BarCampSydney

The first of our fabulous and generous BCS3 sponsors are on board:

If you’d like to be a sponsor for BCS3 let us know!

It’s all go on the Unorganisers end. We are excited to now announce the date and time for a huge BarCamp Sydney 3.

Date: 5th and 6th April 2008
Time: 9:00 am - 5:30pm.
Venue: Roundhouse at UNSW on Anzac Pde, Kensington (transport)

You can register your interest on the BarCampSydney wiki.

There are a few things that need to be sorted out asap.

1. Time

There is a lot of interest from people (regularly emailing to find out when and where). However, a few people have expressed concern about March 1 and 2 as the dates (timing too tight, funerals to go to, no notes from their mothers etc).

• A. Should we stay with March 1 and 2 as the date or…
• B. Move the event back a few weeks to give us a little more time to plan, sort out a venue and spread the word.

2. Unorganisers

Unfortunately, many of our current batch of unorgansers have been abducted by aliens. So, we need people who are interested in become unorganisers so that we can pull this event off! What’s in it for you? Fame, glory, a knighthood (or Damehood?)… Riches beyond your wildest dreams!

• A. Are you interested in becoming an unorganiser - ie help us get this event happening or…
• B. Are you happy to help out on the day (an on-the-day unorganiser) or…
• C. Are you interested in helping out as financial unorganiser for the event - sending invoices etc (jail time is essential in order to undertake this position).

Let’s hear some noise! Over to you, BarCampers!

Mini Barcamp will be on November 11 between 2pm and 6pm (with possibility of extension to 7.30pm) at Victoria Park in Camperdown on City Road at Broadway.

The event will be truly agile. There is no need to register, just rock up on the day. We can use the tent and surrounding grassy areas for break-outs. Come along and take part - get warmed up for the main event BarCamp Sydney on 1-2 March 2008!

It coexists with a futures festival called Live Futures 2020: A World Without Borders. So look out for the Barcamp marquee. Rock up and put your name on the board to present. And if we have lots of mini bar campers we can extend outside under the trees. Snack Food is available at the venue and there are loads of cafes pubs and restaurants within five minutes walk. So keep the spirit of barcamp alive as we move on for dinner.

Wohoo! BarCampSydney2 rocked! Here are some of the reports, pics & discussions already up:

• Mick’s report at Tangler
• Mick’s pics from the event and some discussion at Tanger
• Elias Bizannes’s post about some of the startup lessons
• Nick Hodge’s list of sessions he liked
• Andy Howard has put his presentation up
• Rowan Bunning’s post about ‘Aussie Entrepeneurs’ and Agile2007
• Jean-Jacques Halans has posted his presentation on portability
• Ajay Ranipeta’s post about the differences between BCSv1.0 and 2 and the after,after party
• Bardia Housman gives it a two thumbs up
• Brett Welch (who is actually a Ninja) says Awesome!

Keep your pics coming in on flickr etc using BarCampSydney2 or BCS2 as a tag

Stuff to Keep

• Intro session at the beginning of the day (thanks Patrick).
• Having a Wii to play was fun (thanks ThoughtWorks). So, having something like that would be good.
• Ace people and sponsors.
• Pub at the end of the day. Need we say more?

Stuff to Change

• The venue. We asked for the same rooms as last time but because of the student event on the day we were issued with other rooms (but weren’t told). The venue never told us that there were two other events being held on the same day either. And, as many who have dealt with UTS before know, the events staff are not user-friendly.
• Camp. Next time we’d like to put the camp into BarCamp and actually have a sleepover. So, if you’ve got ideas for a venue let us know!
• Wifi. The venue promised us wifi access but that didn’t happen. Next time we will include wifi in our budget.
• Session times. There were too many people who missed out on giving talks before other ones ran over. In particular, it was fantastic to have some folks from Canberra drive all the way, but terrible to hear Nathanael didn’t get the chance to present. We’ve got a few ideas on how we’ll balance the need to converse for a while about popular topics whilst still allowing everyone who wants to present to get the chance to.
• Diversity of topics. Encourage a wider range of topics.
• T-Shirts. Although we didn’t have the slim-fit this time, we did end up going the opposite direction and didn’t have enough smaller-sizes in the new regular fit. Also, inspired by Mike’s comments about cool tech t-shirts, we’re working on a cool BCS t-shirt for the next one. Either that, or we’ll just continue the BCS tradition of creating t-shirts that for some reason everytime just stuff up.
• Online/RL identity: having some way of associating websites with people as most knew each others websites and avatars but not what they looked like! 

Sponsors

BIG thanks to our ace sponsors:

• Atlassian
• CodeGear
• Freshview
• Newgency
• Tangler
• ThoughtWorks

UnOrganisers

Big thanks to all the unorganisers:

• Christy Dena
• Russ Weakley
• Jason Yip
• Jan Devos
• Ben Hogan
• Dylan Egan
• Patrick Crowley
• and Rich Buggy before he had to be a slave to a client
• and Mick Liubinskas for helping out with accounts and general backseat heckling

On-the-Day-UnOrganisers

and Big thanks to all the on-the-day-unorganisers:

• Ajay Ranipeta
• Jean-Jacques Halans
• Alex North
• Anurag Chakradhar
• Matt Jones
• Ritesh Agarwal
• Jodie Miners
• and Anne Bartlett-Bragg for doing extra stuff on the fly

Let us know about your posts and pictures, and also let us know your ideas or thoughts about BarCampSydney 3 either here in the comments or at the BarCampSydney discussion at Tanger! Yippee!

