Flat Hatter Collaborative

FooBar Sessions as Literature

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/08/29

Berkun has a great writeup of his FooCamp experience from last weekend. Sounds like a great time.

Found myself nodding with this lowlight observation ––

I’m guessing fewer sessions were recorded or taped this year. I don’t know why, but the vibe was much less about blogging, posting and publishing in real-time than last year. Maybe this is not a lowlight - not sure.

Seems to me that this is both a highlight and a lowlight. In one sense, people are more focused on engaging with the stuff around them –– the facilitator, the content, the people, the space.

That’s a big win in my book as the ‘must blog’ buzz is subsiding in favor of more human lids down engagement  (laptops, not eyes).

On the other hand, having just done a full weekend of session video capture at BarCamp Vancouver, it’s a lowlight to me that so many great conversations that could have been captured and passed on just won’t.

In a sense, our ‘now’ orientation keeps us from seeing the connections that are waiting to happen outside of the room/people/time of a particular setting like this.

And yet, when things get captured decently, they have great potential to take on a kind of life of their own — making connections and sparking fires that we can’t see in the moment — kind of like good literature does over the ages.

Even capturing a session that is not hit-it-out-of-the-park-fantastic is fun for me because the presenter is always really grateful and will usually go back and see the things they did well and learn things they could do better next time.

All the stuff, those rhetoric classes were supposed to teach you, but, because you never saw the relevance, never did.

Anyway — the weekend was really useful to help me think through this participate/capture dichotomy — lots of ideas percolating on how to bridge the gap.

Can’t wait for Mind Camp 3.0 to try ‘em out.

BarCamp Vancouver Videos

Posted by Bryan Zug - 2006/08/27

Here are the initial .mov videos I managed to capture from yesterday’s BarCamp Vancouver. Very pleased with the captures for the most part. Will detail the setup Roland and I used later in the week.

These are quicktime .mov files I shot straight to disk. Were were able to get our opensource flash video thing going on Saturday morning (and when I say we, I mean Ianiv). As I previously mentioned, we transcoded and posted Friday night’s introductions. Everything worked through transcoding via FFMPEG to storing in Amazon’s S3 (thanks to Jeff Barr for the help!).

As the morning rolled on Roland and I captured video and Ianiv continued tweaking the setup. Headache and sleep deprivation caused Ianiv to have to pack it in early, so we weren’t able to transcode more via that setup yesterday — am sure we’ll get it done later this week.

On the sessions I caught — all were great and some were fantastic — noted standouts —

• The Meme Epidemic (43 MB .mov)
  Darren Barefoot – darrenbarefoot.com
  Darren is a pro and this was one of the best sessions of the weekend. What is a meme, how do they start, what is intriguing about them. Lots of talk about real world examples and the tracking of what Darren termed the ‘Epidemiology of a Meme’ — e.g. how it spreads.
   
• Constructing Creativity  (36.9 .mov)
  Aaron Wheeler – fightinjoe.com
  Aaron is a natural and as he gets into this presentation, he is very engaging. Does a good job of spurring us on to live creatively engaged lives. Note the great slide design.
   
• Ruby on Rails from the Rear (35 MB .mov)
  Jeremy Hubert – Rain City Studios & Aaron Wheeler – fightinjoe.com
  Jeremy and Aaron gave a great intro to Rails. Natural presenters who showed why Rails is taking off and not just O’Reilly hype. They had a great quote in their slides — “Learn Rails: You can be just like DHH, just not as sexy.”

Here’s the full list of the sessions I got.

–––

10:00-10:30
Open Source Telephony (100 MB .mov)
George Pajari – netVOICE Communications

10:30-11:00
Prediction Markets (53 MB .mov)
Sacha Peter – doubleblind.ca
This vid is only half the session and also has bad audio. When the session I was set to record didn’t make, I repositioned to record Sacha’s session and wasn’t able to mic him.

11:00-11:30
Ad Hacks (8 MB .mov)
James Sherrett – adhack.com
Only have the last few minutes of this one. I had a power problem and it looks like the majority of the session vid got corrupted (and no, I wasn’t shooting tape –– too many undigitized miniDV’s to count are baring me from bringing more into that God-forsaken world) –– bummer too, cause James’ session was great. he’s a fantastic facilitator.

11:30-12:00
AJAX on Rails (32 MB .mov)
Nathaniel Brown – Inimit Innovations

• For those that are interested, the url for DateBocks is at:
  http://datebocks.inimit.com
• For more information on Getting Started with Ruby on Rails, checkout the SlideWheel at:
  http://slidewheel.com/deck/show/12

1:00-1:30 
Constructing Creativity  (36.9 .mov)
Aaron Wheeler – fightinjoe.com

1:30-2:00
Creative Commons Image Search (41 MB .mov)
Mark Thompson – YotoPhoto

2:00-2:30
Ruby on Rails from the Rear (35 MB .mov)
Jeremy Hubert – Rain City Studios & Aaron Wheeler – fightinjoe.com
** Great Quote — You can be just like DHH, just not as sexy.

2:30-3:00
The Meme Epidemic (43 MB .mov)
Darren Barefoot – darrenbarefoot.com 

3:00-3:30
Social Music Networking (47 .mov)
David Graten – davidrdgratton.com

4:00–4:30
AJAX and JavaScript Demos (58 .mov)
Andre Charland and Dave Johnson – Nitobi.com
** Was trying a different sound setup here. It got distorted so I switched back. Sound is a bit distorted in the beginning. Again a bummer, cause it was a good session.

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