Alison Young

This event occurred quite some time ago and due to delays with getting internet connected and the sporadic ways I’ve been accessing the net while in the churn process I haven’t been able to post this until now. Thus it won’t be an overly comprehensive entry as there are other entries about the highlights of PubCamp and various presentations already published by Kate, Stephen and Michael.

I attended both the Sydney and Melbourne PubCamp events which were organised by Jed White of itechne. Sydney was a very polarising experience, the room was even physically divided between Old and New Media. There was lively debate, and plenty of unspoken communication going on in the room as the two seemingly different worlds and views faced off against each other.

My Sydney presentation was quite structured, I presented a modified version of the widely recognised Twitter talk from BarCamp Sydney and Canberra. Instead this time I added more about social networking in general to spark discussion about not only the tools, applications and sites that integrate with Twitter but other social networks too and the different ways we all use them. Slides for the Sydney talk can be found on my slideshare.

Melbourne was an entirely different story, the debate between Old and New Media was significantly muted compared to Sydney. However there were very valid points raised and discussed which was good to see. People in Melbourne were quieter but no less passionate.

For my unconference presentation in Melbourne I took a different approach. The laptop wouldn’t work with the projector so I decided to do away with the slides and just talking about Twitter. We talked a bit about Twitter but also about other social networks, how we all use them and the place they have in our lives. I had an audience of approximately 30 and the room buzzed with discussion. It was pretty great as I’ve never had anything like that happen before and I really liked it. This time it wasn’t about me talking and them discussing later, the discussion was now and I can thank a few key people who started speaking up and then that inspired the others. There were a few new people who’d never heard of Twitter or considered using social networks before. I hope they took something away from the talk. It was my absolute pleasure to be involved in something like PubCamp.

There is a big post about social networks which I will write and publish in the very near future. I’ve been using them for long enough now that I feel I can articulate the motivation and effects that using them has had on my life to date and potentially what the future may hold.

Huge thank-you must again go to itechne and Jed who very generously sponsored my travel and accomodation in Melbourne. It would not have been possible without their support and I had a such a good time meeting all the Melbourne Twitter people who came out and ran amok with us who travelled down for PubCamp. I look forward to going back there soon and catching up again.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending both Sydney and Canberra BarCamps over the recent weeks. Sydney BarCamp3 occurred over the weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of April and was held at the UNSW Roundhouse. Canberra BarCamp1 was held on Saturday the 19^th of April in the ANU CSIT Building. Because I’m cheating in a way and posting 2 entries in one I’ve sub-headed my comments from each BarCamp.

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Last night following the Sydney BarCamp 3 Unorganisers meeting I unveiled the ‘secret BarCamp project’ I’d been working on for the last few weeks. At an earlier meeting we were talking about the idea of having Mikons but they weren’t quite right for us. Instead I had the random idea to come up with a list of things that people can identify with and then just write a one or two letter ‘code’ for each thing on the bottom of your name tag. The others thought this was quite a novel idea and it was suggested maybe doing it in a table, which led to the suggestion that we modify a periodic table. Bingo! Since I had no other tasks I offered to take on this project with a fellow unorganiser, the lovely JodieM. The project took flight.

JodieM found a periodic table online and created a shared GoogleDoc that we could work from. Then as tends to happen she got busier and I got less busy. This resulted in most of the element ideas coming from my side and taking suggestions from others. It was easy to come up with the things that I could relate to but more than a few times I was concerned that I’d missed something glaringly obvious.  I ran my ideas past a few people during the development stages and was pretty happy with the spread I’d created. Hopefully not too much of some things and missing other. A moment of quiet humour led to me add ‘Ni’ for Monty Python and that has by far been the most commented on ‘element’.

The finalised table (for now)  is able to be viewed here.  It’s been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License . I’d love to see it used in other BarCamps as I think it really does embody the whole BarCamp spirit and other geeky networking events. There are way more elements than space on the table which is no bad thing as it lets each group update the table and add the elements that mean the most to them. I’ve also deliberately left the space at the bottom blank. The element list is going to be printed up and put next to the table. On the day the bottom spaces can be filled in by Sydney BarCamp3 attendees with what they’d like to add.

I’m pretty excited that it’s been so well received. It’s also the first project that I’ve CC Licensed which is also exciting, for me at least. A couple of people have mentioned that it’d be a cool t-shirt idea. I think so too and may look into doing a run sometime. Keep an eye out here and on my twitter timeline for more details.

Thank-you to everybody for their feedback!