traveller with a tale

I have somewhat of a penchant for barcamping. Not really sure what it is, but ever since my first barcamp, BarCampLondon3, in 2007 I have been totally addicted. I think the opportunity to meet so many fascinating people is part of the draw, it’s not every day that you can meet people from so many different backgrounds all of whom are so passionate about their thing, be it cupcakes, cartography or computers.

I think one of the key barcamp concepts is somewhat underplayed, and it’s certainly my experience that first time campers are often unaware of: Your talks needn’t be computer geek talks. I say it again, Your talks needn’t be computer geek talks. Actually, I would rather they were not. I work in the industry, I try to keep up to date with tech goings on. What I don’t know about is detail from the hundreds and hundreds of other topics out there. Some of the most fascinating talks I have been to have been about non technical subjects, and I make as much effort as I can to deliver a session on one of my other passions these days.

The challenge is making first time campers aware of this before they come to the camp. So many of them arrive with a techie friend thinking they will just sit and listen, and we loose all of that opportunity to learn. So my message to you, first time barcamper, is take whatever subject you are passionate about, be it cocktail making, modern literature, or even road sweeping, and run a session to educate us about Blue Curacao, Phillip K Dick, or Tarmac!

The conference I was attending in Malaga, unsurprisingly, threw their closing party the evening before I was due to fly back to London. This combination normally works well, you come home late, pass out, wake up and take a cab to the airport a few hours before your flight leaves. This doesn’t work so well when your departure airport is a once a day 3 hour coach ride away, leaving at 10 AM.

That specific night-before I was spectacularly drunk on enormous shots of tequila from a specially opened tourist dive in Torremolinos. The other conference attendees, of whom I only knew a handful for more than 3 days, managed to get me back to the hostel we were staying in (so I’ve been told), and into my bed. What I clearly didn’t manage to do was set an alarm giving me enough time to wash, pack my bag, and comfortably make it to the bus station to catch the service to Gibraltar, which if I missed, would also mean missing my flight. Miraculously I woke up 30 minutes before the bus was due to depart and in my still drunken haze threw all of my possessions into the suddenly very useful conference bag and ran outside to catch a cab.

The Spanish bus service is somewhat unusual when it comes to European transportation, their main ticket offices don’t take credit cards. Being my usual credit happy self I had been planning to buy the ticket on my card and think about the cost when the bill arrived, and so 5 minutes before departure I was sent on a hunt for a cash machine. Even my best hand gestures could not demonstrate a cash machine and so I resorted to the English tradition of speaking loudly and clearly “WHERE IS THE CASH MACHINE?” I felt incredibly stupid and arrogant when the security guard I was exploding at pointed behind me.

Cash in hand I ran straight to the departure gate (which I had the presence of mind to check whilst waiting inline for the fruitless ticket office), and convinced the driver to sell me a ticket. OK, I didn’t have to convince him, he saw the state I was in, was probably scared half to death, and just handed over the precious ticket.

Gibraltar, the little piece of England in the Med, was worth every panicked breath of the morning. Whilst watching the human like behaviour of the apes is incredible, and the view from the rock to die for, the most pleasure to be had was seeing real British traffic lights, sign posts, and pound notes! Whilst I love traveling, there is nothing quite like that coming home feeling, and that is exactly the what I felt handing my passport to the British Boarder Agency and walking into Gibraltar.

This story is about a trip to the IGLYO GMM in Malaga and the journey from there to Gibraltar in December 2007.

At BarCampCork2 I gave a session about how to get the most out of barcamp as a participant, especially aimed at first time attendees. I came up with a 10 step guide, gave each step a title and wrote a few notes about them. You can see the original presentation on slideshare, but I’ve also turned my own thoughts into some notes which actually make much more sense than the presentation.

Let me know what you think, and if you have any other suggestions I might do a follow up!

Step 1 - Prepare your session in advance
Once you have your attendance at a barcamp confirmed, you should start thinking about your session. Some signups even ask you to suggest what you might be interested in talking about when you signup, so that other’s can gauge interest. You can expect the sessions to be between 20 and 30 minutes long, though that might vary from camp to to camp. This might seem like quite along time, but it really flies when you are talking, and goes even faster when you have a well prepared presentation. By preparing not only will your talk flow more easily (because you will have time to iron out the ‘bugs’), but you will also be free to relax and listen during other people’s session instead of fretting over your own. Remember, you don’t have to do a technical talk, feel free to do a presentation on lead a group discussion about whatever subject you’re interested in, be it shoes, technology, health, or anything else.

