In the days leading up to BarCamp Houston (August 25th), I was extremely nervous and tried to devise creative ways to get someone to drive me the thirty-or-so miles it would take to get to the venue itself — I don’t know anyone dumb enough to loan me a car, except maybe Sandy, since she has an impressive collection of resources at her disposal, but even she seemed to catch on to my not-so-conniving plans and gave me a look that seemed to say,”You’re confusing me with a celebrity trial lawyer. Please insert treat.”
That’s what I get for asking my dog, I guess.
Eventually, I made an early morning trip with my dad into the dreaded maze that is downtown Houston. We were looking for a building called the Houston Technology Center, and the Google Maps directions I had looked at mere seconds before I forced my dad out of the door pointed us towards 1200 Smith St. Needless to say, it was not on 1200 Smith St., and after having to go through all manners of one-way streets, we finally found it about a mile from the location dear faithful Google gave us. 410 Pierce St. To be fair, Pierce intersects with Smith, but it isn’t fair to give the name of the street perpendicular to the one you actually want. That’s like being given a platypus when you ask for a duck: “That’s close right, they both have beaks and webbed feet and like water!” Right, but one of them has venom glands (choose the right one and you get a cactus!).
Everyone at BarCamp was very warm and very awesome. I didn’t really see any design presentations (I want to do one next year though!), and the ones I was most looking forward to (both of Kelsey Ruger’s presentations: “The Art of Visual Thinking” and “Grid Design”) were canceled due to time constraints. Although all of Room 1’s events were held in Conference Room 2, and vice-versa, I had no problem finding the panels I wanted. I even surpassed my own expectations and watched a Django presentation (I took notes! I understood things!) as well as a presentation about a type of “Internet scripting language” (think Excel functions and shells) called “Water” — I consider myself very proficient in installing scripts and modifying them. But this scripting language business? It fits right into that quarter of my brain that manufactures my laziness.
My favorite presentations, of the ones I was able to see completely, was Ed Schipul’s “Baking SEO Into Your Web Application.” One thing that he said really caught me. Ed began by saying that it takes about twenty-five years for technology to be widely used. The Internet has only been around for about half that time, which might explain the huge gap between the tech-savvy and still-untempered users of Mother Internets.
Overall, I had an awesome time. I can’t believe that, if I can’t gone to BarCamp, the one interesting thing I could have done in its place was “school supply shopping.” Now I love me some office supplies, but some things just don’t compare evenly!
Read 2 comments (Leave a comment?)
Kilian Valkhof said:
Geekmeets are fun, aren’t they? Good to hear you had fun! Once you’ve been to one you’re going to want to attend them all. Make sure you have nice business cards though, there’s always a job opportunity :)
Posted on August 29, 2007 9:01 AM; Permalink
Ranjani said:
I’ll have business cards next time, but I still got a few goodies ;)
And this time, I know a lot more people so it will be way easier to wander around and sit in on panels. Although, the next time I go to BarCamp, I’ll be in college which might mean that I have to find another group to meet up with :(
Posted on August 31, 2007 6:27 PM; Permalink