I’m really looking forward to attending the upcoming Unsheffield event which kicks off next Friday evening. It is brought to you by the same team that organised BarCampSheffieldII last year, but they felt that they wanted to deviate a little from the standard BarCamp format, hence the rebranding of this new event.

I will endeavour to write more about the event during or shortly afterwards.

Arranged by @vero, the event was very well attended with standing room only by the end.

I enjoyed @garethr’s talk on Asynchronous Messaging for Web Apps, it was a great intro taster to the subject. You can view his slides here.

Then we had a lightning talk from @martinkl about his new browser testing software Go Test It, and a lady called Helen from @HoldsworthPR on a startups conference being held soon.

There was also plenty of opportunity to socialise and have a few beers (shame I was driving). Good to see so many locals in attendance as well as a few of us from further afield.

I shall keep my eye out for the next one. Stay informed by reading the Cambridge Geek Nights blog, and come along next time if you are in the area! You can also follow the tweets here.

Another trip up the North for BarCampLeeds this last weekend. I had been to OBH for PhotoCampLeeds in February, so knew the venue would provide us with a great space for a BarCamp.

There was much bribery going on during the sessions this time – some lovely ladies baked us cupcakes to entice us into their discussion, and Alistair brought along his trainset so that a few more folks would attend his session:

[The Cupcake Express hauls its cargo]

The afternoon saw lots of geeks outside on the lawn enjoying an impromptu circus skills workshop:

[Alistair juggles with pepsi cans whilst The Hodge falls off a unicycle]

And if that wasn’t silly enough, after we had all enjoyed the party on Saturday night and arrived back on Sunday morning [not] nursing hangovers, there was also Twister to play with:

[Twisted fools!]

… and the trainset was back, this time with added constructions fashioned out of sponsor’s mugs!

[Tom watches Mr Duck watching the train run round in circles]

A few of the participants also managed to find a cache when the fun was over too, so all in all a grand weekend.

As expected, the northern hospitality was greatly appreciated, and there were some really interesting sessions. I was a relatively small BarCamp, but I do like the smaller ones as they seem more friendly and it’s easier to get to talk to people than at some of the bigger ones.

I particularly enjoyed @ajkavanagh’s session on Procrastination (we talked a lot but didn’t find any solutions!) and @sctv’s Hardward Hacking for under a fiver:

[Cannibalising stuff for spares - things bought from the Pound Shop often contain components you would be hard-pressed to buy cheaper than that]

James Rutherford also did a fantastic tongue-in-cheek (or should that be geek?) look back at 20th Century websites and what we thought was good at the time. A sobering thought – what we do right now will often look equally naff in a few years’ time!

[James Rutherford - so last century!]

There was also the usual evening fun and games, including Werewolf and PowerPoint Karaoke organised by The Hodge:

[Alistair waves his arms about during the PowerPoint Karoake, in true Magnus Pike style]

I decided not to run a technical session, but instead taught a few folks to play Carcassonne on Sunday morning:

[Strategic thinking during a game of Carcassonne]

[Yahoo! boss David Filo welcomes the geeks to Open Hack 2009]

I had a play about with the BOSS search API, but wasn’t in an actual team as such. I also enjoyed an evening bike ride on the Flickr Bikes – which automatically took a photo every minute when the bikes were in motion. Riding round central London on a push bike was a bit of a hairy experience, but we returned unscathed to tell the tale!

[The two Flickr Bikes were available for a ride]

There was, of course, a little problem with the wifi (isn’t there always?) but the team from Yahoo soon sorted it out. And the was, of course, plenty of fuel for hacking geeks:

[Essential supplies for the hacking geek]

It was great to be in the company of such innovative minds (and a little intimidating too!). There were some great ideas put together during the session. Mr Duck was even on the winning team for Best Harware Hack! Clever duck…

After all the excitement and hard work organising BarCampLondon6 last week, quite a few of the London contingent decided to head to sunny Bournemouth for the first ever BarCamp to be held there, organised by Mark Ng.

Alistair and I went down to the coast a few days early to do a spot of caching too. There are hundreds of caches around Bournemouth so we couldn’t resist.

