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Last Saturday the 2nd Barcamp Brisbane was held at the East Brisbane Bowls Club. This was my first Barcamp and here are some thoughts on the day and on future meet-ups I’d like to see happen in South-East Queensland.

We managed to take over the bowls club for the day, with over 40 people attending. There were two areas - one for slightly more formal presentations with a data projector and the other for informal sit-down discussion of topics of choice. All but two of the presentations were tech-focussed, and varied from an introduction to Adobe AIR to ‘Why I changed to Ruby on Rails’. Easily the most eye-catching presentation was the Silverlight Deep Zoom Demonstration.

Cameron Reilly kicked off the day with a talk which challenged all of us geeks and semi-geeks to wake up to the amazing inheritance which our forefathers worked and fought for. Cameron challenged us to use our talents and technologies to make the world a better place. After a bbq lunch put on by the bowls club, Ian Kath took the stage and shared his passion for podcasting while pointing out to us that the tools which we use as geeks are not at all simple to layman end-users - a fact that Ian challenges all of us to remember as we undertake our tech. journeys.

The highlight of the day for me was the talk by Elias Bizannes on Data Portability, not least of which because DP is a topic which I follow with interest. Elias flew up from Sydney specially, and it was worth hearing him speak. He drew attention to a number of the issues surrounding DP and (judging by the flurry of questions and comments) he certainly got us all thinking about this very topical issue, in these days of seemingly never-ending sign-ups as we all race to try out new web services.

I took time during the day to meet as many people as I could get around, and managed to fit in some evangelising about the uses/benefits of Twitter. I also had a conversation about Twitter’s inability to scale, which sadly reared its head again in the days leading up to the Barcamp. Friendfeed ‘Rooms’ were announced the day before Barcamp, and I took the opportunity to tout those as well. To me, FF rooms allow the possibility of better conversations than can be had on Twitter, and it will be interesting to watch how the rooms idea is taken up. I digress, however..

All in all Barcamp Brisbane 2 was a fantastic day, and I came away thinking about how I yearn to meet more South East Queensland folks more often. Once every 6 months will not do! It is my intention to do more to organise Twitter Underground Brigade meet-ups and also to go to other Barcamps, such as the Gold Coast Barcamp, tentatively slated for the 5th of July 2008 at the time of writing. I also hope to catch up with people over coffee etc in order to keep the momentum of some great conversations going.

A big shout-out to Peter Ward for ‘un-organising’ the day, and Steve Dalton for assisting on the day, even though not in an official ‘un-organising’ capacity.

Links:

Wrap-up of the sessions by Chris Vincent

http://www.brisbaneishome.com/brisbane-barcamp-2008-post-1/

http://www.brisbaneishome.com/brisbane-barcamp-2008-post-2/

Google groups

http://groups.google.com/group/barcampbrisbane

http://groups.google.com/group/barcampgoldcoast

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to registering a domain and starting a blog, some 5 months after I first got enthused and started playing around with Wordpress.com. I found the level of control using Wordpress.com to be somewhat frustrating and quite limited in terms of being able to customise, so I’ve gone with a Wordpress.org installation now.

Inspired by the bold approach taken by Stilgherrian last week when he undertook his first experimental live stream podcast, and greatly encouraged by fellow Brisbane twitterer and budding podcaster, Ian Kath, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and just get started, even if things are a little bit clunky and I don’t have the blog setup exactly as I would like it to be. I’ve realised that while tools such as Twitter have been a real boon for connecting with people, and the BTUB (Brisbane Twitter Underground Brigade) meetup last weekend was a great way to meet some of those people in the flesh, people are going to be able to get to know a lot more about where I’m coming from if I start blogging.

This week I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what it is that goes on in my head relating to tech. I have spent a number of hours trying to come up with a term to describe my approach to tech. The best thing I’ve been able to come up with so far is that i do IT Knowledge Management. To me, this means that I am fascinated by the use of information technology to formulate knowledge bases which facilitate a better workplace, organisational improvement, or deeper social connections, depending on the type of tools/systems etc being used and the scenario in which they are being used. I may post more on this as I have more conversations about it and my own thoughts crystallise more. For me it has been a real breakthrough to be able to put some kind of label to my approach, rather than being labelled by my job title.

As far as the blog goes, it will have a primarily tech. focus, and I will likely post about the things that I have been following closely for the past 6 months or so - social media, attention management, aggregation and online identity, to name a few. Hopefully this will serve as a good dumping ground for my thoughts and who knows, some of it may be of interest to you too!