Tag Archives: BarCamp

Oct 15

BarCamp addendum

Posted on by

When Staeven Frey was talking about brand marketing, one of the rhetorical questions he asked the audience was how many had an iPhone or iPad, and then how many of the rest ever felt intimidated by not having one.

Well, I was really intimidated at BarCamp. It seemed everyone had a tablet or at least a really nice smartphone. I stopped by one of the vendor booths and they had a giveaway going for two AppleTV boxes. I didn’t enter – in part, because I don’t have the infrastructure to use AppleTV right now, but also because of my crummy phone.

You see, the giveaway involved posing for a photo with some camping equipment which the vendor had brought and set up next to its booth, and then tweeting it with the vendor’s hashtag.

“Just hand me your smartphone, and I’ll take the photo,” said the helpful fellow at the booth.

Well, the smartphone I tore up six weeks ago would have, in theory, been able to post such a photo. The unlocked, out-of-date smartphone I ended up buying to replace it has a camera, but every time I’ve tried to use it to upload a photo to Facebook the camera has crashed. And it’s not even 3G, and I don’t have TwitPic set up on it yet, and so it would have taken me 10 minutes just to get the phone set up to upload a photo to Twitter, and even then I’m not sure it would have done so without crashing.

I mumbled something about how maybe I’d come back and enter the contest later, and wandered off to my next session.

Oct 15

No BarCamp for me

Posted on by

I am really sad that I won’t make it to BarCamp this weekend. I have really gotten a lot out of the event the past two years. But this is my Saturday to work at the newspaper, and my editor is out of town so I couldn’t swap out with him.

If you aren’t familiar with this event, it’s a free technology conference, where just about anyone can sign up to speak. That sounds like a recipe for self-serving or really boring content, but it’s not. The event turns out to be fun and really, really informative.

It costs nothing to attend, and there are often freebies or a meal paid for by corporate sponsors. The first year I went, the goodie bag included an iPod accessory which I couldn’t use but which I sold on eBay for $35. (Actually, one of my brothers sold it for me.)

As for the name, the first such event was held at a hotel bar (in Canada, IIRC) by people who hadn’t been able to get into a more-structured conference being held nearby. Today, BarCamps are held all around the world, and are often centered around some sort of large nightclub where you can transition from the day of content into a night of entertainment.

Two years ago, Nashville’s first BarCamp was held at the legendary Exit/In. Last year’s, however, was a BarCamp in name only, held in meeting rooms in the bowels of the Sommet Center. This year, they’re going back to the bar setting at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway.

I’m sure some of my online friends will be there; have a great time.

Oct 18

I take back my haiku

Posted on by

There was a haiku contest at BarCamp. Here, from memory, was my entry:

My door prize ticket
Flew away on crimson wings
I can win no swag

I don’t know if I would have won or not; it probably doesn’t matter, because I think you had to be present to win the prize.

The haiku was about the fact that I misplaced my red door prize ticket shortly after going through registration. I went through my pockets, through the tote bag that each attendee received, and through the pages of various handouts in said tote bag. I couldn’t find the ticket anywhere. And there were some good door prizes, and lots of them!

At about 2:30, I realized it was an hour until the only remaining session that I was interested in seeing — and I wasn’t interested enough to kill the hour. So I got in the car and headed home.

Just now, I dumped out the contents of my tote bag, and do you know what I found? You guessed it. Ticket #284037. It looks like I had not won any of the prizes announced at the time of this blog post.

Anyway, I’m very glad I went. I saw some terrific sessions in the morning and early afternoon, and I got to have lunch with my Mountain T.O.P. buddies Gavin and Erin Richardson and Chris Smith, all of whom were at BarCamp. I knew Gavin and Erin would be there; Chris, who now works for a company that designs web sites for recording artists, was a pleasant surprise. Chris and his wife Amy gave me a brief introduction to geocaching a few years back, and so we talked about the huge geocaching event that will take place next year in Bell Buckle.

I plan to write news stories about at least one, and possibly two, of the sessions. I may also look at setting up a Twitter account for the Times-Gazette.

I was also near sports royalty and never realized it. BarCamp was held in meeting rooms at the Sommet Center, the home of the Nashville Predators. A well-known Nashville blogger posted on Twitter that he had seen Terry Crisp, the former NHL manager who is now the beloved color commentator for the Preds, walking down the corridor next to the meeting rooms accompanied by … Gordie Howe. Depending on which of the meeting rooms I was in at the time (or perhaps I was elsewhere in the corridor), I couldn’t have been more than 50 or 100 feet away.