Tag Archives: barcamp

barcamp austin

Online Ethnography at BarCampAustinIII

When you have loyal community members, they frequently take a big part in managing the community by policing other members, transmitting the culture, and helping with other management tasks. A community manager for Second Life who manages the Orange community, and they gave some community members management responsibilities within the community and so far has been running very smoothly. They also have 3 full-time managers, but this small community within the larger community to help to police the community.

One person here manages African American and Latino communities, which tends to bring in some people who constantly invoke the free speech card when they are being obnoxious asses. In his case, the community has a social contract and a core community where people help enforce it. In general, censorship is OK to maintain the health of the community.

Talked more about community management instead of ethnography.

barcamp

A Great Time at Beaver BarCamp

Those of you following me on Twitter know that I spent Friday night and Saturday in Corvallis at Beaver BarCamp, and I had a great time. I met a bunch of interesting people from Corvallis and had time to visit with a handful of pdxers also attending.

We were using Google Sites for some of the notes, the schedule, and other day of event information. This sounded like a great idea, but it turns out that Google Sites is really buggy right now. About half of the time, I could get to the site, and the other half of the time, I kept getting stuck in a strange login loop. We did get a few of the notes posted to the site.

One of the highlights of the event for me was a tour of the Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) where they host the servers for some key open source projects: kernel.org, Apache, Drupal, and many more. The lab also does quite a bit of work with the OLPC (XO) laptops, and is currently working on improvements to the media player.

I also learned about Wagn, had an interesting discussion about the future of software development, and participated in a discussion about investing led by Steve Morris.

I led a couple of sessions during the BarCamp. I went to Beaver BarCamp planning to host a discussion about managing online communities. I’ve done this at a number of BarCamps, but because it is a facilitated discussion and not a presentation, I am always surprised and interested by the direction that it takes. At the last minute, John Sechrest also asked me to talk about Ignite, since they were planning to hold an Ignite Portland as part of the Saturday evening festivities. We talked about the format, and how to to organize an Ignite event. I also learned that a couple of people from Eugene are thinking about starting a Eugene Ignite event. Unfortunately, I had to leave before they started the evening Ignite event to make the long drive back to Portland.

I hope this will turn into an annual event. I am guessing that a little over a hundred people attended, which is a great showing for the first Beaver BarCamp. Tim Budd or John Sechrest (co-organizers) may have a better count. I also wanted to thank Tim and John, all of the sponsors, and the volunteers for making Beaver BarCamp a great experience for those of us who attended!

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

community

Cool Oregon Events This Week

We have several really cool events coming up this week, and I wanted to remind everyone to attend (I’ll be there)!

For those thinking in the long-term, don’t forget about these:

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

barcampportland

BarCampPortland: May 2, 3, and 4

OK, I think we’ve settled on a date and location for BarCampPortland 2, Portland’s second annual BarCamp event. It will be held at CubeSpace on May 2, 3, and 4.

At this point, we are in the initial planning stages, so you can expect many more details to trickle out over the next couple of months.

What can you do now?

  • RSVP for the event on Upcoming; edit the BarCampPortland wiki and add yourself to the “Campers” section to help us learn more about you
  • Sponsor! These events can’t be successful without our sponsors. Contact me if you would like to sponsor a portion of the event.
  • Join our Mailing List: Sign up for our Google Group to get email announcements about future meetups and events.
  • Tell your friends: Don’t forget to use the BarCampPortland tag when blogging, posting pictures, etc.

What is BarCampPortland?

BarCampPortland is an unconference for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community. Interesting topics, cool people, great networking opportunities, wifi, and more! Building an active tech community in Portland, Oregon.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. You never quite know what to expect at BarCamp. When you arrive on Friday, there will be an agenda framework (times / rooms), but the content for the sessions will be decided by the participants.

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

barcamp, barcampportland, community, ignite portland, legion of tech, portland

Legion of Tech

I’ve been hinting about a non profit organization that a few of us have been working on for a while. Today, we received confirmation of our Oregon non profit incorporation status. Keep in mind that we are not (and may never become) a 501(c) (3) tax-exempt organization (we will file for it, but ultimately the IRS makes this decision).

The organization is called Legion of Tech, and the purpose of this organization is to

  1. Grow and nurture the local Portland technology community through educational, not-for-profit, community-run events.
  2. Make it easier for community members to organize technology events.
  3. Provide resources and assistance for technology community events.

Ignite Portland, BarCamp Portland, and Startupalooza will all fall under this organization. You can read our complete bylaws and see who is on the board of directors on our website.

Note: we are still in the early stages of designing a logo. If you have some mad design skills and want to design a logo for a good cause … in other words for free 🙂 … just let us know!