why I’m not at internet world

Posted by luke on Apr 27, 2010 in blog | 1 comment

I went to Internet World 09 and I was really disappointed, I found it hard to say why I didn’t really like it.. apart from the poor quality of the talks I attended… now I think I know what it is.

It’s just such… an OLD and dated format, its interruptive, its all about sales and not content.

He who pays, talks – if I go to see someone talk, I want them to be an expert in their field, not just a guy with a chequebook.

Money generating not knowledge generating – it’s about selling stuff, not adding value… ok I cringed writing that, a bit of a cliche but it’s so true! If I look back at all the events I liked and hated this is the key difference

Why do we need it? – a conference, about the “internet world”? Stop and think for a minute, erm… isn’t there a better way?

Ok, I do get that it’s handy if you’re a huge product or a big buyer. Personally, looking for ideas, innovation, inspiration… it’s all about the smaller niche ones like:

ContentStrategyLondon10 – superb, an intimate gathering on a specific topic. Lots of good networking, 3 excellent speakers (and beer).

TEDxCDF – outstanding, inspiring speakers by invitation. It expanded the mind and gave me something back for my time. (Great Guardian write up)

BarCampBournemouth2 – with the almost anarchistic approach that anyone can speak, you build your own conference program and interact with almost all the other delegates.

Plus by not going, I’ve probably saved about a tree in brochures I’ll never read…

I asked on twitter if it was just me who thought it wasn’t worth my time:

“I’m bothering, but I’m not optimistic based on last year!”

“Yeah it seemed a bit s#!% to me too.”

“Not Definitely no need.”

“I’m not doing IW, did it last year. Too corporate, so many cheaper ways of doing the same things, not as handy as the A4Uexpo.”

So go forth, find the small get-togethers and un-conferences… expand your mind. Don’t give up your time to be sold at.

What do you think? Did you go to IW10? Was it any good?

Bar Camp Bournemouth 2 – thank you

Posted by luke on Apr 19, 2010 in blog | 0 comments

Thanks to everyone who attended #bcbomo2

Numbers were up on last year (73 signed in attendees + more who mooched around)

More useful talks on the sunday (almost all slots were full both days)

We were able to provide Saturday lunch (thanks to RedWeb) and Sunday breakfast (thanks to the “breakfast club” The G3 show, Squizzle App and BCS YPG)

A HUGE thank you to our venue sponsors C4L and Fibreband and maybe see you all next year…

Google Wave not quite right?

Posted by luke on Apr 6, 2010 in blog | 0 comments

If you’d like to know more about what Google Wave is and how it can be used, I’d start with this article on wave from Mashable.

In the name of experimentation and generally liking to play with new tech, I proudly engaged with Google Wave for a few projects… after a 6 month trial period (wow, how time flies) I report my findings and feelings… please add your thoughts in comments:

After the initial “testing wave 1 2 3″ waves, I was involved in 3 projects, who all wanted to use wave as a form of communication/co-ordination – great, some real tests!

Project #1 – never got off the ground on wave, one of the participants rarely used anything other than his mobile and wave “doesn’t officially support any mobile platforms yet, but if you are feeling adventurous, you can try out Google Wave on Android phones, or on the iPhone.” – I tried, it failed (android 1.6)… he tried (Safari on iPhone) and failed. Dead in the water.

Project #2 – the aim for this one was a bit different, to use it more as an evolving document, outlining the project with waves covering sub topics – it required some interaction with other documents and this is where this one fell over. “Drag and drop” of documents? I’ve never got it to work, so we had to rely on linking to Google docs or other sources online which isn’t really the same. Again as time carried on, we moved to email and notes within a Google doc. Perhaps I’m missing something here, could something like Socialwok help?

Project #3 – Bar CampBournemouth planning – the one success, of sorts. Its worked pretty well for coordinating our efforts to organise #bcbomo2, once everyone had an account (luckily 2 of us had some spare invites) it grew and evolved as expected. The 2 things that weren’t great were:
1) It got a bit too large quite quickly, finding the right sub-waves/topics was difficult and it needed a trim to become more manageable – for corporate use I think I’d have a policy on what does and does not go within a wave (ie no off topic or “chat”).
2) Success was quite dependent on people checking the wave.

General findings and some tips:

Initially I think the biggest failure was to not have email notifications of new blips – there was an app you could add to a wave to do this, although now it’s a feature that is built in. This was the one that nearly sunk our BarCamp Bournemouth planning wave – you had to check if there were updates… rather than being nudged when there were.

I’ve also noticed times when having wave open has had a detrimental affect on performance of my PC, I’m using Firefox (not tried crome or IE) on an XP in my office, my laptop is Vista and my studio PC is a high powered audio PC running XP – all have had the same issue with it generally taking a lot of memory (I suspect), closing the wave tab has in all cases rectified the issue. Hopefully this is just a bug.

If you have more than 2 people in a wave typing/making updates in can really slow down to the point where you are waiting for it to catch up with the words you have typed, which is frustrating.

Some people have also claimed to hate the fact you can’t jump to the new “blips” within a wave… well, like Obama, yes you can. Click into the wave and press spacebar, it’ll jump to the next unread message.

All in all, it is still a beta and I do see potential benefits to a system like wave… would I use it again? Maybe.

Love to know your thoughts/top tips

Bar Camp Bomo 2 – now with sponsors

Posted by luke on Mar 16, 2010 in blog | 0 comments

Big thank you to C4L and Fibreband our main sponsors of BarCamp Bournemouth 2.

If you haven’t signed up to come along… why not?

** Sign up for BarCampBournemouth2 here **

calling all geeks, designers and web folk

Posted by luke on Mar 4, 2010 in blog | 0 comments

2 important dates for your diary:

1) Meetdraw 5 “So Meety” is being held at Bar So on Thursday 18th March from 6:30pm. Everyone is welcome whether you work for an agency, in-house team, freelance or currently studying. A great event to meet and network with fellow tech/web people locally.

and…

2) BarCamp Bournemouth 2 – April 10/11th at Bournemouth University, a 2 day self-organising un-conference – for anyone interested in tech/web stuff.

My quick effort at an FAQ:

What is a BarCamp? Its a 2 day event, starting at 930am and going right through till 4pm on the sunday – turn up, give a talk if you want to (or not if you don’t) and learn from/discuss with / laugh at people in the tech community. (see wikipedia or barcamp.org)

Is that something to do with drinking? – No… not really… but yes, the bar will be open and used as one of the discussion spaces.

What went on at BarCamp Bournemouth 1? Lots of stuff… my highlights are here.

More info and stuff coming on the website soon – if you’d be interested in part sponsoring Bar Camp, please drop me a line – you’ll get space on the website,a logo on the Uni TV (from now till event) etc etc