BarCamp Saskatoon 2011 Schedule

If you were there you know it was good.

If you weren’t, you might be wondering what you missed.

• An amazing venue
• gorgeous t-shirts
• refreshments – including pizza and beer
• people who love technology with a giant thirst for information
• people who love technology with the gift of knowledge to share
• old acquaintances reunited and new friends made.

Designed by Allan Dowdeswell, printed by Hardpressed, worn by Kim Schmidt

With the investment of our local business community we got a chance to improve and to do a lot things that weren’t possible in the past, including:

• A new website, domain transfer and free professional hosting
• mobile website
• professional t-shirt design and printing/other swag
• professional sign design
• professional blogging and social media
• food/drink
• donation to charity (Movember)
• more focused admin and organization
• chair rental/delivery.

Ryan & Chris toast to a successful talk

It’s humbling to see the result of the efforts of our organizing committee and supporters and participants. On a shoestring, we put on a damn good event for 200+ people. And we can do this because it takes more than money to have a BarCamp. It takes people who are interested in building something good where there wasn’t anything before. Every contribution, every bit of advice, every topic, speaker and every attendee are what makes BarCamp a success. The takeaways include a fabulous memory, learning and inspiration from our peers, getting to know each other better, and a fun day with people who get you.

20 XL Pizzas consumed in 20 minutes

As a special bonus this year we had $200 left over to contribute to Movember. With lots of fabulous and fledgling moustaches at the event, this was obviously an appropriate place to put our extra sponsorship funds.

Someone asked about having a BarCamp in Regina and I say, “DO IT #yqr!”. BarCamps in Saskatchewan should be more frequent and they can happen anytime, anywhere. Anyone can do a bit of planning and get the ball rolling. BarCamp is owned by the participants so it’s success or failure never rides on one person, but on everyone involved.

BarCamp Saskatoon 2011

There are a few rules to abide by to ensure that your camp is in-line with the expected framework, but the BarCamp wiki and Wikipedia can help you with that.

BarCamp Saskatoon is a valuable part of our technology and business industry, and after 7 years we’ve built a tighter, friendlier community through it. It’s an event where everyone is welcome to speak and learn in an environment that is not only inspiring, but also has the potential to expand through the initiative of it’s participants.

See you next year… if not before!

Can you believe it’s just a few days till BarCamp Saskatoon? Neither can we. We’re hoping a few more people sign up to do a talk. In the mean time, we’re finalizing other food, drink, and logistical plans.

A few things you should know about:

1. BarCamp Saskatoon has a mobile site. It’s a micro-site: a new product from VendAsta, about which I hope they’ll do a talk at BarCamp (hint, hint). Our mobile site currently lists speakers, supporters, and the #barcampyxe twitter feed, and it includes a QR code to download. On Saturday, it will also include speaker profiles and supporting talk materials, which will be accessible via QR codes at BarCamp.
2. We will be holding a Lightning Reaction Revenger tournament. If, like me, you have no idea what Lightning Reaction Revenger is, watch this video and picture yourself winning/losing repeatedly. Four players, four electrified posts. Buzz in too early: zap! Buzz in too late: zap! I am so in. You must sign up on the wiki to enter.
3. If you bring a non-perishable food item to BarCamp, we will donate it to the Salvation Army of Saskatoon.

As always, a huge thank you to all our sponsors! They are good folk, and they believe in you, the technical community of Saskatoon.

As you probably know, Barcamp Saskatoon is non-profit and entirely free to attend. Think about that for a moment: a free tech conference. How is that even possible?

Sponsors.

We have amazing, generous sponsors. Their contributions, usually financial, make the whole event possible and enjoyable enough to keep people coming back year after year.

The Barcamp event has needs: We need a venue. We need beer. We need some hardware and infrastructure. We need Tshirts. We need people to make it all happen. Some of these things are donated: people donate their time; Vendasta is donating the venue.

Sponsors help us provide the rest: Tshirts, liquor license and snacks, a bartender, incidentals.

So thank you to all the sponsors. See our twitter announcements for who’s on board for 2011. At the Barcamp event, we’ll have posters showing who all our sponsors are.

