@madpilot makes

Put 80-odd  geeks in a room and magic happens, which is what happened on Saturday at BarCamp 2.0, Perth. It was a fantastic turn out – we even got a couple of east coasters (Thanks @marclehmann and @liako) to enjoy the frivolities. Although, due to me running around like a blowfly with it’s head cut off, I still manged to get a couple of great presentations, which could lead to some seriously cool ideas which is all you can ask from a BarCamp.

But the biggest announcement for the day was WA’s very own Web conference – Edge of the Web.  After three awesome Web Awards over the last three years, it was a natural progression for us to push the envelope a little. Keep November 6 and 7 free – it’s going to be three types of awesome. We have international and national speakers, and we are fairly good at throwing parties over this side of the Nullabor. Oh, and we are running a poll, were you can put your 3c worth in picking our logo.

Having said that. I do have one gripe about our fair city. After the PTUB that followed BarCamp at the Royal, we moved on to @richardgiles‘ place for a cuppa tea and a scone. We realised we were out of Brandy, so we went out to find a friendly establishment to purchase a night-cap or two. It was 10pm in the evening AND EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED. I seriously caught a cab out to South Perth to go through a drive through. WTF. Anyway. Enough bitching – it was a top day and night and I’m not going to let our draconian liquor licensing laws spoil that.

Anyhoo, I’m off to nurse this cold that I and half of the Perth twitterati seem to have contracted.

BarCamp Perth is but two days away, and we have nearly 90 participants, it is going to be huge. There is also something a little special that is going to make it even bigger, courtesy of Giant Dice, everyone’s favourite local pervasive gaming studio.

Introducing Silicon Breach:

In Silicon Breach, three Web 2.0 startups compete for venture capital by circulating ideas. When an idea is shared within a company, it’s good. :) When an idea is stolen by another company, it’s bad. :(

On the morning of May 10, players will be secretly assigned to a company, and they will be given a secret idea. Every idea is two words, e.g. roundedcorners or morefunding.

Noone knows your idea but you. Noone knows which company you’re in but you. You must decide how to use this information.

It sounds like a really fun game,that incorporates mystic, social engineering and rounded corners. So if you are heading to BarCamp Perth, go and register to play.

As previously mentioned, Perth is having it’s second BarCamp, and in true unconference style, I’m not going to organise a talk – you are going to do it for me.

I’m running a Q&A, on all things web, so if you have a burning question about PHP, Rails, JavaScript, CSS, Apache, whatever – save then up for Saturday the 10th of May, and see if you can stump me :)

That’s right folks is time for some unconference goodness in the West – pencil (nay, ink) in 10 May 2008 for the second Perth BarCamp!

Go an check out the wiki for all the details, sign up to the newsletter and buy a t-shirt.

Oh, and if you think you might be interested in sponsoring this year’s BarCamp, send an email to events@webindustry.asn.au 

We are hurtling into the wacky end of the year – before you know it, we’ll all be drinking egg-nog and having seedy older men/women hitting on us at office Christmas parties (or vise-versa if you are said seedy man/woman). Well to celebrate, the Perth digital content community is throwing some awesome events over the next couple of weeks: Namely ByteMe! and PerthMassive,

ByteMe! is the brainchild of Kat “I must be taking something because it is impossible for one person to do the amount of stuff I do within a 28-hour day, let alone with in the bounds of current time” Black – it is a free week-long festival that will be show casing the best 1’s and 0’s of the Perth digital community. Not only that, there are some pretty god-damn kick-arse speakers (See for yourself). It it December 2-9 and did I mention free? Oh and AWIA will be running a BarCampNano on the Sunday from 1-4pm – so if you have anything you want to show the world in 20 minutes or less, rock up between those hours to the Perth Town Hall.

