barcamp – Terence Eden’s Blog

Getting To Know You - BarCamp Bingo Generator

@edent — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 12:34:23 +0000

At last month's BarCamp London 13 I ran a little experiment that I'd been meaning to do for a while.

"Getting To Know You" bingo is a well-established team-building exercise. Usually, you gather a bunch of interesting personal facts from a team, stick them on a bingo card, then have people wandering around trying to find out who once dated a Spice Girl and which mid-level executive has a cat called Mr Tiddles.

At this unconference there wasn't a good way to poll attendees in advance. And, even if there was, it's hard to guarantee who will show up. So I purloined a bunch of questions from random websites, added my own, and wrote some code to generate random bingo cards.

Here's what they looked like:

The questions

Some of the questions are the sort that you'd find in any getting-to-know-you game.

For example, find someone who:

Has a cat
Doesn't drink coffee
Read more than 12 books this year

Others are slightly more ambiguous:

Likes Taylor Swift as much as you
Has a cool scar
Knows the meaning of life the universe & everything

Some are deliberately difficult:

Has the same birthday as you
Whose dad has the same name as your dad
Doesn't run Linux on their computer

And some are designed to get people to be creative:

Can use The Force
Won over £1 million on the lottery
Has seen Bigfoot in person

Isn't that a bit annoying / confusing?

Well, yes. But it depends on the participants. Some people got extremely creative with their answers. Some, no doubt, lied. Others got extremely rules-lawyery and wanted to know how we were determining if the scar was cool or not.

And some people threw their papers away and decided not to play.

Get The Code

It's a dead-simple Python script which reads a text file of your questions and spits out as many cards as you want in one printable PDF.

Getting To Know You Bingo Card Generator source code.

Collaborative discussions at an unconference

@edent — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 11:34:01 +0000

Unconferences are brilliant. Rather than a set agenda, people come up with their own sessions. A dozen Post-It® Notes are slapped on a wall, everyone writes down what they want to talk about, they're slotted into a grid, and - BAM! - you've got yourself an unconference.

At the recent OggCamp there were a number of brilliant spontaneous talks. But nearly all of them involved one person standing at the front, delivering a message to an audience. That's fine. But there are other forms of unconference sessions. You can have everyone make something, teach people sea-shanties, play games, or - my personal favourite - have a collaborative discussion.

Here are a few that I've run in the past - with some tips on how to get the best out of them.

Your role as facilitator is to keep the conversation moving. That means encouraging people to speak while quietening the voices which always speak. Notice whose hand is up, bring them into the conversation, move things on when they need to.

Book Club

Tanya and I were having a corridor conversation about our favourite books, so we decided to turn it into a session.

Set the chairs in a circle. Everyone has one minute to say who they are and what their favourite book is. That's it. By the end of the discussion, we had this:

Your role as facilitator is to keep the discussion moving quickly. Have a timer and let people know when they're approaching the end of their minute. Remind people that the books can be on any subject, they can be fiction, they can be classics, whatever they want to talk about.

Fail Camp

This is a harder one to run. Most talks are about success - this is about all the times you failed.

You need to tell people this is a safe space - and they're not to repeat what they heard. You may need to reiterate this message as new people wander in to the room.

Rather than go around the circle, ask for volunteers. Give them a few minutes to talk about their failure - then ask the rest of the group if they have any reflections, thoughts, or reassurances. It's important to keep things moving as many people will want to talk about something that has affected them. It may be handy to have a box of tissues at the ready.

Show Me Your Favourite Website!

This requires one laptop connected to a projector - don't spend precious time swapping between devices. Have people come to the stage podium, type in a URL, then spend a minute talking about their favourite website. It can be theirs, a friend's, a commercial site, whatever. They just need to think it is nifty.

Depending on your attendees, it may be wise to remind people of the code of conduct. Nothing pornographic, abusive, or otherwise unsuitable.

Feedback Camp!

Best to run this at the end of an unconference. It is a meta-session where you ask people what they liked and what they would do differently next time. This can be a difficult session to run, especially if there have been some logistical problems with the event.

Make sure you have a list of questions that you - the organiser - want answered. Some suggestions are:

What did you like about the venue?
If we chose a different venue, what should it have that this venue didn't?
How was the food at the event?
Where did people travel in from?
Were there any scheduling clashes?
What could we do to make the next event better?

Don't ask people to reveal anything embarrassing or distressing (were there any CoC violations? What was the worst session? etc). Be prepared for some robust feedback. Only take a few comments and then move on. Remind people that a survey will be sent out after the event.

