BarCamp Canberra #2 – it’s a wrap!

March 29th, 2009 — Web

BarCamp Canberra #2 was yet another successful event! There was a great turnout with 71 registered users and other folks dropping in and out through out the day. We had representation from Canberra, Yass, Wollongong, Sydney and Melbourne (did I miss out any other cities?). Two streams were running simultaneousness for most of the day with great presentations running in both rooms.

Who presented?

As I have yet to master the art of splitting my self into two, here’s a quick run down of the talks I heard:

  • David Page introduced us to the concept of the Yubikey – a usb key authentication system. It provides single or two factor authentication and is quite affordable. Catch The Yubikey presentation on slideshare.
  • Rohan Mitchell shared his adventures in online business. My favourite slide from his presentation? Slide 18 The Learning Curve, which involves:
    1. Make something cool
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

    Catch the rest of his Adventures in Online Business on slideshare.

  • One of the highlights was Pamela Fox’s presentation on making the google map for the Victorian bushfires. It was fascinating hearing about the solutions they came up with in the challenging environment, with key issues being the short time frames and lack of open data. It really highlighted the problems we face when data (particularly emergency data) is not made available in formats that enable reuse. Read more on Pamela’s blog post BarCamp Canberra 2: Mapping the Fires.
  • Another highlight was Joseph Gentle’s presentation on Artificial intelligence. He took a complex subject and made it really easy to understand. Loved it.
  • Craig Thomler took us through his experiences on blogging as a public servant – a very informative presentation.
  • Linda Gehard ran an interactive impromptu workshop on the good and bad of mobile phone design.
  • Darren Menachemson gave an interesting talk about designing out evil, complete with great graphs!
  • Caronne Carruthers-Taylor gave an interesting presentation on her experiences with UX and design. Catch her presentation Change the world with UX: user experience in federal government on slideshare.
  • Dean K held an interesting discussion about the No Clean Feed recent rally and opportunities to influence the decision makers. He also raised the idea that the solutions we propose need to provide a way for Stephen Conroy to save face.
  • Nathanael Boehm introduced us to Resilient Nation Australia.

My presentation

I did a light hearted presentation on The Uncanny Valley:

The Uncanny Valley – BarCamp Canberra
View more presentations from Ruth Ellison.

Find out what else happened

Didn’t make it to BarCamp Canberra #2? You can:

Thanks

Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein, Nathanael Boehm, Craig Thomler, Rae Buerckner, Darren Menachemson) for putting together a great event and the sponsors (acidlabs, Five Senses Coffee, UX Australia,
Keith Lang, Australian Anthill, Electric Shadows Bookshop).

Can’t wait for BarCamp Canberra #3!

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Ada Lovelace Day – Aussie females

March 24th, 2009 — General, Life, Web

It’s Ada Lovelace Day – an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

From the Ada Lovelace Day pledge site:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

I have many female friends who are doing wonderful work in the technology industry – too many to name but here’s a few Aussie females that I’ll like to sing out about.

  • Donna – she is a great information architect, the Queen of Card Sorting and contributes much of her time to the web community. She’s always happy to share her knowledge and experience.
  • Caronne – I love her passion for the work we do. She’s an extremely supportive person and manages to balance work, life, web community stuff and life with two teens. She does amazing stuff with advocating great user experiences in Government agencies that many people don’t hear about!
  • Susan – one of the many challenging things of being a women is the ability to juggle multiple stressful components of our life. Susan is amazing – she loves the work she does and some how, manages to balance work, family, photography, blogging and web stuff!
  • Viv – a special person I used to work with who is passionate about accessibility and user experience. She’s a solid rock for any team that she’s on and is always quietly working away in the background getting stuff done. It’s people like Viv who work so hard and never seem to get recognition for the hard work they do – so here’s my shout out to you Viv!
  • Lisa – is amazing. She knows a lot of things about accessibility, usability and user experience. We have a very similiar approach to the work we do. She’s a very calming influence and I admire her passion for the work we do.

There are many other females out there who also doing great work (I’m looking at you Teresa, Amie, Suze, Lana!).

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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