Speaking of AWIA, please note that there will be NO Port80 in December because of the biggest digital Christmas party this side of Omnicrone-4, Perth Massive is on! So free up your schedules for the 6th 4th of December 2007, and head over to the Library in Northbridge (The niteclub, not the repository of books) and meet-up with others that like to do what you do (Unless what you like to do is macrame – unless the macrame usergroup shows up). Also free. Free as in beer. And there is Free beer. Which is free as in – beer. Make sure you go and register though, so the organisers knowhow much free beer to get.

Oh, whilst I’m at it, We are having the next installment of our exciting Freelancer Friday initiative at the Silicon Beach house on Friday 30 November 2007. We had about half a dozen people last time which was awesome and since the last one have knocked down some walls and stuff (shh, don’t tell the landlord) so there is heaps more desk space now. If you are interested, drop me an email, or throw your name on the Work@Jelly wiki under Work@ Jelly Perth – Freelancer Friday.

So get your dancing frocks and red (Reebok) pumps and lets rock this Popsicle stand!

Many thanks to Stuart Greenhill for uploading the videos that he took of the day to Vidler. They are all available from the Port80 BarCamp Wiki. For those of you interested in the talk that Matt Didcoe and I did on Ruby on rails, you can watch it for yourself here. I can’t believe I was still coherent after the number of Red Bulls I had had (Both before and during the talk!)

The past few weeks can safely be described as insane – even when compared to a regular working week for Perth-based web developer.

As hinted in my previous half-arsed blog post, BarCamp Perth has come and gone. The event was amazing. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how smoothly and inspiring the day was. To all the people that put there hand up to help out thank you – I would not have been able to mask my usual lack of organisation with out you. Thanks to Simone and Pascal for sorting out the food, thanks to Jordon for keeping everyone caffeinated, thanks to Gary for all the artwork and the t-shirts and thanks to the helpers that turned up early and setup. The day would have run a lot less smoothly if it wasn’t for you all.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record one of my presentations – luckily it was the one that I spent some time preparing, so you can download the slides if your fancy is tickled. The (impromptu) Intro to Rails talk that myself and Matt Didcoe did was videoed so as soon as I get the link, I’ll post it.

The synopsis of the day is available on the offiicial BarCamp Perth wiki – go and check it out and click through on the notes that have been posted. We had over 55 attendees which was amazing – and there was a great cross-section of people there from many different fields. We had web developers, designers, librarians, educators, podcasters and bloggers which meant that there were lots of new people to meet. We even had a Microsoft evangelist – Scott Barnes, fly over from Queensland to see what the west coast had been up to. The event has really created a buzz around those communities, which is evident in the number of times I’ve been asked “When is the next one?”. To answer, AWIA there will be organising definitely early next year, but there are plenty of events between now and then to keep you appetite whet.

One final BIG thankyou goes to each of the sponsors: Eduka, Itomic, Millstream, River Designs, Central TAFE, Five Senses Coffee and Microsoft Australia because without them, we wouldn’t have been able to put on the food. A great day had by all.

This week I started work at Norg Media with Bronwen in our new shard office space in the city! We are sharing with Nick and Dave from Softteq and there is still desk space available if your are a start up of small company that needs a desk or two. You can view the guided tour on YouTube.

If you are interested, drop me an email – we can show you around! Our address is 90 King St.

What’s coming up

The WAWA‘s are in full swing, so don’t forget to buy your tickets! Only a month-and-a-half to go. The AWIA AGM is coming up in August too, so if you want to support the industry association that supports you, it might be a good idea to head along and maybe put your hand up for committee. It will be on August 1 at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. As a result we aren’t having any mini-talks next month.

As you can see, busy, busy, busy!

Later.

I seriously could not have asked for a better day. I’ll write up a better synopsis later, but now I am just too tired.

Big thanks to all the sponsors, and an even bigger thanks to everyone that came along – with out you guys it wouldn’t have been the great day that it was.

I need some sleep now.

‘Twas the night be for BarCamp

and all through the house

not a creature was stirring

not even my scroll-wheel mouse

See all of you Perth geeks tomorrow

• Apologies to Clement Clarke Moore