Step 2 - Go in small groups / alone
This one is a tricky one, especially if your going to a barcamp in your home town, but if you are traveling to a barcamp, don’t be afraid to go alone, or in a small group. Your opportunity to meet people is massively increased, whereas if you go as a group you tend to all stick together. If you are going specifically to network, then go in a group of 2 or 3, split up and introduce the people you meet to your friends later on, that way you can meet 2 or 3 times as many people as otherwise.

Step 3 - Arrive early
It’s always tempting to stay in bed that extra five minutes, but you can do that everyday (or every weekend), barcamps don’t happen everyday. If you miss the opening of the session board, or ‘grid’ then you may well miss your chance to hold the session your prepared. When you get there early you also have a chance to meet people before the sessions board is open, find out who is interested in similar topics to you, and if you’re lucky you might even get some breakfast!

Step 4 - Be prepared to change your session on the day
Barcamp is all about challenging convention. Don’t be afraid to change your session during the day if someone challenges what you think. Or maybe take a discussion you have with some people and turn that into a session you co run. Some of the best sessions are those that form out of discussions at barcamp because they guarantee to be topical. Group discussion session are particularly relevant to this concept because they need far less preparation than a talk (though it’s always good to have some notes and an idea of how you want to lead the conversation).

Step 5 -  Don’t be afraid to leave or hijack session
Not every session at barcamp is for everyone, and it may well be the case that a session you are at isn’t quite what your after. If it’s a group discussion feel free to hijack the topic. OK maybe you shouldn’t hijack the topic, but certainly bring up relevant points even if they are a bit left field, you never know, other people might want to discuss those points to. If it really isn’t working for you you should feel free to leave. Just remember to be polite. If it’s a discussion, let people know why you are leaving, they might even convince you to stay. If it’s a talk, try not to disturb other people.

Step 6 - Don’t make many plans
Anything can happen at barcamp. no, really! You might be offered a lift home, invited to an underground house party, meet the guy or girl of your dreams, or even be invited to another barcamp! You’ll meet people you want to hang out with, and opportunities will present themselves. If you make too many plans then you often miss out on these opportunities. Although it can be hard, try to prearrange the minimum possible. If you’re stuck for accommodation there will almost always be people able to help. Arriving in a foreign city for a barcamp with no specific plans (such as a hotel or return ticket) can be really exhilarating!

Step 7 -  Bring business and personal cards
It’s all well and good meeting people, but if they forget who you are you might miss out. Bring cards with your contact details so that people can link your name to your screen name. If they have something unique to you, even better - my moo cards have my picture on. It can also be good to have your own personal cards to give to people who aren’t relevant to your business, that way you don’t have to clog up your already full work inbox. When making cards you can probably skip the usual concept of putting your mobile number down. Seriously, almost no one you ever give your card to will ever call you. If you need to give them your number, write it on the card, or drop them a twitter dm with your number.

Step 8 - Keep in contact
Hopefully you also collect a whole load of cards and contacts while you are at barcamp. When you get home, or even on the way home if you have a fancy internet dongle, add these people to the various social networks you use. I normally add people to my gmail account by email address, and then use the importers on various sites to link up. Send an @reply to those who you had a real connection with within a couple of days (I’m really guilty of not doing this, so please don’t be mad if I haven’t sent your one!) to start that connection going in the post barcamp world.

Step 9 - Have fun
Really! Barcamp is great for learning and networking, but it’s also about having fun with like minded people. Play games, werewolf, uncricket, buzzword bingo, etc. are all great ways to meet new people. Play some games that get your heart pumping. They are great for your health when you might other wise be staring at screen all day and they take you away from that laptop for some much needed eye rest.

Step 10 - Organise your own barcamp
This is probably the most important one of all. Take all of the great experiences you have at each barcamp and use them to run your own barcamps or help others with ones they have already planned. Run specialist camps like HeroCamp or CupcakeCamp, and run local camps, even if you only think you’ll get 5 people, it’s still worth it. Just remember to let the world know at http://barcamp.org.

Image via Wikipedia

The other day I had an interesting conversation with someone at Virgin Atlantic about how they are trying to engage with their communities of travelers and technologist alike. They are really keen to learn from the community about developing tools that can help improve people’s travel experience, in an open and transparent way. It’s really refreshing to see a large company realise that they need to turn to innovators outside of their organisation in order to actually find out what people want, a perfect example of User Centered Design.

