A week has now passed since BarCamp Belfast - giving us time to reflect on everything we learnt, how excellently the event was organised (ahem) and how the potentially explosive decision to order pizza from somewhere other than Cafe Renoir went by relatively unnoticed. A week was also roughly enough time for most of the presenters to reply to my initial request for their slides, which I’ve now uploaded in vaguely chronological order in relation to the lineup of talks on the day.

Morning Sessions

• Gerard McBreen - Adobe Flex and the Digital Circle
• Lee Monroe - Usability in Web Design
• Paul May - Staying Relevant in Technology
• Florian Hollerweger - Pure Data & Gem
• Simon McCartney - Rapid Web Service in Rails
• Daniel McLaughlin - Nagios Server and Network Monitoring
• Grainne Lennon - Seedcorn Competition

Afternoon Sessions

• Nick Fitzsimons - New Music Economy
• Emma Persky - Vision Based Tracking
• Brian Cleland - Open Source Trends
• Andrew Gribben - Parallel World of Speciality Coffee
• Brian O’Neill - Successful Freelancing
• Andy McMillan - Coffee Shop Working & Coworking Belfast
• David Rice - Scaling Rails (and the story of the mighty fail whale)

(* I’ll keep this updated as the rest hopefully arrive in my inbox)

Nothing is set in stone just yet, but attempts will be made to hold a TechLudd this side of the border over the summer - most likely August - and another BarCamp sometime in the immediate new year. Desperately enough, I’ve already started plotting my next talk …

It’s safe to say BarCamp ‘08 was a rip-roaring success - Flickr is already filling up quite nicely with photos, and with any luck videos and presentation files will be online and available over the next few days. So with the madness behind us I figured it was time to reflect on some lessons learnt, and potential improvements to running the next BarCamp Belfast.

• Registration, and the process surrounding getting guests registered and speakers scheduled needed a bit more thought in advance. Introducing a self-registering process in the foyer seems like a better idea, and means we don’t need to be running out of talks every time someone new arrives (thanks again, Phil). More formal name badges might be a nice touch next time too.
• Schedule, and people running over time was a slight problem. Next year, finding out before hand how long people want to talk for then making sure they stick to it will be a definite priority. Syncing the rooms up using this method should be a little tighter than the experimental just-wait-til-they’re-done approach.
• Internet, and the state of the wifi on the day probably couldn’t have been helped, but planning and testing that a little more in advance should be something to consider next year. Thanks again so much to everyone - especially Matt Johnston - for bringing routers and attempting to configure them around the various security problems.
• Assistance, and specifically getting people to do the dirty work is something I’ll need to potentially bribe people into next year. I overheard a bunch of conversations at lunch I would have loved to have been involved in - but I was too busy making sure everyone was full of pizza. Definitely didn’t network enough, but thats the price you pay for being the organiser!
• Publicity, I think, was fine this year - numbers weren’t too far from hitting triple figures, and every possible avenue was explored in making sure people knew it was happening. Next time, more of a focus on getting students in - especially if we remain at Queen’s - and getting the press down to at least take a few snaps.

I already have so many ideas on how to tackle these issues and make the next BarCamp even better, planning has already begun in the deepest reaches of my mind and it’s only a matter of time until those ideas meet paper, screen and conversation. Thanks again to everyone who attended, everyone who talked and everyone who pitched in!

How about you, any suggestions on how the next unconference might be improved?

BarCamp attendance continues to explode with over 40 people now pre-registered and almost 15 talks scheduled. T-shirts have arrived, badges are in the post, food is pre-ordered and facilities are in the final stages of configuration, so there’s little more left to do than finish up my presentation and keep everything in check. The entire unconference will also be streaming live online (with thanks to Richard Jolly) alongside the inevitable bout of live-blogging and twittering.

9:00 - 10:00 - Session-setup (registering) & “networking”
10:00 - 12:30 - Morning sessions and workshops
12:30 - 2:00 - Lunch (provided)
2:00 - 5:00 - Afternoon sessions and workshops
5:00 - 5:30 - Wrap up and clean up
5:30 - late - Pub

As well as the talks (of which we should comfortable schedule about 20 or so over two rooms), we’ll also fit in a few interactive sessions up in the flexible teaching space (read: lots of shiny gadgets) and a series of lightening sessions, for anyone interested in speaking for a few minutes on smaller subjects. I’m totally open to having anything and everything happen, so if you have an idea for something unique, get in touch and I’ll make sure the facilities are available.

Since we have a lot of people coming from out of town, a meetup on Friday evening has been suggested. Anyone interested in a few pints should head along to McHughs on Friday afternoon at 6pm - as usual you can email / twitter me nearer the time - plan to make it an early night, though!