Your ideas

What sort of facilitated discussions do you like?

How to cope with a broken HDMI port during a presentation

@edent — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 11:34:58 +0000

Last week, I was part of the BarCamp London Hackathon. It had all the usual ups and downs of a Hackathon - laptops crashing, APIs failing, and HDMI ports breaking.

We had a massive projector for participants to show off their work. The HDMI connection was… shit. Sorry, there's no better way to put it. It worked for about 30 seconds and then displayed a green screen. We replaced the HDMI cable. We swapped between a dozen dongles. We tried Linux, Mac, and Windows. In a last ditch attempt at getting it working, we even turned it off then on again.

Nothing.

This was serious. What were we going to do?

Next to the HDMI port was a visualiser. The sort where you can put your papers on to show them to the whole class.

So…

Look, if it's stupid but it works; it's not stupid!

GovCamp Rules - In Memoriam

@edent — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 12:11:45 +0000

The last year has seen an overabundance of death. Some of us got chatting about the various people from the GovCamp community who have died recently, and how we could memorialise them.

It used to be the case that we started every 'Camp with a reading of the rules. A gentle intro to let everyone be on the same page.

The "rules" started out as:

Whoever comes are the right people.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
Whenever it starts is the right time.
When it is over, it is over.

Over time, people added the rule of mobility (leave a session if it isn't for you), the rule of participation (listen more than you speak), the no-tourists rule (everyone must contribute). And so on.

Reading the Rules has fallen out of fashion, and some of the rules need updating. But perhaps it is time to bring back the idea of starting the day off with a common understanding?

I thought that it might be nice to turn an introductory rule-reading into a sort of legacy for our friends and colleagues. A way to let participants know that they are part of a community.

So, with apologies to those I've missed, here's the start of a proposal for a new set of rules.

In memory of David Pearson - take photos! Take many, brilliant, beautiful photos. Document the day and share it with others. Be respectful of those who don't want their photos taken or published.
In memory of John Popham - do something today to make someone's life better. Help people tell their stories.
In memory of Nick Keane - be open about yourself. Embrace who you are.
In memory of Hendrik Grothuis - plant a tree. Think about the environmental impact you're having today.
In memory of Rupert Bowater - Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

I am painfully aware of the inherent biases encoded in this list. I'd love it if you would contribute rules, memories, and suggestions. Perhaps, when all this is over, we can have a GovCamp to mourn our lost friends and celebrate those of us who made it through.

What Happens at #GovCamp Stays at GovCamp?

@edent — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 11:32:17 +0000

How do you archive a conference? A decade ago, I blogged about how to archive a BarCamp - I don't think anyone took up my suggestions. I tried to put it into practice, but in this post about 2009's BarCampBrighton4, half the links have rotted away, cool media-hosting startups have gone bust and eaten the video.

Websites die, tweets get deleted, media codecs become obsolete.

BarCamps, GovCamps, and other unconferences are part of our digital heritage. We should be proud of what we create and ensure that it is available for posterity. For GovCamps, this is especially true.

Anyone capturing a twitter archive of #ukgc12 ?

Richard Akerman

The GovCamp Community has radically changed the way government services are delivered. But we are unaccountable (?) and no one is looking at how we make decisions (?). Someone, perhaps in the future, will want to understand what we did and why we did it.

The National Archives want to preserve the content of all GovCamps. Technically this is quite easy. Grab all the Tweets that have a hashtag, find the linked blog posts, crawl Flickr and YouTube, check the content is accurate, then dump in the archives. Bread and butter stuff.

Legally, they can do that. Section 19 of the Data Protection Act allows for archiving in the public interest, in line with Article 89(1) of the GDPR.

And they can also preserve non-official records. Your Tweets and Blogs are fair game. How does that make you feel?

Did you expect those messages to be archived?

Were you expecting them to be ephemeral?

Are your Tweets from an anonymous account which, in 5 years time, will be unmasked?

Do advances in facial and voice recognition mean that your offhand comment at a conference can be instantly matched to you?

If a session is audio recorded, and then published, does your conversation become less free?

Here's our audio recording from the session:

We hand out special coloured lanyards for people who don't want their photo taken. Do people respect that? Does social pressure force people to wear a lanyard they don't want to wear?

Notes are taken - read the session notes on Google Docs - but they're usually only sketches of the conversation, and not attributed to any one speaker.

The National Archives don't have to make all this content available for anyone to see. They can keep it under lock-and-key, or only allow access to trusted researcher, or publish it only after we're all dead.

If we came to any conclusion, it was this...