What’s in it for sponsors?

• Exposure to some of the most engaged and creative minds in the Saskatoon technical community.
• Association with one of the most accessible and popular events on the tech community calendar.
• Attend the event to learn new ideas and skills for your own professional development.
• A chance to interact and socialize with smart, fun people who are, needless to say, potential clients, hires, partners, or drinking buddies.

We continue to look for sponsors for 2011. If your business is looking to get involved and help out, this is a great opportunity for you. Contact Ginger for details.

Hey Saskatoon! BarCamp is back for 2011, with lots of the same old good stuff and plenty of new features. As always, everyone is welcome to attend. You’ll find the event fascinating if you’re interested in the people, ideas, tools, and/or beverages of the IT community. We love first-time attendees!

If you haven’t registered yet … uh … hurry up. The free tickets are going fast. They’re available from BarCamp Saskatoon on Eventbrite.

After you register, you’ll notice that the attendees list includes information on who is considering doing a talk. Don’t worry if you didn’t indicate it on your registration; you can sign up to talk at any time on our wiki, and even last-minute at the event. To help the planning committee have an idea of how many talks we’ll have, it would be helpful if you told us ahead of time by updating our wiki page with your name and the subject of the talk.

BarCamp 2011 is being held at Vendasta’s new headquarters, a(n?) historic building right downtown. Thanks for opening up your new home to us, Vendasta!

If you want to help the event (and your business) by sponsoring BarCamp Saskatoon, you should contact us for information. We love our sponsors, possibly more than we love first-time attendees. Don’t tell the first-time attendees, though, okay?

This is only scratching the surface of what you might want to know about BarCamp Saskatoon. You can explore the wiki and the posts on this blog from last year. I’ll be posting more info about BarCamp, BeerCamp, helping out, doing a talk, our venue, and other details over the next few weeks. Be sure to follow us on twitter to see all the announcements. If you tweet about BarCamp, our hashtag is #barcampyxe.

I, for one, am looking forward to another round of interesting talks, catching up with old BarCamp friends, meeting a whole batch of new people, and drinking some beer.

Love, Kari (@kayayarai)
… on behalf of Ginger and the rest of the BarCamp Saskatoon planners.

How great was that? So great. Thanks to all our volunteers, presenters, and attendees. We can all be really proud of contributing to a fantastic event. I know my horizons were expanded. I loved the wide variety people, discussion topics, presentation types, and chances to enbiggen myself and my community.

If you want to share your presentation materials, we want to provide links to them here. Once you have posted the materials in the location of your choice, DM a link to @barcampstoon on Twitter.

Also, check out some photos of the event:

• Flickr group
• Vendasta’s blog post about Free Chicken Strips

DM us if you have more!

And a reminder to check out Varial’s offer of one year of free web hosting for Barcamp Saskatoon attendees. Sign up before October 31, 2010. For details see varialhosting.com/barcamp.

Barcamp 2010 presentations

• Minecraft – Dave Mosher
• JavaScript Templating – Jordan Boesch
• Lessons from a Freelancer – Dale Zak (plus: blog post)
• iOS development – Nate Heagy
• Sneaky, foxy portion of talk on Funemployment – Kim Schmidt
• Caring for (and exploiting) non-tech types – Kari Halsted
• Better videos through audio post-production: Talk, Song – Daryl Pierce

Just a few more days till the big event! I hope you’re getting as excited about it as I am. In preparation, please ensure your credentials are in order and your fees are paid, and you’re dressed in business formal.

Ha! Just kidding! I’m so funny.

Barcamp is NOT that conference. It’s in a bar. [Some] speakers will be drinking. Imagine. Please: no formal wear. Unless you’re Ryan Baldwin.

When you arrive (2:00 PM), be prepared to meet the strict entry criteria of providing your name to the nice people at the registration table. There’s time to socialize and check out the poster showing our wonderful sponsors.

You don’t need to print your Eventbrite ticket; we know what size T-shirt you ordered, if you beat the early-bird deadline. By the way, if you didn’t register before the early-bird cutoff, you can have a 2009 version of the shirt. They’re so retro.

