A quickie.
1. If you haven’t joined the BathCamp Ning space yet, do it at http://bathcamp.ning.com
2. If you haven’t put pre-Christmas drinks in your diary, do that too: http://bathcamp.ning.com/events/prechristmas-beers. We’re hoping this will be the first of many meetups so if you can’t make this one, don’t panic - there will be more…
Get in touch here or over there or via email if you’d like to help us organise, have money to pay for beers or want to get involved in any way.
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!
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]
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:
We’ve also had some stirling support from Microsoft, WordPress and Flickr.
Thanks all. It is hugely appreciated. :-)
I work at Carsonified in Bath. We do a number of events focussing on the web industry including “The Future of Web Apps”, “The Future of Web Design” and “Fuel” which looks at how you can take advantage of web technologies to help run your business more effectively. Now and again I get back to the code. Most recently I helped produce “The Mattinator”, a web app created by Carsonified using the Django web framework in four days. The app allows you to post to multiple twitter accounts from one interface. I have also run a couple of my own workshops on PHP5 at our offices in Bath which I really enjoyed. Prior to joining Carsonified I worked as a freelance web developer focussing mainly on .Net and PHP projects.
Like many other people on this blog I have a young child who takes up the majority of my free time. Now and again I still manage to crowbar in some personal projects and have a couple of ideas I am working on. Having only moved to Bath this year I am also really enjoying discovering the South West. We also seem to get a lot of visitors desperate to escape London, our previous home, for a weekend.
I have never been to a BarCamp style event and it’s great that it’s right on my doorstep. It will also be good to learn more about what’s going on in the vibrant local geek scene, a good opportunity to put Twitter names to faces, meet people interested in similar stuff and to learn something new.
My daughter, watching her grow and develop over the last year has been amazing and challenging. I also love learning and I still get a kick out of discovering something new, whether it be a new web framework such as Django or reading about Modernist architecture, great graphic design or discovering a new Belgian beer!
My abstract answer would be time, there’s just never enough. On a more “practical” level I would throw in a bunch of friends, the family, a crate or two of cold Peronis, a selection of pizzas, a tub of Italian ice cream, a great view to gaze at and a miraculous hangover cure for the following day.
You probably noticed already, what with mailings, tweetings, that thing normal people call “talking to others” and whatever other means you have of communicating that all tickets for BathCamp have now sold out. This is great news for us (an awesome 70ish people have signed up!) but not so great news if you didn’t manage to score one in time.
Although we’re absolutely not allowed to sell tickets on the door, there is a glimmer of hope: chuck your name in this form and we’ll get in touch if/when we have drop-outs. It’s on a first-come, first-serve basis but you never know.
I’m a freelance web developer, running my own wee company, NSTW Design (yes, terribly out of date!). I mangle PHP, JavaScript and some other front end nonsense into things that help power businesses and egos (mine included). In folk song stylee, I tell some of the perilous tales of my glamorous developer adventures over at Seventytwo, where I team up with a designer deviant named Alistair to help keep our respective minds sane. It might just be working so far.
As I don’t have a boss and I also have some very pro-active clients, I’m able to spend quite a lot of my time researching new tools and services that I can use. I consider this rather bloody good luck, as it allows me to pitch some mental ideas that are sometimes mad enough to get implemented. I’m finding that I’m spending more and more of my time coding and writing about web stuff when I’m not working, so it really kind of all blurs into one. I’m personally riding on a second wind of passion for the web and often feel compelled to exclaim, “Darn, this Internet rubbish ain’t ‘alf bad now!” (When Twitter works for example, oof…)
I live for music and it’s rare that you’ll ever find me without some tunes at hand. Prog rock is my poison of choice, as well as some nice lo-fi art rock-esque happenings. In the past couple of years I’ve reignited my early teens passion for cycling, so I try and get out for a nice ride at least once a week to make sure my muscles don’t atrophy from so much time in front of the computer.
I’m currently planning an epic 3 month bunk-off at the start of next year to go snowboarding in Whistler, Canada. Apart from imbibing heroic quantities of the local culture, I plan to work on some super secret web apps whilst I’m there. They’re so super secret that even the government doesn’t know about them, but that’s probably a good thing.
Also, jQuery and Zend Framework are so freakin’ good it hurts.
I predict that the collective brainpower at BathCamp will be mind blowing, so I definitely want to witness that. I haven’t been to many geek events lately and all the ones I’ve attended in the past (dConstruct, Future of Web Apps) have been a great experience and I’ve met some really cool people. I like the idea of a more DIY, “people powered” event where everyone can get involved. I also prefer sleeping bags to duvet covers, so it’s really going to be a win-win event for me.
Ritz Crackers. They’re just so damn moreish, and with all that salt you might be able to pull off your very own Dead Sea. Tasty AND practical! For too long Ritz Crackers have been underrated by the cracker community and I think such a foolish stunt might convince people of what they’re missing out on. Perhaps.
