[ale] BarCamp Atlanta 3

[Charles Shapiro]

Barcamp Atlanta 3 was a good time, although turnout was perhaps a little
lower than in years past.  The weekend started in the Georgia Tech ATDC (on
5th St in downtown Atlanta) with a Barbecue Dinner, then a kickoff where the
organizers and sponsors got a chance to get up in front of us.  We soon
discovered that the published LAWN login was good for only two accesses at a
time, but fortunately there were plenty of wireless routers around and after
some fumbling we had one plugged in to the wall for WFO (
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WFO ) wireless access.

I had fun heckling the Microsoft rep, who was flogging some incredibly khoul
entrepreneurial 'opportunity' where they'd provide a bunch of serfs in India
to code your web project up overnight for FREE, if only you sold them your
soul (use some Cloud thing associated with Windows 7).  Heckling him was
probably a mistake, since MS paid for at least part of my dinner. But I
haughtily refused to take any of the big pile of swag they brought,
includijng the black T-shirts that said "Make Web not War". Hey, it ain't my
side that's fighting a war.  One of the other folks there pointed out the
bottle of hand sanitizer included with the shirt, I guess to clean your
hands off after working with that stuff.  I was sorry to see that one of the
folks there had lost essentially all of her cell-phone data in the recent
Sidekick Disaster (
http://techblips.dailyradar.com/story/trouble-in-sidekick-land/ ).  I think
I'm sticking with my Palm 3x for now.

Sessions went from 19:30 until midnight.  Among the ones I saw were a very
good one on git and github ( http://github.com/ ), a talk on social media
and MomoCon ( http://momocon.moonfruit.com/ ), a preview of the Keynote
Speech for next week's cloudcamp (
http://www.cloudcamp.com/?page_id=1288).  The Git talk was
particularly inspiring -- this might be the source code
control system Of the Future. I also saw a talk on makin' a pretty amazing
Duct-Tape corset.

Some of the most fun at BarCamp is actually in the less-formal parts. This
year beer was available from the start, which certainly loosened everyone
up. I got to talk to Michael Mealling about his khoul Ruger 10-22 hack. I
brought my Maverick ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/943c/) but
alas on about the second shot a pin fell out of the trigger group. I
foolishly decided to do some gunsmithing after a few beers and stripped a
screw as a result, so it was out of commission for the rest of the event.
The MomoCon guy brought his enormous big-screen TV and a Microsoft 360 game
box (which was actually working!). There were also some folks flogging some
kind of joystick extension gizmo for it there.  I had way more fun watching
_Call_of_Duty_ than trying to play it, as usual. And apparently the unit
surivived the whole evening.

The Rule of BarCamp is that you have to present. This year I gave 2.5
talks.  The first talk was sparsely attended ("Fun Pocket Gizmos!), but went
ok.  The second talk I gave was "Zymurgy with Samples", and I was somewhat
shocked to find that nobody knew what Zymurgy was. I had about 6 folks there
(good for a BarCamp talk!), and I took them quickly through what beer is and
how to get started in homebrewing. I dunno if I made any converts, but all
present agreed that the samples were at least good.

Alas, I think I was one of less than five people who actually spent the
night in the building.  I fell out at about 04:30 and was up again at 07:00,
to a delicious breakfast of Chik Fil-A biscuits.  Folks started filtering in
again around 09:00, and we had a lively fun debate about the Crisis du Jour
(healthcare, of course), filled with lots of fun anecdotes and terrible
personal stories.  I had a great time playing with Brian Pitts on his
Open-Mesh ( https://www.open-mesh.com/store/ ) routers, which seem to almost
work, cost very little (like, $25 ea quantity 20), and have some really
interesting features (Web-based dashboard! Auto-config!).  I also found out
about Ignition Alley ( http://www.ignitionalley.com/ ), found out there's
actually a co-working space right in Avondale Estates (
http://techdrawl.com/new-co-working-space-in-avondale-estates/ ), about a
mile from where I'm sitting, and talked to an actual human involved with
Freeside Atlanta ( http://blog.freesideatlanta.org/ ).  Randall Bollig gave
a pretty fun talk about Burning Man, which I'm *still* too scared to go to.
Lunch was delicious pizza and soda.

Around 13:00, I was standing around near the Schedules when Logan Gray
wandered up and said "Boy, someone should give a gadgets talk!". I pointed
out that I had already given just that talk, and he graciously offered to
share another one with me. We had the great honor of closing out Barcamp --
but his gadgets kicked my gadgets's butt.  I was 'specially impressed with
his Optoma Pico projector (
http://www.optomausa.com/Product_detail.asp?product_id=399 ) and the Kodak
ZX1 camera (
http://store.kodak.com/store/ekconsus/en_US/pd/Zx1_Pocket_Video_Camera/productID.145117100).
Both were amazing and fun, and made my GP2X Wiz look pretty pale.

Brian Pitts brought a bunch of really great EFF swag to the event, so now
I'm the Proud Owner of an EFF secret decoder ring (
http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyfaller/2472391783/) and a bunch of
"Defective by Design stickers, which I'm just waitin' to slap onto my
friends' gizmos.

It was a great time, and I hope that the event and I can both return next
year.

-- CHS
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