Sunday, March 12, 2006

Open Source Panel at Bar Camp Austin



I moderated an open source panel at Bar Camp Austin last night. This turned out extremely well, and several people commented to me afterwards that it was the best panel they had seen all-day (compared to SXSWi). Quite a compliment for the panel.

Panels have not traditionally been part of BarCamp, as far as I can tell, but with a topic like open souce and the caliber of the panelists, this was a natural fit. I only wish that we had allocated more time, as the topics raised were interesting, and the audience had many questions for our panelists that we were not able to accommodate.

The Open Source Panel:
Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems
William Hurley, Chief Technology Officer, Qlusters
Doc Searls, Senior Editor, Linux Journal
Matt Mullenweg, Lead Developer, WordPress
Chris Messina, Open Source Ambassdor, Flock

Panelist Blog Posts:
Simon Phipps
Doc Searls

I will post additional links as they come in (and hopefully a podcast of the panel, as several people were recording it).

Whurley and I are already thinking about putting together a Bar Camp Austin Open Source follow-up event this year. Stay tuned...

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Live from the Bar Camp Austin Pre-Party

The Bar Camp Austin Pre-Party was a huge success. At peak, we had 60 people in attendance (and over 100 through the doors). I was able to spend time with the WordPress development team (Matt, Rob, Andy, etc.), Tantek from Technorati, Decibel from PostgreSQL, Chris from Flock, Tara from Riya, whurley from Qlusters (and the organizer of the event), and a host of others. The WordPress meetup, corresponding with Bar Camp Austin at The Thistle Cafe, should make for a fantastic event.

If you're in Austin on Saturday for SWSXi or happen to live here, I highly recommend visiting Bar Camp Austin on Saturday. We'll be there from 9am Saturday until probably 3am Sunday morning.

The photo is of the Bar Camp Austin badge and t-shirt.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Bar Camp Austin on Saturday

If you are planing to be in Austin for SXSW Interactive on Saturday, or happen to live in the area, I highly recommend that you attend Bar Camp Austin. I have been helping William Hurley (whurley) with the event.

What is Bar Camp? It's a FREE, ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment). Bar Camp Austin will be an intense event with discussions, ad-hoc technology collaboration, podcasting, demos, panels, blogging, mashups, meetups, robots, and pirates...yeah, pirates, real pirates...that sing...with swords.

Some members of the open source community that have RSVP'ed include:

Chris Messina, Open Source Ambassador, Flock
Jim Nasby (Decibel), PostgreSQL
John Bachir, Lyceum
David Geilhufe, CivicCRM
Alexander Muse and Kevin Marvin, SimpleTicket
Ryan Thrash, MODx
Doc Searls
Moshe Bar, OpenMosix

And of course, William Hurley (Qlusters) and I...and I am sure there will be many others. The events is not exclusively focused on open source, so it'll be a good mix of disciplines.

I will be moderating an open source panel in the evening. Just prior to the panel, the WordPress crew are doing a meetup/dinner, and we are expecting a bunch of WordPress developers and users to attend.

Don't miss out if you're planning to be in Austin this Saturday.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Six Options

My article on open source support options has (finally!) been published in the March 2006 edition of Optimize Magazine. The article was posted on the web today - Six Options For Open-Source Support.