The National Archives have the skill and resources to do this well.
They also have the legal right to do so.
It's important for preserving the record of our culture.
We should get Community Consent for this activity.
Participants should be informed / warned that their social media will be archived.
We'll have to accept that it may suppress some conversations.

Here are the broken archives of some previous GovCamps

Video archive is now up from #GovCamp http://ow.ly/5hLQA Gotta carve out some time to watch a few... #opendata

Marco Campana

Matthey Murray's GovCampQLD archive from 2012 is full of broken links.

(OK, using Pinterest to archive posts was just a weird decision!)

And, for luck, the late lamented David having the final word:

How to run a tech swap shop at a conference

@edent — Tue, 28 May 2019 12:58:07 +0000

At the recent BarCampLondon Ⅺ I decided to run a little experiment.

The idea is similar to Swishing - a popular way to recycle old clothes. In a Swishing party, you turn up with a jacket, swap it for a ticket, then swap the ticket for a vintage pair of jeans.

We decided to go a little more simple and low tech for our swap-meet.

A big table in the corridor
People can deposit any (working) gadgets on there
Anyone can take what they want - you don't have to bring something to get something

We made sure to tell people in advance what was likely to be on offer, and got a few friendly faces to promote it.

A few ground rules

Here are the informal rules that we set up...

People can take one thing each. Geeks are hoarders and, given half the chance, will snaffle everything. We told a people who'd already taken something to come back later to give everyone a fair chance.
Caveat emptor - we gave everything a quick visual inspection to make sure it wasn't obviously broken or unsafe. But we didn't do any PAT, or virus scanning, or even booting up. You get what you pay for, and that was explained to people.
Have a friendly sign to let people know what's going on.
Have someone crew the stall to ensure fair-play and explain what some of the more esoteric items are.

That green cube is a WiFi Travel Router & Charger.

Can I run a swap-shop at my event?

YES! At your next tech event, tell participants that they can bring any old gadgets, laptops, cables, tools, bits, kits, circuits, and components with them to swap.

There is a slight risk that you'll end up with some useless junk that no-one wants. Either get the person who "donated" it to take it back, or find your local WEEE Recycling plant.

Fair warning, you will almost certainly need a separate table just for obsolete cables!

Enjoy!

The Policy Hack

@edent — Sat, 20 Jan 2018 20:31:55 +0000

I've found a delightfully exploitable social hack which I presented at UK GovCamp. It applies to any uncooperative bureaucracy.

Here's how it works. You ask someone to do something and they reply with "I'm sorry sir, that's against our policy."

You should say "I'm sorry to hear that. Please can you send me a copy of the policy?"

Turns out, most times, there is no policy!

Shocking, I know. So much of modern life rests on the whim of whichever call-centre worker you happen to get. If they can't be bothered to do something, they can hide behind a non-existent policy.

Here are a few examples where it has worked for me.

A supplier refused to issue documentation via email and insisted on posting it out. Why? "It's our security policy."

I asked for a copy of the policy - so I could understand why I was allowed to send them documentation via "insecure" email, but they couldn't reciprocate. Of course, there was no policy. They just didn't know how to do email attachments.

A previous employer had an internal system which insisted that password could only be 8 alphabetic characters. No number, no special characters. Oh, and it had to change every 28 days. Again, asking for the policy showed that it was one person's "overenthusiastic" interpretation of the IT department's actual policy.

This happens repeatedly.

Caveats

This isn't a foolproof technique. Sometimes there is a genuine and well thought out policy in place.

A few examples of where it hasn't worked.

"My manager won't let us share it." (So I escalate to the manager and we repeat the process.)
"Sorry sir, that's an internal policy and we can't share it." (At which point you can apply for a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act to see how the decision was made.)
"Certainly sir. Here is the policy which has been thoroughly reviewed by our lawyers." (Fair enough, I guess!)

Anyway, this technique is now yours to try. See what works and report back.

Warnings

Two important points to consider.

This works for me. Of course, I have the confidence of a mediocre white man - your success may vary depending on your level of privilege.
It's rarely the fault of the person blocking your way. They're stuck in a dystopian system which rewards them for denying you access. Don't get angry with them - fix the system instead.

Over The Air 2012

@edent — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 08:22:49 +0000

Another brilliant event from Over The Air. The perfect mix of lectures, hacking, and relaxing in a country manor / museum. And, to top it off, my hack won a brace of prizes!

The Wifi just about held up. Although I think it's fundamentally impossible to provide decent connectivity to 200+ people. Especially when they're geeks.

