BathCamp blog

BathCamp – the barcamp 2009

2 July 2009 in Uncategorized | by Mike | Leave a comment

We’re delighted to announce the second BathCamp barcamp! Not to be confused with the similarly-named BathCamp evening events, this one is the all-weekend barcamp; a 24-hour+ long series of talks, cud-chewing, beer, pizza…and other things…

A bike. On a stick. BathCamp 2009 will be held on the weekend of 26th/27th September 2009. Pencil the Friday night in, too, just in case we need to drink beer :-)

This year we’re doing it slightly differently. BathCamp 2009 will be:

- held at The Bell Inn, Buckland Dinham, a truly lovely country pub with media barn, wifi and camping space
- al fresco. That’s outdoors for you people that don’t talk the lingo. So we’re talking tents, marquees, that kind of thing.
- an extended weekend, with the main talks all day Saturday and other fun stuff (think band, cider, fires, bbq, etc) around the edges

As usual, the organisation is heading along just a smidgen behind the actual idea/date itself. So yes, there will be a booking page; yes there might be a (small) cost, yes it will be first-come, first-served (hence why I’ve turned off RSVP on here..); and yes (you know who you are), we’ll be looking for sponsorship, help, free stuff, etc…but for now just get it in your diary.

BathCamp 4 – quiz night

30 April 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: bath, BathCamp, geek, pub, quiz, raven, tech, technology, web2.0 | by Mike | Leave a comment

The problem with Twitter is that you tend to forget that blogs are quite important, too. That’s why I last updated this one nearly two months ago with a post about BathCamp evening event 2…

In the intervening period we had a stonkingly good night with Dan Zambonini, Chris Book and Giles Turnbull on April 1st – they did some great talks about various aspects of mobile webness. I would have had videos but [*cough*] the batteries ran out early doors, so I…well, don’t. Sorry bout that.

The next evening do is next week – geek quiz night – on Wednesday 6th May. There’s a change of venue to the Raven which might well be permanent – we’ll see how we get on with it and go from there. The quiz will be compered by the excellent Darren Beale (Siftware) who ran the BathCamp quiz last year (as well as sponsoring, providing beer AND lugging a bath around…). So big hands to him.

Anyhoo. RSVP on the Ning site and I’ll try and keep this mumma updated in future. ta.

BathCamp evening meetup #2: Arduino and Current Cost…

2 March 2009 in Announcements | Tags: arduino, current cost, electronics, hardware, toy hacking | by Mike | Leave a comment

We’re meeting again in only two days! On Wednesday 4th March we’re going circuit-bending tastic.

Ben Tomlinson, Creative Director of London agency Ico Design is our first guest speaker for the evening. He’ll be demonstrating some of the stuff you can do with the amazing Arduino platform.

Dale Lane will also be joining us and talking about the cool stuff he’s doing hacking around with the Current Cost home energy monitor.

This’ll be an interactive session where you’ll get a chance to see and fiddle with some electronics as well as pick Ben and Dale’s brains on how to get started.

BathCamp evening 1

6 February 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: BathCamp, design, evening1, event, paul boag, ryan carson | by Mike | Leave a comment

We had a really excellent first BathCamp evening on Wednesday (4th Feb) hearing great talks by Ryan Carson and Paul Boag. The turnout was huge: I’d said 30 to the venue, but I reckon we were 50? Maybe more?

Either way, thank you everyone for coming and big hands to Ryan and Paul.

One thing that I was amazed at was the distance some people had come – one lady from Exeter, someone from Winchester, another from Fleet. Given the weather, I’m also glad (following bathcamp-mentioning tweets) that you all seemed to get home ok, too.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s the footage. Paul has also written a couple of posts on his talk, and embedded slides. Start here and you’ll pick up the story of the People With No Sense Of Humour ;-)

Paul Boag and Ryan Carson

25 January 2009 in Uncategorized | by Mike | Leave a comment

4th February….evening event….Boag and Carson….

RSVP and more details over here

Evening meetups are go

10 January 2009 in Announcements | Tags: bath, bristol, evening, event, geek, revolution, tech | by Mike | 1 comment

For those of you that have missed the emails / tweets, I’m putting together a regular evening event for anyone from Bath / Bristol / nearby. I’ve given it the “BathCamp” label but if you didn’t come to BathCamp or don’t know what BathCamp is, don’t let this put you off. Basically, if you’re into webby stuff and want to hear from / meet other interesting people then these are for you.

The evenings will be on the first Wednesday of each month - the first one is on Wednesday 4th February 2009. Speakers for this one will be announced shortly.

The second meetup has also now been booked – the awesome Ben Tomlinson from London firm Ico Design will be giving an introduction to hardware hacking and the Arduino. Expect some circuit-bending fun :-)

As for venue – we’re going to try Revolution Bath (the lounge, upstairs) as a venue and see how it goes. They have a private space with sofas, wifi and a projector which sounds great, but it’s a suck it and see moment. If you have alternative suggestions for a venue in the Bath area, let me know in the comments. Cheap / free is a good start…

For now I’m not going to create a sign-up page on EventBrite for these events – if you’re interested, please just register on the BathCamp Ning site and flag yourself as “attending” on the relevant event page. Again, we’ll see how this works and fiddle with it if it doesn’t.

If you’re interested in talking I’d love to hear from you. There’s a thread on the BathCamp forum for this, or you can email me or chuck a comment on this post. Whatever works for you.

Look forward to seeing you soon!

