Copacetic

Damien rails about the same old cliquey gang going to Barcamp Galway. I’m not sure how to fix this one personally, apart from not attending

As an organiser of a previous Barcamp I can tell you one of the big worries is not having enough speakers to interest and entertain your audience, so I embrace all participants who are willing to post on the blog with an idea for a talk. You take your speakers where you can get ‘em.

Each Barcamp I have been at has been completely different in character feel and style to the others (and thats a good thing) and I rarely felt like I was seeing the same speaker over and over. The most common complaint across all Barcamps is “gee I want to go to all three sessions” that are scheduled for the current slot, so there is a recurring demand for some of the talks. As it is about 20% of those who sign up for a talk fail to attend, and of the audience much less than 10% will be willing to do an impromptu session. I had to practically press gang poor Karlin Lillington on a panel at Barcamp Dublin.

This is Ireland, I think we might be the first country in the world with 0 degrees of separation, so everything will appear a bit cliquey from the outside. My advice to people who are bored with the regulars is, go hustle up to stranger, there were always plenty at the Barcamp’s I attended. For people who are attending Barcamp for the first time, my advice is, do a talk. There is no better way to get to know people.

Well Barcamp Dublin seemed to go well to my eye, the only fly in the ointment being practically non-existent WIFI. We had about 90 attendees in total and 20 or so speakers. Based on Barcamp Dublin and previous Barcamps you seem to get around two thirds of the registered numbers turning up.

Things that came up in this Barcamp:

• Make sure the geography of the building is clear to all attendees, loads of people asked me where the main auditorium was, even though I thought it was obvious.
• Name and label the talking areas and put plenty of signs up for people
• Make sure the speakers have plenty of water available
• I brought a big bag of random stationary to the event (postits, markers, sticky tape, spraymount (invaluable!), pens, elastic bands) etc. that proved useful
• Make sure the speakers clearly label their talk, No acronyms or contractions. I think it would be sensible for speakers to add their mobile numbers so they can be notified of schedule changes in the future
• Having tea and coffee available all day would be something I would aim for at the next Barcamp
• Both Barcamp Cork and Barcamp Dublin had the main networking and congregation area backing on to one of the talking areas. Ideally this should be seperated from the talking area so the networking can occur in parallel with talks
• Good WIFI is hard to achieve but Evert Bopp has offered to help here.
• Sean Foley of Microsoft (Clare Dillon’s boss) has offered to help with videoing future Barcamps.
• You need at least two full timers on the day, one to man the entrance desk (Elly Parker did trojan work in this area) and the other to generally police the event, making sure the schedule board gets filled properly, speakers are ready on time and people can find their way around.

I would like to make one proposal rather than having a seperate blog for each Barcamp (we had BarcampDublin and I see Barcamp Galway is live) why not create one Barcamp blog (barcamp.ie?) that all Barcamps can use. Then there is only feed to subscribe to and each Barcamp can leverage the expertise and community of the others?

Finally, Big shout out to Elly, Eoghan and Paul for helping put it all together.

The official Barcamp Dublin site is at http://barcamp.org/BarCampIreland3 please add your name their if you are planning to attend and especially if you are planning to speak.

Full details on the blog. Kick off is Saturday 21st of April at the Digital Hub, just off Thomas St on Crane Street.

 Barcamp Ireland – SouthEast is on in Waterford on the 20th January 2007. Can’t grok stuff in January at the moment, but I may sign up later. If we are going to hold regular Barcamps I think infecting each one with a theme would be useful.

Conor O’Neill (Argolon) introduced proceedings and Simon McGarr kicked off with a talk on “Whats wrong with data retention?”.

Simon McGarr – Whats wrong with data retention?

Keep the data – Don’t tell anyone I told you. This was illegal. What data? phone records, location data, who called who.

Who knew we’d all be carrying a government tracking device everywhere we went and pay 100 euro for the privilege.

The same goes for all your internet records. All your email tos and froms.