Simon blogs at Seventytwo.co.uk and occasionally shares some visual delights over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/allidid
What do you do in your day job?I work for the Institute of Physics Publishing in Bristol, my official job title is “Information Systems Developer”. I just am just reminded that I have worked here for seven years (shocked). Originally I was hired as a ColdFusion developer but have ranged across a variety of different technologies. Currently I am almost exclusively working in Java and towards the back-end of web applications, which I enjoy.
I am not sure I actually get as much as 10% thanks to my three sons. However they need me less and less these days so the situation is improving, mostly is has got to the stage where they want to overpower me physically or mentally (which will happen sometime soon). Much of my free time is taken up with learning Chinese and other language learning related activities at the moment. I have been looking around for a European language to learn and settled on German so that is likely to keep me busy also.
Some of my 10% time at work is spent secretly doing things that I think are work related but that my bosses may not. I guess many of us are in that position, there is always some new technology or approach to investigate, I never feel I have time do enough investigating.
Recently that would have be learning. I work in an industry that requires continual learning and my hobbies usually involve some kind of learning. It seems that modern technology and the Internet are providing opportunities to learn things faster and with less overhead (effort still required though). I am still exploring new ways to learn and becoming increasing despondent about how little these changes are reflected in the way that my sons are educated. When I can I have started trying to repair some of the damage.
Mainly because it sounds fun and interesting, I haven’t attended this kind of event before. Of course it helps that is it is very local and that I actually know at least one person who is going. I spend a lot of time on the back-end of web applications these days and it seems some of the more creative types (dangerous to pigeonhole I know) have more fun. I guess I need to get out more. It would be a real bonus if there are any native Chinese speakers or learners there of course.
Dorset Naga chile peppers (the hottest you can get); completely pointless as there would be enough heat and flavour there to last many lifetimes, but it would be rather beautiful. This is typical chile-head mentality which goes something along the lines of “Wow I grew three plants of that really hot chile this year and had more more than I could possibly use, next year I will grow ten.” I am prone to chile-head mentality unfortunately.
Chris blogs at Chris on the Web and Friedelcraft and Tweets at chris_english and chris_mandarin.
Alistair MacDonald dropped us a line with a simple idea:
“As a complete experiment I have been adding a car pooling section to the wikis of the BarCamps I am attending where I can share part of the journey. It might just not work, but you don’t know until you try I guess.“
I think this is a great idea. If you’re travelling to BathCamp (from however far, even Bristol!) then chuck your details in to the relevant section of the BathCamp wiki page. Thanks Alistair!
What do you do in your day job?I’ve been getting paid to build websites for around 10 years now, the last 6 of which I’ve been self employed running a small development firm. The first was in London which I exited when we’d had enough of the smoke and my new venture is just over 2 years old, based in the same village as our home on the Worcs/Glos borders.
I’m still trying to strike the right balance between being a manager and developer and I’m not convinced I’ve got it nailed just yet. One thing I am clear on though is that I am much happier keeping the business lean. In London we were a team of 8 full-time and with Siftware it’s just 3, but I’m probably more profitable and I’m certainly a lot more relaxed (though it doesn’t feel like it sometimes).
My skills are quite broad and in addition to the lots of different hats one needs to wear as a small business owner my strongest skills are PHP/MySQL (Symfony ideally), JavaScript and Linux administration. My XHTML/CSS is probably above average though I normally leave the joy of debugging IE6 problems to others.
Well I’ve 5yr old twins and a 6 month old baby so there’s not much time left over. I’ve definitely jumped on the veg growing bandwagon with this being my first full-on season and I’m really happy with the results so far. I am also about to start a course in carpentry as I feel the need to build something from physical materials for a change. I’m an improving windsurfer and I try to get at least one decent hike in per year.
The west has one of the most vibrant digital scenes in the UK and every time I go along to a meet-up, whether it’s some informal Underscore geeky beerage, a Skillswap or other industry related event I come away feeling inspired and normally with some new ideas. That and a chance to meet more of the people I’ve encountered on Underscore or Twitter makes it a no-brainer for me and if that’s not enough, a fiver seemed a cheap way to get a new T-shirt.
First and foremost I am determined to see my kids grow up. I am also looking at options that will allow me to be personally involved in producing a percentage of my family’s food every year and we’re (slowly) becoming more in-tune with what food is naturally and locally available in a given season. I also feel strongly that people should return to living within their means and save a percentage of their income for unforeseen circumstances rather than spending every penny on shite that they don’t really need (though I can sometimes be as guilty as the next person when it comes to shiny things with flashing lights)
My wife Cathie and I also have a business idea that we’re working on in our ’spare spare’ time that we’re both extremely excited about, though it’s too early to discuss openly yet.
Prosaic as it might be, I’d fill it with hot water. Then, with a large malt and a good novel, I’d lock the door and retire to it for an hour warning the small people in my house that they’d better not interrupt me, or else.
twitter / bathcamp