Which, in turn, lead to this:

As per my post of two years ago, I tried to encourage people to record video or audio of the talks they were in. It was a reasonable success. We captured several great sessions, but others have been lost to the æther.

I honestly believe that BarCamps, unconferences, and hack-days are part of our culture and should be preserved. There's a selfish element in that I want to see the talks that I missed - but more than that, I want to ensure that what we're doing isn't lost forever.

So, here are my thoughts (and videos) of the day.

Everything You Know About QR Codes is WRONG!🔗

The devilishly handsome Terence Eden gave one of his excellent talks upon the subject of QR codes.

I was really pleased with how this went, a packed room and lots of great questions. Thanks to Craig Heath for videoing it.

Responsive Web Design - the Specs Behind the Sex 🔗

Bruce Lawson talked through some of the issues with RWD especially when it comes to adaptive images.

My thoughts on the subject are still developing, but I think that it ought to be the server / CDN which adapts the images, rather than the handset relying on JavaScript and CSS. I've two primary reasons for this,

There are billions of phones already on the market which don't support CSS or JS sufficiently to handle this. There's no realistic way to upgrade their browser.
Programmers and web designers are lazy. I don't believe that the more complex mark-up will be used, nor that they will generate several different images.

A Means to Interact: A Guided Tour of Arts Programming Platforms 🔗

I must confess, I misread the subject of this talk - I thought it would be about artistic APIs. Instead, it was a fascinating talk about different ways to create graphics programatically. Becky Stewart stepped us through the pros and cons of each platform and showed us how they worked. I love interactive sessions - so coding along was great fun. She wisely distributed Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the SDKs on memory stick so we wouldn't spend half the session downloading them.

Mobile Websites Can Have Nice Fonts Too 🔗

I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to fonts. I have the vague feeling they're important, but I don't really know why - nor how to implement them on a website. Laura Kalbag to the rescue then!

After the session, I was talking to my friend Saqib (who is blind) about fonts. He wanted a better understanding of how they affected the reading of text. I realised that fonts are like the background music in a film. It's the music which makes Star Wars as much as the dialogue and special effects. Imagine watching a Schindler's List with a jaunty comedy score - it would completely destroy the meaning of the film. As well as readability, picking a font changes the emotional engagement that a reader has with your text.

TheLab: Demo Cool Things!🔗

I say! Those chaps from O2's TheLab are rather clever, aren't they? Just goes to show what a bit of ingenuity can do when applied to a telco. We saw a demo which tracked which country people were in based on whether their phone was roaming, HashBlue which backs up your text messages and provides an API to access them, and O2 Connect which routes your calls over WiFi if you're out of signal. Evidently lots of smart thinking going on in Slough!

Connecting Microcontrollers to the Cloud 🔗

The guys from Vodafone were showing off mbed. It's a micro-controller similar to the Arduino. The idea is that you can rapidly prototype sensor data, send it via a data or SMS connection and do other cool stuff with it. The session I attended went into the C code behind it (which was a little over my head) as well as demoing practical uses for it. It's great to see kit electronics like this and the Raspberry Pi become popular - hopefully it will make hardware more accessible.

An Illustrated History of Computation 🔗

What a delightful session! Professor Bernie Cohen took us through a history of computing, mixed with personal anecdotes, and live algorithm solving. He seems to know a thing or two - I predict the lad'll go far!

ePatient 101: An Introduction to the Asymmetrical World of Technology and Healthcare 🔗

Mark Kramer (AKA Mamk) joined us via a dodgy Skype connection from the US, where he has just finished being treated for cancer. Fuck cancer. Seriously, fuck it. Mark was talking about the disparity between the technology which the medical profession has access to versus that of their patients. Doctors may have MRI machines - but they're often stuck with handwritten notes, or ancient PCs. Patients have more CPU power in their phones than a whole office full of medical staff.

Hacking

Over The Air is where geeks come to play. Some of the inventions on display were simply marvellous. I think there were 39 hacks presented - I'm going to highlight the ones I thought were exceptional.

Sam Machin built a tool to allow you to send tweets via a DNS lookup! As he said during his introduction:

Without going into too much detail, you do a lookup on my-message-is-this.example.com, when the server receives the NS, it tweets on your behalf. So, as long as you can do a DNS request - even if the response is blocked - you can tweet. Amazing!

🔊

💾 Download this audio file.

Tom Hume built an app which lets you post your call history on Facebook. It's not as creepy as it sounds! Remember "poking"? Well, a phone call is a private poke, in essence. So, your friends can see that you called X to wish them happy birthday.