Together with NESTA (The National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts), Virgin Atlantic are organising an innovation day at the end of November 2008, where they aim to gather a wide spectrum of people from frequent fliers (with any airline), social networking gurus, and developers. They want this group of people to sit down and help Virgin Atlantic to scope out the direction they need to take their technology in, with the aim of kick starting the development of some tools that travelers can use which will improve their overall experience.

If you’re interested in going to the event you should fill our their short questionnaire which asks about your experience and background, and they will let you know if you’ve been selected to attend. The day will take an unstructured, almost barcamp style form with attendees creating the schedule as they go, and promises to be quite interesting. Oh, and I head rumor of some drinks afterward…

The event, known as V-Jam is going to be held in Central London, on Friday 28th November 2008, so hurry up and apply!

In the wee hours of early morning, sunday 9th november 2008, I was suddenly inspired to head away for the rest of the weekend. I had been toying with the idea of Manchester to go and see some friends, but it didn’t quite fit. I’ve been searching for a level of excitement in my life that I feel is somehow missing. I used to do insane crazy things, but in recent years I have become less wild. Not that anyone seems to have noticed, all of my friends would probably swear that I am the craziest person they know. I wonder what they would have thought if they knew me back then.

Manchester was thrown out and I turned to skyscanner to see if I could

bag a last minute cheap flight, but none of the options jumped out at me. Having ruled out Manchester (and with it travelling by car) and Flying, I was left with one option for escaping from London. The Train. But not just any train, Eurostar to Paris.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s been something approaching 7 years since I last took a trip to paris. It was a day trip with my friend Sarah, and it was around her 18th birthday, my present to her. We joked at the time that following on from our Paris trip I would owe her a trip to New York for her 25th. It’s approaching next year…

But I digress. I bought a ticket on the Eurostar, grabbed my iPhone, my passport and a credit card, and headed down to St Pancras International. This, however, was not to be any of my normal last minute trips, I was going to psedo live stream my trip via twitter / twitpic, engaging with the world about what I should do, where I should go, and what I should see.

The trip was an awesome success and you can see all the tweets and twitpics from the day. There were some things I would have changed, but overall it was awesome.

I plan to take this idea and run with it further. Watch this space for the next installment of traveller with a tale.

I’ve been invited by the guys at carsonified to speak at their latest addition to the conference circuit, FOWA Dublin 2009. I’m totally excited about this, and simultaneously petrified at the same time, given that I’m going to be talking about “The future is Ruby without Rails.” And DHH will also be speaking at the conference.

I’m not going to give away the secrets of my talk here before the conference, you’re going to have to come along and listen to what I have to say :p

Looking forward to seeing some of you there, and thanks again to carsonified.

I attended barcampcork at the weekend at the Webworks centre in Cork, Ireland, and it was an outstanding success. I’m not sure of the exact counts, but there number of attendees was easily approaching 100, if not surpassing it. People traveled from all over Ireland to attend to attend, which added, rather than detracted, to the community atmosphere. And, for me, it is the community atmosphere that is what barcamping is all about. You could feel the buzz and excitement of people who only knew of each other by internet legend actually meeting. The venue itself was beautiful, although it could have done with some rearrangement to allow for more session rooms and a separate breakout space. The pizza lunch was wonderful and warm (seriously, this is really important, there’s nothing like cold food to encourage people to leave and do there own thing).

The day was a little slow to start, with the bulk of the people not arriving until around 11am. Nevertheless there were more than enough people to successfully kick the camp of almost on time.

Personally I felt incredibly welcomed into the community, even though I was a clear outsider. Even my red hair can’t pass as Irish red hair! I abandoned my train trip to Dublin (where I flew out of) in favour of a lift with the guys from Contrast.ie and Claudgh who tried her hardest to get us surfing, unfortunately the surfing company didn’t play ball.

My talking “A Beginners Guide to Barcamping” went down a treat, especially with many first time campers attending. It even sparked off a movement to create an extra space in the venue so that additional talks could happen. This was mainly down to people not realising that talks don’t have to be about tech, and that session leaders needn’t be experts.

All in all, it was an excellent barcamp, and an excelent first trip to the Republic of Ireland, and I can’t wait until I find another excuse to visit.

My real involvement started with a twitter direct message (my first, incidentally) from Melinda offering me a last minute ticket to barcamp london 3 at Google. Still high from the fun at Berlin I jumped at the opportunity even though I was not really able to go. At the time I was still an Apple employee slogging my Saturdays away at Regent Street convincing people that AppleCare and .mac would be awesome. Hah! And that particular Sunday was my grandfather’s memorial service in the morning.

