BarCampHelsinki - My notes form an exciting day

This post has been sitting in my TODO for far too long.

First of all, thanks to Fjord for the use of their space. It was a really good space to have this type of event; good WiFi coverage, plenty of power points, Interesting things (asus eee pc, olpc), large boards to write on (and enough space for everyone to sit)

Only thing to remember for next time is that the entrance to their office is a little tricky to find (it is sort of "round the back")
An interesting and diverse group of people came. During the round table introduction there almost seemed to be a "i'm the least technical person here" competition happening :)

The organising of the days agenda went rather smoothly (enough topics had been proposed etc).
Here Antti live posted the agenda as it was made

First there was a split into two rooms as there seemed to be enough content for two tracks (one more technical than the other).

The Microformats session i did not attend.

Antti gave an overview of how he does GTD here is a thread discussing the tools he uses (these were some of the notes i lost)

Although there was a plan to have two tracks it seemed everyone wanted to listen to Petri's session, so that's what we did.
So now the day moved back to a single track, to me this is one of the cool things about BarCamp type activities, the attendees decide what will happen.

Open organizing and wikis by Petri
Yochai Benkler - commons based peer production Too much content for me to take notes (but lots of really important ideas)
@Pe3 contacts have devloped "think tank" culture - micro-contributions Parvi.fi (swarm). Reasearch swarm started in jaiku #tutkimusparvi
Science is not open. End result is open, but process is closed. Experiment in what happens if done in an open way. Need all of mediaWiki to be "localised" before getting full status Wikiversity (wikiopisto) creating "learning prcesses" not "learning materials" Avoin.org - 3 guys writing their phd's Jornalisim is changing - what is it.
link
the revcommended book

Scred by Kris
Billmonk vs scred Cool conerversation "bit" between Peter (a bill monk user) and Kris.
Peter & friends started to build a "debt" tool, but realised that more complicated than first thought.
Why not change; took long enough to get friends onto billmonk -> export tool by built by Scred.
Scred has mobile client that syncs nicely

A short break for lunch (that then extended :)

Tcl session by Kris
Everything is a string
Mature language
Kris gave some examples of why TCL is so cool for a developer.
Developers should remeber that there is a really easy to embed version for your projects.
TCL homepage

Location Based Services by me
Links to sites mentioned:
jaiku - found out in the beer session afterwards, people had not realized that if they have S60 client they can name locations (based on cell towers)
brightkite - US based, Send location to site. Sort of not very good copy of Jaiku location functionality.
locatik.com - not sure of the point of this, but it is in beta (need a GPS enabled S60 phone to take part).
Nokia Sports Tracker - Speed distance maonitoring using the inbuilt GPS of an S60 phone
Nokia Maps - free maps for S60 phones
During discussion, extra site plazes brought up, but no-longer has mobile client, what is the point of it?
interesting discussion comparing Nike sports Vs Nokia Sports Tracker

Systems logic in design by melanie
Explanation/demo of this technique - Common Needs, Context Needs, Context needs, Qualifier needs,
Examples of how to use this technique for Nokia N770 and Wonderbra
Demo of how this applies to advertising (at least i learnt a new thing that wonderbra has a product for "fuller figure" women!) compare&contrast this to French 1970 playtex bra advert.
Really good presentation/session by Melanie (especailly as idea for seesion was only thought of approx 2 hours before session!)

Internationalization / Localization by
Simple 4/5 slide presentation outlining points
Do it now, if not web 2.0 services are too easy to replicate
Formats & localisation (only USA has states, etc)
Google fail * detects ip - causes fail if using proxy from some other country (not too bad for home page, but other serives become hard to use :) * ff - point by Patrik Hirvinen * not using selected location - try searching using Google.de in finland gives results as if searching in FI = FAIL!
Much bigger problem because customer support is most important thing

Hopefully there will be more events like this in the future.