Jatrobot was the scariest looking hack I'd seen! Herx The Vampire Slayer! The team had built a modern farming tool. It measured soil moisture, weather, gps, and a bunch of other stuff via mbed - then reported it all back via Android.

Finally, my hack! This was the first time I'd entered a hack at OTA and I was unusually nervous!

I took inspiration from Ariel Waldman's mesmerising keynote about creating accessible interfaces to science. I was reminded of the Music of the Spheres (not the Doctor Who episode!) - which is the idea that the movement of the planets and celestial bodies can be thought of as a musical arrangement. We can also tune in to the background radiation of the universe and turn that into music. My phone doesn't have a gamma ray detector - but it does have a solar radiation sensor - the Lux Meter! It also has a proximity sensor - so it can tell how far away my hand is from the screen.

So, I created an ersatz Theremin! Having created a musical instrument (despite having no musical talent) I set about composing a work to be played via the medium of light.

I'm chuffed to say it worked really well and the crowd seemed to like it!

The app won one of the awards for Best Android App and was crowned Best In Show! Utterly gobsmacked, truly humbled, and over-excited to receive a Galaxy Nexus and a Raspberry Pi.

You can download the theremin and read all about the technology behind it.

Massive thanks to Dan, Maggie, Matt, and all the others involved in the highlight of the mobile geek calendar.

I cannot wait for next year!

HOWTO: Preserving BarCamps

@edent — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 07:00:10 +0000

Oh! Woe is me! I can't make BarCampLondon 8. This will be the first BarCamp I've not been able to get to in ages. Following hashtags is fun, if a little disjointed. What I really need is some way I could attend virtually.....

Does It Need To Be So Hard?

We don't need expensive crews. We have each other! The very idea of BarCamps is that they should be self-organised. So, if you're going to BCL8 this year, here's what I would like you to do...

Got a smartphone or a flip camcorder? Video the sessions you're in.
Got a less-than-smart-phone or a dictaphone? Record the audio of the sessions you run or participate in.
Got neither? Offer to hold someone else's tech while they present.

Before long, every single session will have coverage of some kind and us poor sods who can't make it will still be able to vicariously share in the pleasure of London's greatest Unconference.

Video

There are loads of places to stick video up on the web. But most services have time and size restrictions or want you to pay to store your video. YouTube is limited to 15 minutes (no good for 30 minute BarCamp sessions) and Vimeo is limited to 500MB per week (no good if you've filmed in HD).

Here are two free services which I think will suit the BarCamp Crowd.

Archive.org

Archive.org is

building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

I believe this to be the best place to store the record of our culture. Here's a video of me running a session at BarCamp Brighton. The video is hosted by Archive.org and can be downloaded in several formats.

Videos can be any length and any format. They'll be transcoded to MP4 and Ogg Video. Best of all, video can be uploaded via FTP - which makes queuing large uploads very easy. You can, of course, upload via your browser.

One point to note, videos have to be CreativeCommons or Public Domain.

There are already around 40 BarCamp videos on Archive.org.

Qik

If you have the bandwidth, Qik is the ideal place to stream and store video. I've found the application can be a little hit-and-miss - especially if WiFi coverage gets congested. Here's my presentation from BarCamp Transparency.

(Qik videos autoplay - click on the screenshot to see the video)

Streaming Services

There are loads of sites which will let you stream video from your laptop's webcam. Please - whatever service you use - make sure that it is also recording the stream. It greatly saddens me that the presentations from awesome events like CharityHackDay are lost forever. They were streamed and then promptly vanished.

Audio

Video can be overkill. It takes a lot of effort to upload and just as much to download. It's often simpler just to record audio. Even the most basic phones tend to have a "voice record" function. Once you've got the audio, there are a number of places you can put it.

AudioBoo

Everyone loves AudioBoo. It's a great way of saving audio - although it's currently only available on iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone, you can upload any sound file you like to their website and they'll convert and host it.

Here is a recording of my session at BarCamp Brighton.

🔊 Location Based QR Codes - Introducing http://xmts.mobi/
🎤 edent

💾 Download this audio file.

I decided to separate the main body of the talk from the discussion which followed afterwards.

🔊 Discussion: Introducing http://xmts.mobi/
🎤 edent

💾 Download this audio file.

Just personal preference.

Archive.org

There's a whole bunch of BarCamp audio already up on Archive.org.

Audacity

If you want to edit your audio, I highly recommend Audacity. It's free, open source, and works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Collating

Ok, so every session is now recorded and stored somewhere on the Internet. How do we go about organising this mass of video and audio?

Let's look at how some other conferences have done it.

