BarCamp Phoenix
Sponsors: Microsoft, Neurogami, Integrum, Grid7, JumpBox and UAT.
Saturday I spent the day with a bunch of geeks and I had a great time! BarCamp Phoenix was an informal conference so people in the industry could get together. I heard about it at Refresh Phoenix a month ago and since I was in town I figured it would be interesting.
When I arrived, they group had just finished putting together a loose agenda for the day. I spotted Aaron and grabbed a seat near him. People volunteered to lead discussion on the topics and basically had 15 - 30 minutes a piece. The discussion and socialization was definitely the best part for me. Oh, and I got a really cool shirt too.
Before lunch, I listened a lot and only made a few comments. Admittedly, I was intimidated as the only non-developer/designer in the room. It didn't help that I was the only woman too. During lunch, I was able to socialize a bit, which helped me relax. I talked with Dan, who I've been getting to know at Refresh. (Ironically, I found Dan on Flickr before I ever met him in person. We both posted photos from Flugtag (a RedBull event) - Dan's are here. Mine are here.)
I also chatted with Matt Bob Jones, who might have the best name ever! Matt just finished his first semester of college and is considering whether or not he wants to go back. (I, of course, am very pro-school, but I tried to hold my opinion back a little bit. I realize school isn't for everyone.) As lunch was wrapping up, I met Josh Knowles simply because he was sitting near me. It turns out Josh's company, Integrum, provided lunch.
After lunch, there was a bit of change in attendance. A few people left and a few new people showed up. The afternoon was a bit more fun (for me at least) because people showed demos of their products / projects. We ended the day with introductions (
When BarCamp was over a few of us went to The Sets for happy hour. (Sean did a nice job of getting us great drink prices!) We drank a little bit, talked about backgrounds and scuba diving, played some shuffle board. All in all a really nice time. Later, I went and ate Thai food with James, Kimbro, and Josh. Three very nice and super intelligent guys, who did a lovely job of making me feel included. I feel like I made some friends Saturday. THAT is a good thing.
My notes from BarCamp Phoenix.
Design
How do you determine good design? Especially for a developer who isn't necessarily into design.
Books: Non-Designer's Design Book (Paperback) Author - Robin Williams
Streaming Video - Chance Carpenter from EssentialET.com
Stream at or below 350K per second
Video window 320 x 240
What about indexing video so its searchable? What about small pieces?
Viddler.com is now allowing bookmarks within videos.
podcasts - Pwop.com
What's Next - Ray Niemeir
The group brainstormed this list. (And I heard of a bunch of new stuff that was completely off my radar.)
- Virtualization - ex split machine so running multiple os's on one machine
- Transcoding video
- WPFE / Flex - Rich Internet Apps
- Functional Programming
- Utility Computing - redefine hosting - Amazon S3 & EC2
- Digital ID
- Less AJAX
- Personal Web Servers - cell phones
- URLs everywhere
- Personal Data Store - keep all stuff in one place
- Teleimmersion
- VOIP
- video ads
- Ubiquitous recording
- Return to Print / Fabrication - making real stuff
- User created content
- Digital paper
- Software-defined radio
- Computer in the living room
- Batteries
- AB split testing
- municipalities wifi, geo
- Open source software development ideals moves into other technologies
Business of Selling Web Apps - Josh Padnick, web based solutions for medical practices
Josh's process:
1. Business Value
2. Content / Site Map
3. Wire frames
4. Present to client / client sign-off
5. Send to designer
Suggestions - bring the designer into the business value / problem to be solved.
- list of possibilities to designer
- Sell a complete product line ex. search engine optimization
- Redefine the designer - solving problems, not just making it pretty
- Page Description Diagram instead of wire frames - could give the designer more flexibility
Demos
- Viddler.com - Chris Tinchin at Tornado Design
A video app kinda like Flickr. The best feature is bookmarking in the middle of a video.
Lorin recommended VDub a free app for editing video before putting it on the web. - SimpleSeating.com - Steve Swedler
An easy to use planning tool for guest seating. Geared to the wedding market. I saw it written up in SimpleHuman blog a few weeks back. - XNA Express - Rob Bagby
Microsoft software for the amateur game developer. Needless to say this conversation was WAY over my head. The cool thing, for about $50 you can get your own game ported over to an XBox360. - WPFE - Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere - Tim Heuer
I might have missed the boat on this one, but WPFE allows for animation and video. Channel9.msdn.com The interesting part of this presentation is how Tim actually said there were "too many Powerbooks in the room for his taste." Since Tim works for Microsoft, there was maybe a tiny bit of tension in the room. - Vista - Tim Heuer
Good features - search, file tagging system, MediaCenter, Gadgets - Security - Ivan Barreda
A very, very tough topic but Ivan did a good job of getting discussion going.
A list of some of the other people I met at BarCamp:
Ward Andrews - Campbell Fisher Design, blog, T-shirts at Mister Shape (Ward had the coolest business cards for Mister Shape. The shape of a water droplet and laminated.)
Lorin Thwaits - organizes DesertCodeCamp and has a blog.
Josh Padnick - works at Omedix which does web services for doctors. My doctor needs them!!!
David Koontz - teaches programming to art students and his company is Rise and Shine Software.
Ray Niemeir - Ray is extremely approachable and I believe very, very intelligent.
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