As previously discussed, BarCamp is returning to Belfast for the second year running, now with me at the helm. I’m now happy to report that we have a confirmed date and venue for the un-conference which thanks to it’s nature is more than enough for the rest of the planning to begin perpetuating itself.

BarCamp Belfast ‘08
Saturday 21st June, 9am - 5pm
Queens University Belfast, Peter Froggatt Centre

Just to be clear (as I’ve had a few emails about this already) - if you’re interested in giving a talk or presentation at the event, all you need to do is pre-register under “Speakers” on the wiki and show up on the day prepared to present - you don’t need permission from me, but I’ll be in contact with the details of the setup in due course. Also, if your name is on the Attendees list, it should also be trying its best to be under Speakers too - everyone has something of interest that they can share with the group, so long as it’s vaguely related to technology or an interesting tangent. Information on sponsorship, setup and my master plans for lunch and merchandising are on the way!

And please, share a link to the wiki or this blog post on as many groups, blogs, twitter feeds, IRC channels, mailing lists and address book contacts as possible!

Are you aware of what BarCamp is? Some of you might be. BarCamp is a user-generated conference where attendees give talks typically often focusing on web applications, open source technologies, social protocols and open data formats. Attendees are responsible for not only listening diligently (and scoffing pizza), but also for the talks themselves, sharing their areas of expertise with the group - extending the ethos of OpenCoffee and Co-Working to a conference format.

Some of you reading may have attended last year. Sadly, I was out of the country, but am more than making up for that this year by actually organizing the conference itself (thanks for busying yourself with parenthood, Matt!). Unfortunately, that also adds pressure for me to give a talk myself, but unless I can get away with talking about sandwiches or the most effective way to procrastinate your way through an ever-growing workload, I’m a bit stuck.

So get your thinking caps on (and for those interested in sponsoring - your cheque-books out) - details of BarCamp Belfast ‘08 should be appearing in an RSS aggregator near you promptly.

After intently refreshing the liveblogs, skimming the news and product pages and taking in the keynote, allow me to join every other blog that made a post this evening by communicating my opinions on the product launches that took place today …

Time Capsule
http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/

Packing the reliability of the Airport Extreme Base-station with a high-capacity drive is a magnificent idea, and frankly long overdue. I’m curious as to whether or not the internal drive can be used for regular storage beyond backups, or if the USB still accepts additional external drives - if so, I could be very tempted to trade in my dodgy router and/or external hard drive for the convenience of house-wide iTunes library access - especially at such an agreeable price.

iPhone & iPod Touch Updates
http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Gradually working their way down the list of features that should have existed in the first place, finally multiple senders for SMS messages sees the light of day. Google Maps has also massively benefited from a UI overhaul, now including the ability to pin-point your current location via cell-tower triangulation - genius! You now also have the ability to reshuffle menu items - not only on the home screen, but within the iPod app itself - finally making it slightly easier for me to get at my podcasts. Nothing we didn’t expect, though, except for the $20 upgrade for current Touch owners, though? What happened to the respecting, apologetic Apple that warmed our hearts when they forked out rebates to ripped-off iPhone early adopters?

iTunes Movie Rentals & Apple TV
http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Another brilliantly executed distribution model heavily rumored for good reason. Once this rolls out internationally, it’s definitely going to pave the way for future distribution of digital content (which will hopefully be a little less strict on the limitations). High-definition rentals has finally given the Apple TV a reason to exist, and packaging the entire UI overhaul and expanded feature list into a free software update was an unexpected but obviously fruitful gesture. I’m still holding out for a third-party developer to break it open and add a Freeview-compliant EPG before I rush out to buy one, but looks like I’ll be sat here for some time yet.

Macbook Air
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

For £100 of a difference between the low-end Macbook Pro and the low-end Macbook Air, you lose almost 2 inches of screen space, a good chunk of processing power, half the standard hard drive space, the Superdrive and almost every port except one USB input. For that loss, you get … portability. Honestly, Apple, I don’t think it’s worth it. My 17″ Macbook Pro is thin and light when you take into consideration the power, usability and storage - which is what I predict most people will do before reconsidering their purchase. At a lower price and with a higher screen size, it would have been an excellent cousin to the Macbook and fill the niche of those who dislike the Macbooks’ bulk & small screen but enjoy the affordably average specs. Still, on the up, it’s absolutely gorgeous and impressively tiny - and it’s nice to see a soft introduction of multi-touch and solid-state drives - just not enough to justify the price or hassle.

And that’s it. Expect a few interesting announcements from other developers and Apple affiliates as Macworld continues.