BarCampSydney is a free event that wouldn’t happen without the support of sponsors. Here are the fantabulous sponsors that have jumped at the chance to give this unconference gift to you:

• Tangler
• CodeGear
• Atlassian
• Newgency

BCS2 is happening here on Sat 25th Aug, but this weekend is actually the 3rd anniversary of BarCamps. For those in the USA, there will actually be a special BarCampBlock event:

This year’s BarCamp anniversary will take place full circle back in the same place it started: Socialtext’s offices… and spilling out into the streets! Yep. We will be working with Socialtext to get this puppy off the ground with the goal of having a multi-office party starting at Socialtext’s offices… and looping in nearby neighbors like IDEO, Edgeio and so on.

If you’re in California you can’t miss this special event. Check out the details at: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampBlock

Huzzah! The first of our fabulous and generous sponsors are Tangler and CodeGear. We’ve got a few more we should be announcing soon (tweaking the details) but these two sponsors get the award for being first for the second BCS.

The second BCS already has debate swirling cyberspace. In our survey, sent out to those who were on the announcement list, we asked some pretty important questions. One of them was whether you wanted Ninjas, giant robots, monkeys or any combination of these. Well, 41.3% of you voted for Ninja Monkeys. In the ‘other’ section we received some valuable feedback:

Lots of requests for “Pirate Monkeys” and “Robot Monkeys”

“Sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads”

“A to E only: Everyone knows Ninja Monkeys move with such stealth they can’t be seen!”

“Giant killer robots, as feared by Mick Keelty”

Eric Rice has offered his view: he think Ninjas beat Pirates hands down. It is these sort of hard-hitting questions that will be addressed (by you) at BCS2, along with other topics such as startups, Web2.0, open source technologies, RoR, video compression, podcasting, virtual worlds and citizen journalism.

So, if you’re not already churning over ideas in your head, get involved! To present/provoke a discussion on something that you’re passionate about (that is the prerequisite), sign up at the wiki, email us about being a sponsor or let us know if you want to be an on-the-day UnOrganiser.

Wohoo! BarCampSydney 2 is just around the corner. Based on the results of our survey, you wanted 1 day, in the CDB, with Ninja Monkeys. We’ve got the first two covered so far: the next BCS will be on Saturday 25th August at the University of Technology, Sydney.

More details about what will be happening very shortly. Get your thinking caps on about what you’d like to present on or provoke discussion about…anything goes…

The first step though, is to register your interest at the BCS2 wiki signup page: http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney2

Make yourself known at BCS2 at upcoming too

We all look forward to seeing you all again on the 25th!

We promised we’d be back and we will be… soon. Looks like early August is the month. Goodie. Goodie.

A huge thank you:

• Everyone who came along!
• On-the-day unorganisers
  • Jean-Jacques Halans
  • Craig Sharkie
  • Marin Ivezic
  • Radzster
  • Ajay Ranipeta
  • Martha Bishay
• The sponsors:
  • Atlassian
  • Microsoft Australia
  • ThoughtWorks
  • Tangler
  • UnWired
  • Hothouse
  • Google
  • Yoick
  • Linux Australia
  • Freshview
  • Milkooler

Things to Keep:

• Venue worked well, but no overnight option although not necessary.
• The computer lab was good for the workshopping demos
• Linkup with another BarCamp
• UnWired access was good?
• The “lounge” just outside the rooms
• Circle of chairs versus rows of chairs

Things to change:

• Signup/announcement list system
• Have people announce ideas at the beginning to help with initial coordination and scheduling
• More detailed ideas before the BarCamp to allow for pre-reading, preparation — ununconference.
• Centralised schedule wall (with directions to “rooms”)
• Put lots more sheets of blank paper/static whiteboard sheets up for people to write whatever they want.
• Complaints about the quality of the food and coffee at the cafe. We can bring in a coffee wagon as was originally planned but about the food…unless we go to another venue we can’t change that. Yeah, that was nasty!
• The third room wasn’t used that much because it was just that bit too far away. If the numbers stay the same or less, we can do without it. If we get more, we may want to think about another venue… Rooms need to be close as possible.
• We’ve done the ‘bar’ part but not the ‘camp’ part yet. Any suggestions?
• Bigger t-shirts
• Borrow ideas from World Cafe (http://www.theworldcafe.com/)
• Avoid conversations directly outside rooms
• Lab was only 50% used - more workshops!
• DeBrief/feedback/idea session about the event at the end of the day and/or place to put comments up while the day is happening

Media Sharing:

• For those who had powerpoints, put them up at Slideshare and tag it BarCampSydney
• Check out the photos at flickr
• Some videos by Nick Hodge
• conversation (and here)
• Discuss at Tangler…

To keep informed about the BarCampSydney v0.2, make sure you put your name and email on the wiki

Let us know what you think we should keep and change?…