The MIX keynote room, earlier this morning.
Don’t forget – you don’t have to be in Vegas to catch the MIX11 Day 1 keynote. All you have to do is point your browser at live.visitmix.com.
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Scenes from BarCamp Boston
I was in Boston this weekend to help out with BarCamp Boston, the sixth such event to take place there. It took place on Saturday, April 9th and Sunday, April 10th at Microsoft’s NERD Center (NERD is short for New England Research and Development), located in Cambridge on One Memorial Drive, nestled comfortably by the MIT campus and close to the high-tech and bio-tech companies surrounding Kendall Square.
A BarCamp is an “unconference”: a conference in which the normal rules are turned on their ear. Normal conferences have their agendas set in advance by the conference organizers, and the conference sessions are typically lectures featuring one or a few speakers and everyone else acting as the audience. In a BarCamp, the agenda is set by all the attendees, the sessions are less like lectures and more like open discussions, and in lieu of the traditional presenter is a discussion facilitator. (I’ll explain a little more about how this works later in this article.)
BarCamp Boston 6 was sponsored by BarCamp Tour, a group of five startups who actively participate in BarCamps taking place across the U.S. and help BarCamp organizers ensure that they’re holding the best possible events. The startups that make up the BarCamp Tour are:
If you’re planning a BarCamp for your city and would like the backing of BarCamp Tour, which comes with money to help run your event plus other goodies like arrangements for the after-party, you should contact them! Drop them a line via Twitter at @BarCampTour and be ready to explain to them why they should support your city’s BarCamp.
BarCamp Boston 6 started off in the big space that takes up the 10th and 11th floors at NERD. It’s an airy space with lots of places to sit and lots of windows providing a gorgeous view of the Charles River and downtown Boston. It served as the breakfast, lunch and dinner room, as well as for the opening “unkeynote” and the after-party.
The big room at NERD features banners that feature both nerdiness and “local colour”:
The local organizers welcomed the crowd enthusiastically:
…and by “crowd”, I do mean crowd. There were a number of people down on the floor, with more people watching the opening talk from the balconies:
…and a good number more caught the talk from the combination staircase/stands that connected the two floors:
Once the event had been properly introduced, we all made out way to NERD’s first floor, which contained all the conference rooms and meeting spaces where BarCamp’s sessions would actually take place. It was now time for the participants to set the agenda.
Step one was to propose topics of discussion. Attendees were encouraged to propose topics by writing them down on large Post-It notes and stick them on the “Ideas” wall. In the meantime, people would vote on those proposals by placing checkmarks on those proposals they’d like to see:
There were a lot of topics proposed. Many were about programming, the web and technology, but a number were about self-improvement, cooking, being an entrepreneur, being active in your community, music, philosophical matters – just about everything that might interest the sort of person who’d spend an weekend at a BarCamp.
Once a proposed topic got a sufficient number of votes, the person who proposed the topic would then take the Post-It note and place it somewhere within the schedule grid. The schedule grid divided the weekend into equal-sized time slots, and it was first-come, first-served.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
Click the photo to see it at full size.
Once the schedule grid started filling up and the start time for sessions drew near, people started picking out the sessions they wanted to attend:
And then it was session time! Sessions took place in all sorts of settings. Some took place in NERD’s larger lecture halls, while others took place in the “clusters” that are scattered about NERD. NERD is rich in all sorts of little spaces designed for collaborative work, which makes it an ideal location for a BarCamp:
NERD also has a number of smaller “salon” style rooms that are perfect for comfortable round-table discussions. The room shown below was a great place for the Mobile UI discussion; large enough to accommodate the crowd, but small enough for people to pass around phones to show off their mobile UI projects:
The smallest rooms were perfect for discussions that required a closer look, such as this session on Arduino projects:
With the participants responsible for putting together the content for a BarCamp on an ad hoc basis, what’s left for the organizers to do? Simple: create the conditions that make BarCamp possible in the first place! That includes getting a venue in which to hold BarCamp, providing the basic structure around which BarCamp takes place, and of course, providing food. With the sponsorship of the companies that make BarCamp Tour as well as Microsoft, there was food and drink aplenty for breakfast, lunch and dinner:
Saturday’s sessions ran from 11:00 to 6:00 p.m., with a break for lunch. The sessions were followed by dinner, then PowerPoint Karaoke, and then a performance by the local band Ribs:
I was only able to attend the Saturday of BarCamp Boston 6, but it went quite well and I had a great time meeting, sharing ideas with and playing accordion for a lot of people while I was there. I hope to catch more BarCamps over the next few months, so if you want BarCamp Tour to sponsor your BarCamp, contact them on Twitter!
I’m at the MIX conference as I write this, where the pre-conference boot camps are currently taking place. The actual conference doesn’t start until tomorrow, when this place will transform from a relatively idyllic (idyllic for Vegas, anyway) zone into a geek mosh pit with the population density of downtown Tokyo.
It’s still morning here in the Pacific time zone, and right now, there’s a packed room learning about HTML5 and CSS3. We’ve got a good number of people in the room who are diving into this stuff in earnest for the first time – some are coming over from the desktop dev / WinForms world, others are coming from programming on the back end – and I can see from the looks on their faces that they’re feeling a tad overwhelmed. If you’re among this crowd, let me assure you that:
a) CSS eventually does make sense, even when it sometimes does what you don’t expect (hence the “CSS is Awesome” mug, a joke that you’ll soon appreciate and that you can by at Zazzle.com),
b) CSS will make your life as a web designer / developer / whatever easier once you get the hang of it,
c) There are lots of people right here at MIX who’d be happy to answer your questions about CSS, including the Canadian Developer Evangelist team, which includes Yours Truly, John Bristowe and Fred Harper.