OpenTech

One of the great things about OpenTech was the effort put in by the organisers to ensure every talk was preserved on ~~wax cylinders~~ mp3. The session page is really well laid out and has links to audio and, in some cases, slides.

But what if you can't be bothered or don't have the time to manage a web page?

Lanyrd

Currently the darling of the conference scene, Lanyrd easily allows you to add "coverage" to sessions. You can attach notes, handouts, audio, video, slides, photos or links.

Privacy

Some people won't want their sessions recorded. Please ask presenters to check that they're happy to be immortalised.
Everyone hates the sound of their own voice - do let people in the audience know if you're going to be recording.
When in doubt, edit it out.

A Plea

I really want to attend BarCamp London. And BarCamp Manchester. And all the other BarCamps which I can't get to.

Please - if you can - record your session and upload it somewhere. Even a poorly shot, noisy, unedited video is better than none.

This is our digital heritage. We should be proud of what we create and ensure that it is available for posterity.

Hack Your Kindle

@edent — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 12:48:04 +0000

I gave a quick talk at BarCamp Brigton about how to hack the Amazon Kindle 3G. These hacks come in two flavours - easy and very easy.

Very Easy - Pictures

Wouldn't it be great to view pictures on your Kindle? Well? OK - pictures, perhaps not so much - but comics? Yes please!

For best results, image files should be the same resolution as the Kindle. 600px * 800px - and grey-scale.

Let's use the XKCD comics - mostly because they're already the right size and mostly in black and white. And they're awesome.

This hack can be done in under 30 seconds.

Plug you Kindle into your computer using the USB cable.
In the root folder, create a new folder called "pictures"
In the new folder, create another folder called "XKCD"
Copy the pictures into the XKCD folder.
Eject the Kindle & unplug it.
From the Kindle home screen, press ALT and Z at the same time.
The screen will now show an XKCD book. You can scroll through the pages using the normal page scroll buttons.
You can also change the size of the pictures.

Very Easy - Screenshots

Hold down ALT, SHIFT, G, at the same time. Done. The .gif files are stored in your documents folder.

Very Easy - Diagnostic Information

To get this diagnostic information do the following.

Turn the Kindle on and unlock it.
Press Menu
Press Settings
Hold down the Alt key
While holding down Alt, type Y Q Q
Ta da!

You can also type R Q Q to get this screen.

Easy - Jail Breaking and Screensavers

These are fairly easy hacks. Copy a file onto your Kindle and hit update. For up todate files and instructions, visit the MobileRead Wiki on Kindle Jailbreaking.

Found This Useful?

If you've enjoyed this post, or found it useful - you can buy an Amazon Kindle via my referral link.

BarCamp Africa UK

@edent — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:53:44 +0000

I met Ethel Delali Cofie at BarCampBrighton. She was telling me that she wanted to run a BarCamp called #bcAfricaUK09. I pointed her towards the BarCampLondon 09 organisers and told her that I'd see if she could use the Vodafone Group HQ.

I woke up on Saturday morning after a long and difficult week at work. The last thing I felt like doing was making the trek into the office. I just couldn't face spending half of my precious weekend trapped within the same walls I look at every day.

I figured that I'd make the effort, show up for an hour or so and then slope off home.

How glad I am that I stayed for the whole day - it was one of the most unusual, inspiring, fun and education BarCamps I have ever attended.

Talks

The majority of the talks were streamed and recorded for posterity. You can view all the BarCamp Africa UK videos at TweetCam. This is definitely something that other BarCamps should do. Not only does it capture interesting talks, it also means that if there is a clash between two talks, you can go to one safe in the knowledge you can catch the other one later.

The sessions board

I tweeted some of the more interesting snippets of the talks and tagged the #bcAfricaUK09. Here are the highlights...

Africa's Development Priorities

A bunch of us sat around and created a paper Wiki while we discussed what we thought the leading social, technological and developmental priorities were for Africa.

Smart Buildings

You know when people say "that literally blew my mind" and that snide part of you thinks "stop abusing the word 'literally' or I'll literally give you a slap"?

After Rachel Armstrong's talk I was left with smoke coming out of my ears as I struggled to comprehend what I'd just seen. Inexpensive table-top chemistry showing how you could create self repairing buildings, carbon capturing bacteria, re-floating Venice.

The possibilities seem endless. I think everyone in the room was left reeling with the possibilities this technology opens up.

OLPC

This was a chance for Professor Cornelia Boldyreff to discuss the work she and her students are doing with the One Laptop Per Child project. Specifically talking about how you can download Sugar on a Stick and start developing for OLPC whether you're on Linux, PC or Mac.

