Perth

Podcamp for women, library workers…and kids too?

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Podcamp Perth is on this weekend. It’s a free community unconference about New Media – podcasting, videocasting, Citizen Journalism, blogging, virtual worlds, social networking, mobile applications, web standards – yummy! You should come too.

WHO’S GOING?

125 people are on the registration page of the wiki. Fifty one are women – just under half. And….wait for it….eleven work in libraries – that’s almost ten percent.

The Co-Pilot and I both want to go on Saturday- I’ve prepared a presentation and he’d like to help out by videoing the sessions. We don’t have babysitting, so we’ll experiment with taking the kids. And the wii. Kate is bringing along a projector and some additional controllers. And Lloyd is bringing another console…so the adults don’t push the kids off. If anyone else has a spare large monitor, that would be cool.

We hope it will keep them occupied, otherwise one of us can take them on the train to the museum. They are rather immersed in all this stuff – I helped out at kindy today and Mr5 had to draw things you’d find around a pond. Frogs, rocks, fountain, game of hangman on a table…..wha’? ….then I remembered…that’s what I put next to the pond on the library plot of land in Second Life. Oh dear.

hangpond.jpg

WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING?

There are 16 sessions so far listed on the wiki. I like the way they are rated according to how complex they are – 101 for basic sessions up to “V” for Veteran sessions that are for experienced users.

Nick Hodge from Microsoft is flying over to present about how the company is using social media. Stilgherrian will be here to talk about how social media is being used in the lead up to the federal election. Duncan Riley is talking about branding and the new media. There are 3 sessions on podcasting with an education flavour, two about Second Life and even a feel good talk about doing what we love.

I’m offering a presentation called “Blog Fodder”- all about how to find things to write on your blog. It’s aimed at the 101 level – no need to even have a blog to get something out of it… (not mentioning any names….). I thought it would be good to add to the mix something n00b friendly.

Sunday is for “birds of a feather” sessions. I’ll be behind the ref desk at work, so I won’t be going to the twitter meetup or the Geeks in the Grass picnic in Kings Park.

The Co-Pilot? He’s being dragged off to yet another five year old’s birthday party. I don’t think they’ll be providing a wii to keep the adults entertained.

The tag for items about podcamp is: podcampperth07

Webjam Perth

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Great night. Professional, fun, great learning experience, real social networking.

Everyone had 3 minutes to present an idea. Topics were:

  • Self coded email client
  • Co-working space at the Silicon Beach House
  • Self coded photosharing site
  • Selected sites displayed on the mobile web – or why you should write a mobile specific site
  • An SMS information support system to help farmers use water more efficiently
  • How to optimise a site that suddenly gets more than 2 million hits in a couple of days (cache, cache, cache)
  • Using vectors to display True Type fonts on web pages
  • A node linked resume
  • LOLcode
  • Why get a web planner?
  • Web 3.0 – NOT. How to build a badly designed webpage from scratch.
  • How a web hussy uses web tools
  • ICCARUS – Spatial representation of nodes and interlinking in the social networking on Scouta

Voting via sending SMS of the speaker’s number. Cute animation showed the number of votes, but not who for, in the break before the winner was announced. It had the feel of an open mic comedy gig, but without the heckling.

Richard Giles and Simon Wittber from Scouta got the most votes, with their ICCARUS presentation. The video of it is here: Webjam/Perth: ICCARUS . Nick Cowie was second with what was described as “web-sledging” – where he chose the websites of people in the room and showed how they looked on a mobile device. Gary Barber, came third. He felt sick of the Web 2.0 look of his blog, so redesigned it as we watched – complete with non-scrapable text, flashing icons, music playing, tables everywhere etc.

The Co-Pilot filmed the event and will upload the other clips of each presentation to viddler soon.

Here’s what the best dressed were wearing. Mosaic of the geek shirts at Webjam Perth 15 Aug 2007. It’s clearer on flickr.

1. Maybe if this shirt is witty enough someone will finally love me, 2. Do not want!, 3. in case of emergency BREAK DANCE, 4. Webjam, 5. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US, 6. port80, 7. Myles made these, 8. /everybody stand back/ I know regular expressions, 9. Eraser, 10. STFU I M 133t h4x0r, 11. Roses are…, 12. Librarian: The Original Seach Engine

Playful thinking – Unconference, PowerPoint Karaoke and Webjam.

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After a couple of days off with the family, I’ll be rolling up my sleeves to pitch in with the other unorganizers for the Unconference – Library 2.0 on the Loose at the State Library of WA this Friday, 3 August. The presentations are looking really interesting, although of course the program is set on the morning. There is no closing date for registration, but if you can let us know by Wednesday, we will be able to feed you.

Revealing questionable sanity, Con and I have put ourselves down for a round of Power Point Karaoke at the unconference. Karen G Schneider, of Free Range Librarian fame, is making us each a set of Power Point slides on a topic unknown to us, but presumably relating to libraries – I hope. We get to see the topic of the talk, and each slide, for the first time as we show it to the audience and present about the topic.

I like this playful way of sharing ideas. That’s why I’m attending the webjam being held in Perth on Wednesday 15 August. For this, you actually know what you will present or demo, but you have just 3 minutes to do it. Gary Barber, the Man with no blog, describes it perfectly in Doing the Perth Webjam:

It’s been making a noise in Sydney, and Melbourne. Now it’s time for Perth to take it up a notch. Turn the amps up to eleven, it’s time for a WebJam. In association with the Australian Web Industry Association, Mr Super “Events” Man Myles Eftos has managed to talk Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod and Tim Lucas into bringing WebJam to Perth.

Where: The Velvet Lounge (Rear of the Flying Scotsman), Mt Lawley
When: Wednesday, 15th August 2007 at 6pm
Cost: FREE (yeap that’s right)

What’s a WebJam. It’s where a heap (technical term) of presenters have three minutes to scream through a presentation or demo. The presentation can be anything, a demo, an idea, you’re latest project, anything. The presentations are then voted on and a winner receives the expected fame and fortune, err.. some prizes.

You don’t have to present, just come along to heckle, check out the talent, or just the general web geekiness. Need more info, go look at the videos of previous WebJams. So now go and register to attend.

Don’t forget that this is the same week as the WA Web Awards (WAWA), you do have your ticket for the WAWAs, I would hurry they have a habit of selling out. So thats two events in one week. That’s a WA Web Week.

Let’s take this WebJam, Perth and really show people what we can do.