This data is being retained “in case you commit a crime”.

If we are successful in overturning this law at the Eurpean Court of Justice, then we will overturn a law affecting hundreds of millions of people.

Key defence – We must catch terrorists and paedophiles.

Hard to prove that this data contributes to those tasks. Was there ever a case, where data retention issues prevented a crime being solved? The Irish government’s answer? No.

Use data preservation rather than retention. Take action based on specific events, rather than retaining everything. The operators already keep data for 6 months anyway for billing purposes.

Put the DRI button on your website and get a free laptop skin.

There are no safeguards in place to protect the data from illegal access.

Sabrina Dent – Your world, Your Imagination

Runs a blog on Second Life.

Soon be a million players on Second Life. 50% will have logged in in the last 30 days. The players online spent 350,000 dollars in the last 24 days.

Exchange rate 300 linden dollars to 1 USD. Second Life gets one dollar for each sell transaction. Made money even when not logged into Second Life. Made 300 dollars without logging in.

Economic forces,

• Land
• Services
• Shopping – objects, meshes, scripted
• Real World businesses
• External businesses

Land : There are 64000 sq. meters of land.

An She Chung (spelling?) – biggest developer in Second Life. Came up with the idea of themed communities. Gay, gothic, japanese etc. etc. Made $125,000 USD in first year of trading.

Builds them and sells them. The plots cost 15000 Linden dollars.

There is a compelling desire to give your avatar a home. Spending money drives the need to make money.

Services – sex obviously comes up. Linden don’t have a policy. Anything goes (within the bounds of the law). Prostitution is big business.

Second Life pays my rent.

Everything in Second Life was built by the players. Linden provides the land and the water.

Events – Throw a ball for 500 linden each. They are themed. Weddings cost around 30000 linden. You can have as many wifes as you want, but of course there is no way of guaranteeing your wife is a women.

Casinos – Russian roulette.

Shopping – stuff to make you look better. Body parts, cosmetic surgery, good clothes great hair.

Objects get built by users. They can be incredibly complex and both small (shoes) and large (houses). Houses sell for around 5000 linden.

There is a search engine to find stuff. You pay linden dollars to get rankings.

Women’s clothing is a big market. Men’s market is growing.

There was no way to do elaborate avatar interactions (e.g. hugging, kissing etc.) Craig Altman came up with a “hug pack”. With this you can do physical interaction. Made 90000 linden in the first year of trading.

Real World Businesses – American apparel have opened a store selling models of their real world clothes.

Starwood Hotels is building hotels in Second Life. They are prototyping their hotels in order to determine what they put in their real world hotels.

There are VCs in Second Life. But there are no contracts, so legal enforcement is a problem. ROI is likely to be small. There is no regulation. The income you earn is taxable.

There are charities.

External Businesses – Ebay, Escort Services, Linden Lifestyles. Marketing and advertising. There is a company called Rivers Run Red which has brought the BBC into Second Life.

You can spend a lot of (real) time on supporting customers.

My store is running while I’m not logged in, making me money.

Joseph Smith – The Ryder Cup, a case study

Strategy and guerilla marketing. How to enhance your presence on the web.  Blogging hasn’t been a rampant success for their clients. Your corporate competitors are bigger and have more money.

Use Ryder cup as a case study. What kind of impact can we make in 4 months. Campaign investment by big boys was over €10m (AIB, Rolex, O2, Failte…)

Create something useful, find a niche, create relevant content, target the long tail.

Couldn’t win the term ryder cup. But the more obscure searches push up your postings.

Became the No 1 independent blog on the Ryder cup (Ryder Diary). Lots of old media hits. Traditional media is looking for stuff to write about.

Didn’t appreciate the importance of inbound links. Didn’t commercialise the UI (bookmarks, Google ads).

I was planning on attending and contributing to Barcamp – Ireland, but it turns out I’m going to see LegoLand in Windsor with my kids instead, sorry folks!