Digital Language Preservation

Can we use technology to preserve language which are in danger of disappearing, Some very interesting ideas about how tools like AudioBoo can preserve indigenous languages, but also help teach the next generation the language of their ancestors.

Innovators and Entrepreneurs

What are the challenges facing the upcoming generation of talented business-people and inventors?

Logistics

Curiously, everyone was given a printed sheet with details of all the proposed talks. While somewhat against the spirit of the three word rule, it gave presenters a chance to expand on their themes which, in turn, helped participants work out which talks they wanted to attend.

Proposed Talks

There was a sign up sheet by every talk so organisers could assign rooms. This prevented the social awkwardness which ensues when a presenter books a cavernous room, only to have a few people turn up - it also prevents overcrowding at popular talks.

The organisers came round to let presenters know when they had 5 minutes left. They also turned up at the end of each session to let us know where the next talks were taking place. This really aided the smooth flow of the day.

Despite the meticulous planning, the day ended up running around 20-40 minutes late. I was reliably informed that this was because we were running on Kenyan time!

Nevertheless, the day went off without a hitch.

Lunch

Two words. Hummus Brothers.

Mmmmmm

This made such a delicious change from the normal BarCamp fare of sandwiches and pizza. There was a great mix of vegetarian, vegan and carnivore topped hummus as well as salads, falafel, and fresh vegetables. There was also a smattering of African snacks; plantain sweet potato chips and the like.

A great communal lunch lead to loads of interesting conversations - not all about how yummy the food was! - and produced a really fun atmosphere. I wish every day at work could be this enjoyable.

Spirit

This was one of the most fun BarCamps I have ever been to. There was a real sense of unity and purpose. It was an honour and a privilege to have played even a small role in its organisation. The mixture of people from all over the planet, the joy and exuberance, the stunning talks and awe inspiring participants made this a truly memorable BarCamp - I can't wait for next year!

Bonus!

I was given this shockingly yellow T-Shirt This may be one of the few images of me where I'm not dressed entirely in black!

BarCampBrighton4 and High Def Video

@edent — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:18:28 +0000

Another weekend, another BarCamp. This time the Fourth Annual BarCampBrighton.

The BarCamp was excellent. A great bunch of people. The venue was beautiful, but the lack of walls (and floorboards!) meant that sound bleed was a problem.

The problem I have with BarCamps is there are invariably two or three talks which I really want to see which have clashing timeslots.

So, I decided to record the sessions I went to so that others could see them later.

I really hope that future BarCamps make it a policy to record every talk / discussion (where appropriate). Think of it like a low-tech TED Talk.

I managed to get hold of a Flip Mino HD Camera. I'll put a review up later, but, briefly, it's a simple Point and Shoot cam which records in 720p. Lovely. It has a 4GB flash drive in it which gives a 1 hour recording time. So a 30 minute BarCamp presentation is ~2GB

The only problem is.... THIS IS TOO LARGE FOR ANY ONLINE SERVICE!

YouTube - Will take files up to 2GB in size - but has a limit of 10 minutes of length.

BlipTV - Have a file limit of 1GB. Annoyingly, they don't transcode to a lower resolution, so people with older machines won't be able to watch the videos. They do have a very nice FTP upload service.

DailyMotion - To upload videos of unlimited length, you need to become a "MotionMaker". The process requires you to get approval. I found that many of my videos just didn't work when uploaded to DailyMotion.

Vimeo - with a paid for "Plus" account, you can still only load 5GB per week. If you want to use the free service, you're restricted to 500MB

GAH!

So, I've had to spend ages transcoding the footage I took so it can be uploaded somewhere. On a slow machine it can take a long time to convert to a smaller video format - especially if you want to keep the sound in sync. Uploading videos of several hundred megabytes is also painfully slow.

Here are the talks I went to. Enjoy!

What Is BarCampBrighton

Star Wars Wedding on a Budget

High Altitude Photography

http://blip.tv/play/hKpBgZ+pEwA.m4v

Zepplins

http://blip.tv/play/hKpBgZ7daQA.m4v

Some Robots

http://blip.tv/play/hKpBgZ7abAA.m4v

Widgets

Thoughts on Mobile Tech 4 Social Change UK

@edent — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:24:33 +0000

Saturday was a bit of a Busman's Holiday for me. The Mobile Tech 4 Social Change Camp was held in the London offices of Vodafone. Certainly an interesting venue for a BarCamp - not quite as plush as the Guardian venue for #BarCampLondon09, nor as hip as Wallacespace for SMCLondon09, but surprisingly good for a smaller camp. It's certainly given me a new appreciation for the office space in which I spend most of my time.

