john bollwitt blog

The guys at the Canadian Podcast Buffet ran an audio comment that I sent them in their latest episode. I was wondering about the awesomeness that is Podcasters Across Boarders and asked why we don’t do something like this on the west coast. Their responses are great, and I hope I keep their gears turning so that something might happen.

This is an idea that I mentioned to Tod Maffin at the recent DemoCampVancouver, and he had the same conclusion that I did. We should just do it ourselves.

Mainly, I like the approach that PAB takes with the whole concept of their conference. I think that if we combined that with the mentality of what goes on at a BarCamp and/or Northern Voice, we could come up with something really good out here on the west coast.

Remember, this wouldn’t just be a west coast of Canada only thing. People from anywhere and everywhere would be welcome to attend, and I’m sure that we could pull an interesting crowd from the U.S. side of the border. I mean, you can’t tell me that folks from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and on down the coast wouldn’t think about the trek, andI say this with the folks from Geek.Farm.Life in mind. Andrew drove from Indiana for last year’s PAB in Kingston, Ontario. Not a huge amount of distance, but a commute nonetheless.

Yes, if you build it, they will come. Wrapping my head around it is another story, but I think Vancouver could pull it off.

If I don’t sit down to hammer out some quick, follow-up thoughts about DemoCampVancouver01 right now, I won’t get to it later. Better yet, the freshness of the event won’t be there, even though it’s been about 24 hours since the event. If you missed it, check out Rebecca’s live blog of the event.

Basic low down about DemoCampVancouver is that it is a outstanding concept. It’s a very open sourced, controlled environment that is what the name really implies. You show up, people have a limited amount of time to present their idea or product, and then you move on.

The best way that I can sum up the experience is that it’s like watching a commercial but being able to ask questions, and you completely understand what I’m talking about. For instance, I caught a spot for a cellphone service via TV that offers a really great package and literally spit out in response, “yeah, but what’s the catch?” The tube doesn’t interact with you at that point as you would like.

At DemoCamp, you can pelt as many questions as you want to the presenter, as long as there is time. The crew running the show, namely Boris, Kris, and Bill, did a crack job of keeping everything on track. It moved from one to the next, and I got my fill of things that I knew nothing to little about.

There is to be another one of these in the near future, and I’m pretty confident that I’ll do my best to make it out to see what’s going on.

Let me just let the text on the site for DemoCampVancouver speak for itself.

What is DemoCamp Vancouver All about?

Unlike other iterations of DemoCamp, the Vancouver event covers all industries. Idea people will be presenting innovations on all things ranging from business to charity, high-technology to high-art. The purpose is to encourage a cross-pollination of industries and individuals in hopes that people engaged in unrelated endeavors might provide an enlightening perspective on the presenters concept. There is strength in diversity!

Yes, that’s right, we’re redefining “Demo”, but at the same time, showing a connection between all the bright people across Canada and beyond who are gathering to share cool ideas.

The Idea is your Demo

Your concept or idea should be developed enough to support a three minute presentation, but it is not necessary to have a working model to “demo” … it’s the idea that’s important! There are three minutes for delivery and three minutes for discussion. The time limit is strict so if you take two and a half minutes to setup your laptop, you only get thirty seconds to present. (the gong hath no mercy).

I always have ideas floating through my head. My biggest problem is putting them on paper so I don’t forget them. After that, it’s a daunting task to go from paper to project. Right now, I have about five post-it notes floating around with lists of things that I’m thinking about or actually applying to various things. Trust me, that’s better than letting it float to the back of my brain.

I’ll wander my way to DemoCampVancouver on May 24th and see what happens. Would be neat to get some audio from people who are thinking about various things, not to mention see some cool people.

My post about attending the SuperHappyDevHouse at the Bryght offices in Vancouver was pretty last minute, so I thought I would do my best to give a post-game reaction to the festivities.

In all honesty, I went there with the intent of doing something kinda geeky and fun, but the fun really got put in front of the geeky. While the true hackers and do’ers were on the main floor doing some, what looked like, intense coding, I was manning the grill for hot action with some brats. And the way the sun was shining on the rooftop patio, I quickly made myself at home up there. The keg was up there too, so I was far from alone.

Talked to a lot of really cool folks while I was up there. In no particular order, Jordan Behan, Roland Tanglao, Jason Vanderhill, Boris Mann, Richard Eriksson, Kris Krug, Ianiv, Ivan, John Biehler, and big shout outs to good pals Duane Storey and the Dave Olsen.

I’m unaware if anything monumental came from the event, but there were a chunk of folks who were looking to do something that sounded neat. I don’t think that I was completely out of my element there, but hard coding is a tad out of the realms of the things I know and like to do. I overheard that one of said coders asked Rebecca why she was there once they found out that she was “just a blogger“.

Bottom line, I had a lot of fun. People that I hung around and chatted with were a great group of folks, and we certainly had a good exchange of ideas, concepts, slams, jokes, laughter, and so on. Being that I have a few Drupal projects that I have been working on, these are the right folks to be talking to.

I’m just back from the Massive Technology Show at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, and it’s safe to say that this was indeed a massive show. There might be others that beg to differ, but when you think that the previous two years had this thing crammed into Science World, this location seems seemingly brainless for such an event.