None of this, however, stopped me. I managed to switch up my shifts at Apple, but still only managed to finish a mammoth 9 hour shift at 7pm, after which I rushed straight over to Google’s shiny offices in Victoria to be blessed with a much needed delicious meal and vast quantities of alcohol. After my first real game of Werewolf (in which, incidentally, I was a werewolf, and we won), I staggered home at about 5am.

First barcamp day 1, session attended nil.

Going from my grandfather’s memorial straight to barcamp was truly fitting. After I gave him an old computer a few years before he passed away he became utterly addicted to the internet, and I was often called around to help him upgrade something or other. A few weeks before he passed away I upgraded him from dial up to broadband, and we affectionately joke that he simply couldn’t cope with the speed his internet was now at.
Arriving at Google once again in the nick of time for food I started to earn my reputation as as a schwag whore. Whilst I could never truthfully deny such an allegation, freebies are not the only reason I go to these gigs. The rest of the afternoon was wonderful and I was in awe of some of the brilliant and inspiring people who I met and listened to.

I left Barcamp London 3 even more elated than when I left Web 2 in Berlin. Inspired and ready for more, more more. Unfortunately my life had other plans at the time…

This weekend I shall be returning to Berlin for the first time since my eventful, some might say life changing trip there last year, so I thought it might be interesting to surmise some aspects of my life since Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2008.

I guess the biggest change is that I have actually become involved in the London geek community. This is quite possibly the most shocking of all. I had already been a student here for over 2 years when I visited Berlin, and a geeky one at that, and yet I had *never* heard of barcamp, of geeky shindigs (like pubstandards or geek dinners). I guess it never occurred to me to google the phrase “London Geek.” Much of this was probably my comfort in having my circle of friends as a student, and not wanting, or needed, to expand my horizons.

How foolish was I!!!

Becoming involved was probably one of the most awesome things to have happened to me in a long time. New avenues of friendship have been opened up, and a whole new level of clarity over where my future lies has materialized.

For me in late 2007 my serendipitous meeting of Mel, Cristiano and Patricia was novel and quirky. Little did I expect, nor even hope, to meet such wonderful people at an event so outside of my scope of experience. These days I feel let down if any event, however small, fails to introduce me to ever more interesting and wonderful people.

Have I become blase, expecting what should be seen as happy extra when it happens? Probably, but only because it continues to happen all the time. Rest assured, however, that I will continue to make my presence on the geek scene wherever, and whenever I can.

Recently the media has been inundated with stories of looming economic doom and destruction. Recession. Bank Collapse. Inept politicians meddling in the socio-economic capitalistic nature of modern British life creating the new socialist state. Ok, I half made the last one up. But the fact remains that our elected politicians are directly effecting changes in the money flow structures on which our free market economy is built.

It started small with the “Temporary Emergency Loan” handed out to the Northern Rock in mid september. The key words here are Temporary and Loan. The money was to be paid back to the Bank of England in due time, and was merely to tide the bank over and prevent a run.

Next came the HBOS Lloyds Merger in early October, which, it is said, the government backed. I would imagine in other times the Competition Commission would have much to say about creating a bank holding as much as 1/3 of all UK mortgages, but that this path was smoothed by the politicians eager to prevent natural market forces taking place.

The last nail in the coffin for our free market economy is the de-facto nataionalisation of 4 of the major high street banks expected to be announced today. The government has urged these banks to take a collective £50bn cash injection in exchange for Preferred Stock. Whilst not technically giving the government control over the bank, the people (or rather our money) is now what is keeping our financial institutions afloat. We are now paying tax some of which will be siphoned off for the banks, which will ensure that money which was ours in the first place is still there.

What strikes me as odd about all of this is that no where in the this chain of events is the incompetence of numerous bankers being questioned or challenged. More over tax payers money is now being used to pay the salaries of people who have perpetuated the current state of affairs.

Now I’m not a socialist, but it does seem to me that actually nationalising any failing banks into a single High Street Bank of England, circumventing the cause of our problems and ensuring that no profit can be drawn from the use of tax payer’s money to repair the damage already done, would be a far more intelligent idea. Of course banks that don’t need rescuing should be free to operate as commercial entities, which would hopefully rekindle the free market, new youthful banks could spring up in place of the old, and eventually any nationalised bank could be reprivatised to the benefit of the tax payer.

So who wants to join me in starting a new bank…?