The first order of business will be collaborating to create the schedule of talks. To make things easy, we’ve set up a time grid — the only thing in the entire event that’s relatively set in stone (see below). But as far as which talks will happen in which time slots — that’s up to us all.

You can join any session, listen, ask questions, engage in the conversation. Or switch between sessions as you like, or skip sessions entirely and hit the roulette table, er, get a bite to eat instead.

As you can see in the schedule, the 21 talk slots are 30 or 45 minutes long, with 15-minute breaks in between. Speakers, please plan accordingly. You are encouraged to allow time for Q&A and conversation and you won’t be permitted to go over.

Let us know at @barcampstoon or in the comment section below if you have questions. Looking forward to joining the conversation with you all on Saturday. Happy Thanksgiving!

Schedule:

2:00 – Arrive, register, T-shirts

2:15 – 2:45 – Brief announcements, collaborate on talk schedule

2:45 – 3:15 – Talks 1 – 3
3:15 – 3:30 – Break

3:30 – 4:15 – Talks 4 – 6
4:15 – 4:30 – Break

4:30 – 5:15 – Talks 7 – 9
5:15 – 5:30 – Break

5:30 – 6:15 – Talks 10 – 12
6:15 – 6:30 – Break

6:30 – 7:15 – Talks 13 – 15
7:15 – 7:30 – Break

7:30 – 8:15 – Talks 16 – 18
8:15 – 8:30 – Break

8:30 – 9:00 – Talks 19 – 21

9:00 – Tear down, beer camp

Hey all you barcampers! Just two more weeks until the big day!

Are you still thinking of presenting something? Judging by the list of sign-ups over on the wiki, it’s looking like we are light on Art talks. Perhaps you know a thing or two about technology and art, enough to fill 5 minutes or 45 minutes, enough to inform or enough to start a discussion, or just enough to demo what you’ve done.

Go ahead! Here’s your chance to get experience, meet new people, put something on your CV…

Some Art + Technology ideas to consider:

• making or delivering music
• digital photography or photo processing
• writing or publishing poetry, literature, art, or personal blogs
• generating creative ideas
• graphic design
• animation
• digital film making
• storyboarding tools

… or some other twist on a creative topic. Provide some right-brain balance to this left-brain heavy schedule!

If you’ve been to barcamp before, or even done the slightest amount of reading about it, you’re well aware that anyone is welcome to do a talk at barcamp. It’s true! If “speak at a conference” is on your someday-maybe list, maybe this is your year.

If you’re waiting for someone to encourage you to do a talk at barcamp, here’s the encouragement: Please! Speak!

You don’t have to have a huge slide presentation, or some sort of airtight defense like you might have had for your thesis (if you even did a thesis defense — I certainly didn’t). You just have to have a subject that you’re interested in, and that you know something about, and would like to hear questions about it that other people have.

If you do want to do a talk, you probably should start thinking now about what you might talk about. For example, I’m toying with a couple ideas. One would be a discussion aimed at programmers about how to improve their deliverables by exploiting the non-technical people around them (And you thought marketing folk just made work for you!). Another idea I had was some variation of the old “Why don’t more women go into tech careers” talk, but with the slant of examining why lots of men DO go into tech careers. I don’t know about that idea; the last thing we need is another boring discussion about gender differences.

Anyhow, there’s also a couple things I’d like to hear other people talk about, if any of you know about this stuff, because I sure don’t. For example, the current state of DRM in Canada, and all the controversy around that, because I’m too lazy to read up on it myself, and I’d be more interested in a discussion about it than reading news articles or Wikipedia.

Also, I’d love a session on animation, or stop motion stuff. It looks cool, and again, I’m too lazy to take a class. If you know how to do this, maybe you could demo something? That would be awesome.

If you have ideas for talks, your own or someone else’s, please add it to the Talk and Hear sections on our wiki page. We’ve created three very flexible tracks: Art, Science, Business. We chose them to help reflect the notion that Technology is about more than just ones and zeros (although it’s also about that). We do want to hear about the art, science, and business of technology. If you have an idea that you don’t think fits into those tracks, it’s okay to propose it anyhow.

Good luck generating those ideas! Can’t wait to hear what everyone has to teach us all.