Later this afternoon: the jQuery boot camp!
Hackfest?
If you’re in the Vancouver or Toronto areas and you’ve been meaning to write apps for Windows Phone 7, there’s a Hackfest near you this coming Saturday, April 16th!
- If you have an idea for an app but don’t know how to build apps for Windows Phone, this event is for you! We’ll have experts and tutors on hand to show you how to write your first Windows Phone app, and it’s easier than you think.
- If you have the skills to build apps for Windows Phone but don’t have any ideas for an app, this event is also for you! If you’ve got C#, .NET, Silverlight or XNA skills but can’t think of what to write, the Hackfests are a great place to brainstorm with other people and come up with ideas for apps.
- If you’re looking for a job or clients, this event is also for you! Okay, Hackfests aren’t actually job fairs, but they’re excellent networking opportunities, and these days, 80% of the tech jobs out there are found by networking.
The Vancouver Hackfest
Vancouver’s Hackfest takes place this Saturday, April 16th from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. at BCIT Burnaby Campus (3700 Willingdon Avenue, Burnaby), Building SW3, Room 1710.
This event is free – click here to register!
The Toronto Hackfest
Toronto’s Hackfest also takes place this Saturday, April 16th from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the ObjectSharp offices (11 King Street West, Toronto), suite 1400.
This event is free – click here to register!
Get the Tools
If you’re coming to the Hackfests, you’ll want to bring a computer (preferably a laptop, unless you’re into heavy lifting), and to make the best use of the time, you should install the Windows Phone developer tools beforehand.
You can download the tools from the App Hub (create.msdn.com). They’re free-as-in-beer and they’re awesome.
You’ll want to do it in this order:
- Download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools (Release Notes)
- Download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools January 2011 Update (Release Notes) [Note: Installation may take several minutes and is complete when the install dialog box closes.]
- Download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix
One of the topics that will be covered quite heavily at the MIX Conference (it’s taking place this week) is HTML5. It’s great to see it supported in Internet Explorer, it’s great to hear that it’s coming soon to Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, and now it’s time to get any of you who’ve held off on taking it up to get started and those of you who’ve already taken it up to get even better at it.
Dzinepress have put together a collection of Ultimate HTML5 Tutorials and Useful Techniques, and whether you’re new to HTML5 or an old hand it at already, there should be something in this set that you’ll find useful.
I’ve taken the links from Dzinepress’ article and grouped them into categories below:
Introductory Stuff
- HTML5: The Basics
- Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch
- HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using
- The Power of HTML 5 and CSS 3
- How to Make All Browsers Render HTML5 Mark-up Correctly – Even IE6
- Structural Tags in HTML5
- HTML5 and CSS3 Without Guilt
- Semantics in HTML 5
- HTML5 Unleashed: Tips, Tricks and Techniques
- Yes, You Can Use HTML 5 Today!
Site Design
- Touch The Future: Create An Elegant Website With HTML 5 And CSS3
- Code a Backwards Compatible, One Page Portfolio with HTML5 and CSS3
- Code a Vibrant Professional Web Design with HTML5/CSS3
- Designing a Blog With HTML5
- Building a Live News Blogging System
- Coding a CSS3 & HTML5 One-Page Website Template
- Hybrid Column Layout
Forms
- Create a Stylish Contact Form with HTML5 & CSS3
- Have a Field Day with HTML5 Forms
- How to Build Cross-Browser HTML5 Form
- Rethinking Forms in HTML5
Drag and Drop
Canvas
Video
- Blowing up HTML5 video and mapping it into 3D space
- The video element in HTML5
- View Source Tutorial: Sticky Notes With HTML5 and CSS3
Storage
Mobile
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We’ll Be at MIX11 All Week!
What happens in Vegas…ends up on this blog. Well, most of what happens, anyway.
MIX ‘11, Microsoft’s most “right-brained” conference takes place this week! It’s the conference where we talk about the web, mobile, user experience and design, and it’s also where announcements about Silverlight, Internet Explorer and Windows Phone have traditionally been made. Last year’s announcements at MIX were pretty big ones: it’s where we got our first real taste of Windows Phone and the dev tools. as well as a first look at Internet Explorer 9. As far this year’s announcements, you’ll have to wait until Tuesday and Wednesday to find out what they are.
If you’re a Canadian developer attending MIX, we’d love to see you! John Bristowe, Fred Harper, Paul Laberge and Yours Truly will be all over the conference and if you see us, please come up and chat with us. We’ll also be throwing at “Canadian 3-Screen Mixer” on Tuesday evening: if you’re a Canadian attendee, check your email – we should’ve sent you an invitation.
If you can’t attend MIX, you can still catch the keynotes and sessions:
- The Tuesday and Wednesday keynotes, both of which take place at 12:00 noon EDT / 9:00 a.m. PDT / 4:00 p.m. GMT, will be streamed live, free, and with no registration required. Just point your browser at live.visitmix.com at those times.
- The videos of all sessions will be posted to the MIX site about 24 hours after each session. Take a look at the sessions to see what interests you.
See you in Vegas!
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Congratulations, Pushlife!
TechVibes points to StartupNorth’s story on PushLife being acquired by Google. According to TechVibes, this makes it the third Toronto-based company to be acquired by the Big G, with Bumptop (created by DemoCamp guy-at-large Anand Agarawala) and SocialDeck being the other two.
Congrats, Pushlife! It’s always nice to see a local company make good.