The BathCamp ducks go forth…

15 September 2008 in Announcements | Tags: bathcamp08, competition, ducks, Flickr | by Frankie Roberto | 1 comment

If you came to BathCamp, you may have noticed that there was an actual bath sat on the stage (sourced and carried to the event at great expense). In the evening it was full of beer. You probably noticed that too, judging by how much of it was drunk. Nestled amongst the beer however was a large family of yellow rubber ducks.

One thing we forgot to mention much at the event was our grand plan for a duck competition. The rules are pretty freeform. Take pics of the ducks in cool locations around UK and further afield (extra points for other Barcamps and cool web events), tag the pics as bathcamp on Flickr and add them to our Flickr pool, and then sometime around March (just before SXSW) a decision will be made on the most deserving duck, and its owner will
win an iPod touch.

Here’s a nice example, of one of the ducks riding one of those mysterious pigs that seem to be dotted around Bath:

If you didn’t pick up a duck at the event, let us know and we’ll try to get one to you somehow!

Happy ducking!

Bathcamp: we did it

14 September 2008 in Updates | Tags: BathCamp, bathcamp08, bathcamp09, summary, thanks, twitter | by Frankie Roberto | 5 comments

So, er, Bathcamp happened hey. I’m exhausted from it, as I’m sure many others are, but it was definitely worth it for all the great people, talks, sessions and so on.

I thought I’d get in a quick blog post to say a big well done to Mike Ellis (the baldy bloke who stood on the table and introduced the event). More than anyone, Mike has spent months running around, sorting stuff out, and having a few sleepless nights. In the end, none of the potential crises materialised, and it all went pretty swimmingly, so thanks Mike, from all of us! And thanks to to everyone else who came, who helped out, and who contributed to paying for stuff.

We’ll be looking through the photos, videos & blog posts from and about the event over the next few days, so if you do any of that stuff please tag it so it’s findable (as ‘bathcamp’, or maybe ‘bathcamp08′ or ‘bathcamp2008′ or some combination thereof). We’ll link through to some of the best content here on the blog.

There was some talk at the end of doing re-running the event next year as BathCamp 2009. We’re not even going to start to think about it for a couple of months, and maybe the format for next year would be a different kind of event? (a mashup of the BarCamp format at the Open Space format was discussed in one session). Keep this blog in your feed reader anyway, as we’ll post news of what happens here.

Finally, I thought I’d compile a quick list of everyone I could find on Twitter who went to the event. Might be useful for anyone wanting to make contact with someone they met.

frankieroberto (me), Mike Ellis, Drew Jones, Tim Beadle, Jennybee, Suzicatherine, Sam Downie, slum_goddess, jahcub, Darren Beale, Peter Gradwell, Mark Ng, Dale Lane, iammikek, Ian Ibbotson, Ruth Harper, Stephen Pope, Felix Cohen, Jag Gill, Matt Jukes, Jack Martin Leith, Mia Ridge, Chris English, Richard Harrison, Tom Goskar, Michael Edwards, Lisa Price, Mike Nolan, Rick Hurst, Alex Francis, James Boardwell ,gicela, Sam Machin, Brian Kelly, bookmeister, Laura Dee, Edward McCaughan, Keir Whittaker, Alistair MacDonald…

[man, that took longer than I anticipated. If you're not on the list and should be, send me a direct message on twitter]

A week tomorrow…

5 September 2008 in Uncategorized | by Mike | 3 comments

Holy smokes. I just realised that in a smidgen over a week I’ll be sitting in a room listening to a bunch of people talking about interesting stuff.

The “what I’m gonna talk about” list has been growing. From herbs to “The Gurgitator” to archaeological computing to learning Chinese, this is shaping up to be a fantastically diverse and interesting weekend.

We’re close enough to BathCamp now that I can almost smell the excitement. Or is that the smell of 70-something people bedding down in a church hall..?

Over the last few weeks we’ve been talking to some immensely ace people who have agreed to sponsor the event. It is these guys who will be paying for the venue, the beer, the sandwiches, the pizza, the tshirts, the cake, the coffee and the pop.

Massive, huge thanks to each and every one of them. Big, comedy hands, high-fives and some whooping, please. Even better, buy them a drink at the event :-). Without them, none of this…

Here’s who they are:

Eduserv “A not for profit, professional IT services group”
Gradwell “Enabling the internet that you don’t see”
Siftware “Helping deliver the technical aspects of web projects”
Box UK “An award-winning UK web software company”
Pluggable ”Web development and consultancy”
Carsonified “Creativity with integrity”
PixeLabs ”Web developer, user experience designer and lover of the internets..”
Rattle “We do social innovation on the web”
Insitute of Physics “Devoted to increasing the understanding and application of physics”

We’ve also had some stirling support from Microsoft, WordPress and Flickr.

Thanks all. It is hugely appreciated. :-)

BathCamp events

BathCamponified: 3 minutes, one technology...
What's the one technology that has blown you away more than any other in the last year, and why? You have three minutes or less to tell us about your chosen technology: why it has changed your life, the way you work or ways in which it has improved the world. The talks will be voted on by a panel comprising Ryan Carson, Mike […]
Mike Ellis
BathCamp - the barcamp 2009
*** BathCamp - the barcamp, 2009 *** We're delighted to announce the second BathCamp barcamp! Not to be confused with the similarly-named BathCamp evening events, this one is the all-weekend barcamp; a 24-hour+ long series of talks, cud-chewing, beer, pizza...and other things... This year we're doing it slightly differen […]
Mike Ellis