to talk about similar topics merge into shared groups in 5 mins or less. Some times I was looking at the board with despair when 3 or 4 of the topics in the time slot were pretty much the same concept.
Having said that I did get to learn at least 5 really interesting points and met at least that many interesting people to keep in touch with after the event so was worth the effort.
On another note, one of the most interesting quotes I heard all day was from an Android developer
“My application does 4 things....all of which are not possible on the iphone”
Basically his entire application couldn’t be built for or even run on the iPhone and that’s even assuming that Apple would actually approve and pass his application. I think the winds of change are coming, it might take a while because of distributed application stores and multiple handset manufacturers but all the really cool apps you are going to see will be built on the Android platform and the uncool kids will be left using iPhones.
Cheers,
Dean
Was an interesting day, less tech than I would have liked – lots of dogooders running around saying lets change the world….without any solutions – lol, I say that with love :)
……But seriously techie barcamps are organized way better – At BarcampNYC people who want to talk about similar topics merge into shared groups in 5 mins or less. Some times I was looking at the board with despair when 3 or 4 of the topics in the time slot were pretty much the same concept.
Having said that I did get to learn at least 5 really interesting points and met at least that many interesting people to keep in touch with after the event so was worth the effort.
On another note, one of the most interesting quotes I heard all day was from an Android developer
“My application does 4 things....all of which are not possible on the iphone”
Basically his entire application couldn’t be built for or even run on the iPhone and that’s even assuming that Apple would actually approve and pass his application. I think the winds of change are coming, it might take a while because of distributed application stores and multiple handset manufacturers but all the really cool apps you are going to see will be built on the Android platform and the uncool kids will be left using iPhones.
Cheers,
Dean
Friday, March 14, 2008
Yeehaa BarCampNYC3 is finally here
I swear I've been grinning all week. The thing that I look forward to living in New York about the most is finally here.
http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampNYC3
It's an all weekend geekfest from Saturday morning at 11am until 6pm Sunday - 31 hours straight through (probably with no sleep courtesy of redbull).
I'll probably posting updates here but if you google or jump on flickr with the tag "barcampnyc3" you'll find a ton of online content.
Like a kid in a candy store :)
Cheers,
Dean
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Google QR Codes
The googles are coming....the googles are coming.... :)
Came across this today (interesting none of the google reps at Mobile Barcamp NYC 2 last week talked about it at all).
http://www.google.com/adwords/printads/ads/barcode/
Will this finally be the turning point for QR code adoption in the USA?
Interesting sidenote - I never heard back from any of the 3 advertising agencies who talked to me at MobileCamp about coming in to run the 4 hour QR code workshop……..I kind of get the feeling the problem is with the interactive agencies ....not the technology.
And for any agencies reading this post "will you be reading this and in 2 years be wondering…why didn’t I implement this to my clients at the time".
Go download this message.....you'll know what to do once you read it.
Cheers,
Dean
For more information on Google QR codes check out www.Cognation.net/QR
Came across this today (interesting none of the google reps at Mobile Barcamp NYC 2 last week talked about it at all).
http://www.google.com/adwords/printads/ads/barcode/
Will this finally be the turning point for QR code adoption in the USA?
Interesting sidenote - I never heard back from any of the 3 advertising agencies who talked to me at MobileCamp about coming in to run the 4 hour QR code workshop……..I kind of get the feeling the problem is with the interactive agencies ....not the technology.
And for any agencies reading this post "will you be reading this and in 2 years be wondering…why didn’t I implement this to my clients at the time".
Go download this message.....you'll know what to do once you read it.
Cheers,
Dean
For more information on Google QR codes check out www.Cognation.net/QR
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Apology
Wow the bug finally bit. I have to offer an apology to Scott Shaffer AKA The Pondering Primate who has been raving to me about QR codes for months in his very well read and very knowledgeable PWC/Mobile Marketing blog and to be honest I always thought it was too complicated too unworkable.
QR codes are a 2 dimensional barcode (stores information not only on the x axis but the y axis as well). They look like a series of random dots in a square shape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
You are able to use the camera on your phone to take a photo of these QR codes which will cause it to enable an event, either text, Vcard, URL etc.
I didn't realise until I went to the Barcamp Mobile NY conference last week that QR codes aren't proprietary eg any reader should in effect be able to read any other encoders output...ahhhh well that makes more sense.
EG I thought a scanbuy reader needed to be downloaded to read the dupont labels eg- whats the point of that my handset would have nothing but readers on it.
So I took my trusty HTC Tytn (otherwise known as the cingular 8525 for you USA based readers) off to http://www.quickmark.com.tw/English/download.asp downloaded the CHT9000 software (hmmm they must be so interchangeable that it doesn't really matter) copy the .cab file into the phone, install file and power up the software.
After searching the web for QR codes and finding some really cool ones - including business cards, urls, hyperlinks, click-to-call links etc, I came back to the Quickmark site to start encoding my own http://diy.quickmark.com.tw/sa_eng/?c=101
Now yes there are a whole heap of other sites that will encode for you however the function I really wanted was my business card and most of the other web based encoders were only doing simple single text or url encoding - I really wanted the Vcard function so now off you go to www.cognation.net/contact and snap a shot :)
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. In case you are wondering by this point in the post whats the point....experience will teach you otherwise, go download the reader on your phone and come back and comment-interested in your thoughts.
P.P.S. Yes Microsoft are going to make this huge https://barcode.ideas.live-int.com/ if only they can get it right eventually....their current encoder is crap and implemented incorrectly - stick with Quickmark for the moment.
QR codes are a 2 dimensional barcode (stores information not only on the x axis but the y axis as well). They look like a series of random dots in a square shape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
You are able to use the camera on your phone to take a photo of these QR codes which will cause it to enable an event, either text, Vcard, URL etc.
I didn't realise until I went to the Barcamp Mobile NY conference last week that QR codes aren't proprietary eg any reader should in effect be able to read any other encoders output...ahhhh well that makes more sense.
EG I thought a scanbuy reader needed to be downloaded to read the dupont labels eg- whats the point of that my handset would have nothing but readers on it.
So I took my trusty HTC Tytn (otherwise known as the cingular 8525 for you USA based readers) off to http://www.quickmark.com.tw/English/download.asp downloaded the CHT9000 software (hmmm they must be so interchangeable that it doesn't really matter) copy the .cab file into the phone, install file and power up the software.
After searching the web for QR codes and finding some really cool ones - including business cards, urls, hyperlinks, click-to-call links etc, I came back to the Quickmark site to start encoding my own http://diy.quickmark.com.tw/sa_eng/?c=101
Now yes there are a whole heap of other sites that will encode for you however the function I really wanted was my business card and most of the other web based encoders were only doing simple single text or url encoding - I really wanted the Vcard function so now off you go to www.cognation.net/contact and snap a shot :)
Cheers,
Dean
P.S. In case you are wondering by this point in the post whats the point....experience will teach you otherwise, go download the reader on your phone and come back and comment-interested in your thoughts.
P.P.S. Yes Microsoft are going to make this huge https://barcode.ideas.live-int.com/ if only they can get it right eventually....their current encoder is crap and implemented incorrectly - stick with Quickmark for the moment.
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