I was catching up with superjeans earlier and Sheffield barcamp came up. Turns out that there’s a few folks at work that are interested in what happens but can’t make it – so it looks like I’m blogging about what goes on.
Friday | Saturday | Sunday
I know a couple of the guys organising the event, so I turned up a little early to see if I could lend a hand. After being employed pulling the balls off springy plastic headband things (my collaborator in the wanton destruction thinks that they’re going to used in some kind of human tag cloud… what could possibly go wrong?) I acquired my very own pair of round-ended scissors and put my pre-school-taught l33t skillz in cutting stuff up to good use preparing what could be the most vital ingredient of the event – the beer tokens.
Once my work was done, I pulled out my laptop, hooked up the wireless network here and started on this post. As an aside, I have to take my hat off to the Ubuntu guys – the ease of use of the connectivity aspects of 8.10 is fantastic – it’s just seamless. Maybe that’s not such a great thing – is the feeling of victorious elation I used to feel after those running battles with sound cards, XFree86 and networking a thing of the past? No, I’ve decided – it is a great thing after all.
If I’d thought ahead, I’d probably have bought a camera – I only have my phone on me and the camera on that is absolutely rubbish.
The sponsorship behind the event is pretty impressive. Tickets are free, (some) beer is free, dinner is free (and there’ll be free breakfast tomorrow too) and the talks are free. Thanks a lot to the sponsors!
There’s not much going on in the way of formal events going on tonight – it’s more a meet and greet while things get set up – good for me because there’s plenty of familiar faces from geekups I want to catch up with! The one scheduled session is called ‘Whose Slide is it Anyway?’, where the organizers find slideshows on t’internet and folks present them. Pretty good icebreaker.
As 1am draws near, I’ve heard presentations on Mario Kart, Abu Dhabi and worryingly Stickiness, my usual love-hate relationship with Hoegaarden is well underway and most people still left awake are sporting springy headband things which, as it turns out, are for you to advertise your interests to the rest of the group.
Time to call a taxi, as at 10am-ish tomorrow morning the talks and presentations start…
The BarCamp Sheffield 2008 Photos
The BarCamp Sheffield 2008 Site
The BarCamp Sheffield 2008 Forum
crossedstreams.com 