Organised by MobileActive.org, this was a BarCamp for people passionate about using mobile technology for social impact and to make the world a better place. This was a step change from most BarCamps which - if we're honest - are often about showing off. Whether it's grandstanding on a particular topic or demoing something cool they've found, BarCamps can feel a bit like a grown-up version of "Show and Tell". Because this BarCamp was aimed tightly on the twin subjects of Mobile and Social Change, I found it refreshingly focussed. There was a real sense that everyone there wanted to make a difference.

First up, a massive thanks to Katrin and Dan for getting the event up and running. Organisers can make or break a BarCamp and these two were the perfect mix of cat herder and presenter.

We started with a presentation from Karina Brisby, G20Voice project founder and Oxfam Digital Campaigns Manager. I wasn't surprised that Oxfam have a dedicated digital team - what did surprise me is that the team is so small and yet was able to organise events like G20Voice.

Some points I picked up on

Oxfam used SpinVox and AudioBoo to empower people around the world to communicate with G20Voice. These technologies enable people to literally have their voice heard. In many ways, voice is more powerful than a traditional petition.
I wonder if a service like Phreadz could be used with 3G phones to make this sort of campaigning more powerful. Obviously, it requires a higher technology base.
Oxfam are looking to embed their applications & content into mobiles.
Interesting. Would you buy an Oxfam co-branded Nokia (for example)?
In some places, being seen to talk to Oxfam can be dangerous. Mobile is discreet & more importantly fast. Essential for NGOs
Targeting is key to campaigning. While millions march against war, it only take a few high profile people to whisper in the right ears to make a difference.
Perhaps the most inspiring statement of the day "Even in repressive regimes, nerds find a way to get around restriction!" Because SMS can be monitored by the state, nerds in some countries use Bluetooth transmitters hidden in flowerpots to spread their message. Nerd are nerds wherever you go!
If you're in the UK, you can donate £5 to Oxfam RIGHT NOW! Text "HUNGRY" to 87099.

Next up, Scott Smith, a "Futurist". Scott had organised a game for us...

I'll admit to being a bit sceptical; usually team "bonding" games are a huge turn-off for me. This was no ordinary team game. We had cards with specific tasks and restrictions. We had to come up with a solution to a problem - in our case, raising money from families to help provide clean drinking water. We had to consider factors like m-banking, open source, anonymity, NFC, etc. Here's the result - a service which lets you donate unused minutes from your airtime plan to a charity.

Combined with social network integration, "rewards", reporting, usage of local labour. I was astounded with what we had devised in just 30 minutes. All the other teams had similarly inspiring ideas. I really feel that we could leverage our idea to change fund-raising in this country. Kudos to Scott for a brilliant and thought provoking session.

I flitted between several of the sessions, chatting to people. Here are two of the most memorable session.

The-Latest.com is a Citizen Journalist / UGC website with a heavy focus on non-reported or under-reported news. Marc Wadsworth and Deborah Hobson were very open in how the site works and what its challenges are.

Citizen journalism is a rapidly growing field. I don't want to go in to details about the failing of mainstream media - failings that blogs often have - but it has become clear that we urgently need alternative news sources. Allowing people to report on stories which interest and impact them is much needed.

Finally, Dan set up a session on open sourced, crowd sourced news gathering for crisis zones. A heavy topic, but one with increasing relevance. In particular, this looked at Ushahidi and ways in which it can be improved and expanded.

The one thing which worries me about ideas like this is how you manage trust in an anonymous network. You need anonymity to protect people from recriminations - but you need trust to ensure that you're not being used as a vector for misinformation.

I want to give my thanks to everyone who was at M4ChangeUK - far too many to mention individually. BarCamps live or die based on the attendees; this one soared into the sky.

Porn and Social Media #SMCLondon

@edent — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:00:54 +0000

This was a talk I gave at Social Media Camp London in 2009. In it, I describe my experiences working with user-generated-content, pornography, and other adult material. This was one of my earliest BarCamp talks, and contains several ideas which now seem quite outdated.
I was attempting to warn people about accepting UGC - not only the danger it posed to their sites, but also to their sanity.
The tone is a bit too jokey in places, and some of my ideas around sex, gender, sexuality, and the like are quite naïve.
Terence - 2017

Video originally by Damien Austin-Walker - rehosted by kind permission.

Contemporary Tweets

Photo by
Basheera Khan CC by-nc-sa