I went to BarcampBrighton2 last weekend, held at the University of Sussex student union (USSU). I normally don’t get excited about Barcamps on universities but I have to admit that this Barcamp was brilliant. The food was good, the rooms were great, the crowd was inspiring and the talks were exciting. I was actually amazed about the amount of new people (about 50%) which made the event yet again refreshing.
I attended a few talks including giving one myself on “Voluntary Economies” (more in a moment). During the day I visited quite a few talks, including:
Barcamp Ephemera (by Ryan Alexander) - A quick and funny introduction to Barcamp
Arduino Introduction - I got to play with an Arduino board to get a led light to pulse on and off with increasing/decreasing speeds. And all of that within 45 minutes. I need to buy an Arduino board and do something cool now.
Open Rights Group (by Glyn Wintle) - A nice talk by Glyn on how the ORG prevents the UK government from making even more mistakes than they already do. His talks are always good for some interesting anecdotes.
How to : Uncricket (by Melinda, Emma, and Patricia) - What i thought would be a lame talk by the girls on how to play something without rules that they had come up with in Berlin last year, turned out to be a lot of fun. It did lead to some bruises and swollen tongs though.
The Origins of Design Patterns - What town planning, poetry and design patterns have in common
Summer 2008 movie trailers (by Melinda Seckington) - Mel did a nice talk by simply showing all the coolest trailers of the summer movies on the big screen, with nice surround sound.
Wine and Cheese (no really, eating and drinking) by Emma Persky - I think the title says it all. Good wine though and I could use some cheese by then.
Ask the BBC ANYTHING! (by Ian Forrester, Sheila Thomson, Dan Morris) - Interesting discussion on the BBC, the fun they and we are having with the iPlayer, and the future of the BBC in general
Delicious Pecha Kucha (by Tom Morris) - Pecha Kucha style session where people got to explain a random 5 of their last 20 del.icio.us bookmarks as they showed up on screen. I didn’t present as I was afraid it would be way to boring.
As i said I also did a talk myself on “Voluntary Economies” and the talk went pretty well. For most part I stole the slides from Alper and Reinier who gave a similar talk before during BarcampLondon3 and BarcampAmsterdam3, and I probably should have prepared a bit better. Still, people seemed to love it and we filled the 45 minutes with ease. Here are the slides:
Finally I made a few photos. I had a play with Mark Ng’sSigma 30mm F1.4 HSM which resulted in some very nice photos during the uncricket session. I really need to get this lens, so can someone donate me £200 ?
12 Future Apps For Your iPhone - An interesting article with some interesting ideas, but with some apps I can't see why they would have more reason for success on the iPhone than previous devices. Especially the business cards app.
New Principles for a New Economy - Alper has an interesting article up on the Tipit blog about voluntary economics. Will be a major inspiration for my BarcampBrighton2 talk tomorrow.
Portable contact lists and the case against XFN - Messina has a nice article up about the over complexity of XFN and suggests promoting a simpler subset of Contact List Portability instead.
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