Not being all too familiar with what the MTS was or is, I wasn’t all too sure what to expect. To me, it was a total melting pot of various technologies, holding true to the show’s name. I ran across a variety of vendors looking to sell their products, ranging from IP routers, telephones, VoIP, and all forms of web presence. Hardware, software, mobile technology, and so on, not to mention fun gadget stuff like segways, electric scooters, and gaming. There was also a fair amount of online education booths as well.

Oddly enough, for an event of this scale, there were a fair amount of empty booths, probably one or two in every other row. As successful as this event has been, it makes me fairly curious if some exhibitors decided to not show up, but they missed a fairly good opportunity to have some tiptop exposure.

Personally, I had a good time discovering various bandwidth providers in and around Vancouver. These companies tend to specialize in small business, but they prevent some nice alternatives to the standard cable provider that we have at home now. Worthy of a replacement service? I’m not too sure yet, but when I find out that their field techs will show up to your location at a specified time, instead of an anytime within a five hour time window, then I am very interested. Oh yeah, and the bandwidth they offer is noteworthy as well, but I’m not going to give out free advertising just yet.

I didn’t make my way into the conference area, but the presentations that were listed did not strike me as noteworthy. Chances are, I might have missed out on some good topics being presented upstairs, but the reason might come from the way the sessions were marketed. Call it a matter of personal preference, but there wasn’t much that struck me as something to not miss.

I do feel for anyone who tried to watch any of the presentations on the main stage though. I’m not sure that the PA was loud enough to hear the speaker over the crowd on the main floor, which was just mere feet away from the back row of seats to watch these things. Two projection screens at each side of the stage were showing slides, but even I had a hard time seeing exactly what was up there. Of course, I didn’t watch too many of these, but the one I caught about ten minutes of was the experience that I just described.

Bottom line, there is good stuff at the MTS. This is the first time in this location, and it is bound to get better and better. According to David Drucker, this year is very evident of that. I would hope that they would continue to be in a location like this in the future, but imagine what the new expansion of the convention centre might hold for a show like this once it is completed. MTS might be developing a tech show with wide reaching appeal if they play their cards right.

One last note, I am bothered by the MTS blog, especially the fact that it hasn’t been updated since the end of February. For a tech show, this seems near sacrilege, especially with the amount of web identity and marketing companies that were there today. There should be someone live blogging the event, posting live pictures, or some form of interaction with its website, especially on the day of the event. Something tells me that it might not be “that type of conference”, but it should be.

Uber final note, big shout out to the Bryght crew. Roland’s first question out of his mouth was if I have found a job yet, and the answer is that I’m trying.

Update: Big thanks to Jeremy Latham for catching a “typo” on this post, and I also wanted to point out this review by John Chow. He says some things that I was thinking, but in a much better way. Also makes me wish I would have played with the segways a little bit.

I know there hasn’t been much for updates as of late, but it’s been a hectic time. A combination of job searching and projects has kept my mind pretty awash in the last week.

I will be hitting the Massive Tech Show tomorrow in downtown Vancouver, thanks to some free, all access passes. To tell the truth, I’m not all too sure what to expect. There’s a conference plus trade show and exhibition. I imagine that means that I’m going to come home with a bunch of pamphlets, pens, and other promotional goodies that will clutter up my work space after their novelty wears off. Then I can say, “I got that from the Massive Tech Show.” Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

This will also be a great opportunity to search for potential employment opportunities. How and what and where, I can’t really tell you. I just like doing geeky things, and someone should totally be paying me to do those sorts of things for them. Watch for on location posts, but no promises.

The last and only time I went to SXSW was in 2002. It was a free ticket to go, thanks to KRUI. We crammed nine people into a University of Iowa SUV and drove the whole way down. That sounds like fun, but when you only have certain days that coordinate with classes and exams, things get tight for time, money, and space. 17 hours of driving, without stopping, we put all of us into two rooms, not far off 6th Street[wiki] in Austin.

Oh, Austin. The one place in Texas that I would seriously consider moving to. Incredible music scene? Check. Good food? Check. Warm weather? Double check. Large Hispanic population? Ubercheck. I even applied for an engineering position at KUT, and there was hints of interest. Sadly, the call back never came.

I loved my time at SXSW, but my reason for going there were way more music related than the film and interactive part, and I kick myself now for not understanding what that “interactive” thing in the title meant. That should say “internet” in big, bold letters.

In hindsight, if I had more of a mindset to pay attention, I would have used some of the knowledge being spread there to apply it to the realm of radio that I was slaving away in. How? Let’s just say that when I checked out the KRUI website the other day, I was so happy that someone took the initiative of setting up a WordPress blog to run the site. It’s a really great step in the evolutionary petri dish for that particular student run radio station.

If I went again, and you know that I’m thinking about it heavily, I would completely pay attention to this interactive, internet, blogging, podcasting, geeks-on-steroids conference with much more anticipation and enthusiasm. At the same time, I would have to check out the music portion.

I can’t tell you how often I think about that opportunity. I saw so many great acts. They Might Be Giants, Lo-Fidelity All Stars, Shiner (twice), Jurassic 5, The Promise Ring, Boys Against Girls… and that’s just what I can remember without spending too much time recalling all of them.

Combine all of this internet and music stuff, it makes me sad every year SXSW rolls around. I want to do it again soon. There is good news though. You can download podcasts from some of the panels now. It’s the next best thing I’ve got to being there.