[Sunset over Sandbanks]

I really enjoyed the BarCamp. Another relaxed, friendly get-together and the University setting was great for that sort of event.

Dom and Tim were up to their usual antics and decided to fill a Smart Car with boxes of the Sponsor’s Tea:

[A Smart Car full of tea. Why? Why not!]

It was lots of  hard work, but really rewarding to see everything come together over the weekend. At times, we might have felt a little headless (it happens to the best of us!). I never thought I would spent 2 hours putting together Lego figures for the schwag bag on the Friday evening, but it was fun.

We had some great sessions and loads of people seemed to enjoy themselves. Thanks for all the feedback folks!

Here are some more images I took during the weekend:

[VIP pass for Mr Duck]

[The awesome BarCamp logo made from Lego during the introductory sessions]

So would I do it again? Probably. Just not for a while

A quick reminder about BarCampLondon6 – it will be held on 28th-29th March 2009 at The Guardian’s swanky offices in Kings Cross. The first wave of tickets are due to be released at 3pm on 16th Feb – see the BarCampLondon.org website for more details.

If you miss out on the first wave, don’t worry – there will be other opportunities to sign up.

So, when there was a general call for help to organise the next London BarCamp, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring.

Now we have our venue and major sponsor 99% sewn up, we are ready to announce BarCampLondon6.

When: 28th/29th March 2009
Where: Central London
Who for: Anyone who’s interested!

The first tickets will be released mid-February – please see the website to subscribe to up-to-date information.

It was great to return to Sheffield (where I did my electronic engineering degree) after an absence of more than 13 years. Far too long!

[Showroom Cafe/Bar/Cinema, the venue]

The venue was in a rather nice Art Deco cinema/cafe/conference centre called the Showroom, in the heart of the city. It worked well as a place to host the BarCamp, with most of the rooms we used very close to each other. And the food was excellent – right from Dinner on the Friday night through to lunch on Sunday.

The warmup party on Friday night was a lot of fun. We were encouraged to make thought bubbles with our tags/interests and contact details, as a bit of an ice breaker. I think we felt a little daft at first, but with the aid of a few beers, we generally got into the swing of things!

[Three loonies wearing thought bubbles: Jay, me, Alistair]

I really enjoyed some of the presentations and discussions which were run during the event. I got mine over with early on, A Newbies’ Guide to Geocaching, which you can download from Slideshare.

Next up was a discussion about Community, and what it meant to us, lead by Alistair MacDonald. Some interesting points were raised, and this also lead nicely into another discussion a couple of sessions later on Social Isolation, lead by Kian Ryan.

After lunch, I noticed the sun was out, so I skived out for half an hour to photograph some nearby sights with a bit of decent light. The sculpture Cutting Edge made it as picture of the day, but I also liked this [right] one of a little lad admiring the cascade fountain near the station:

Alistair & I also managed a geocaching session in the city centre, before it got too cold and dark! Then it was back to the venue to thaw out and watch a session on Self-Defence for Geeks run by Paul Stanton.

Before long it was time for dinner and moar beer and silliness. You can imagine what the evening ended up like. And you can imagine what state some folks were in the next morning. Thankfully, the reving properties of copious quantities of tea and bacon soon did the trick.

Some Sunday sessions which I enjoyed included Jay Cousins‘ talk on Language and how it can influence our perception of technology. He made up some pretty neat words too!

Emma Persky ran a discussion about the imbalance of women in positions of influence within the web, when there is more or less parity now with the ratio of male/females who use the web. Not sure that any concensus was reached, as we seemed to talk in circles for a bit!

Tom Scott ran an excellent quiz during the Sunday lunch slot – the team I was on won, so of course it was excellent! We also had an open discussion with the organisers about the way things had gone over the two days, chaired by Jag Gill. Certainly they did some things differently; some worked well, others not quite so well, but overall I think the team did an excellent job at organising their very first BarCamp! Bravo to Jag, Ibbo, Josie, Jay and all the others.

Jon Linklater-Johnson ran a session on 10 Top Tips To Stop You From Messing Up Your Website. There was also a session about Tea, which was quite appropriate since lots of geeks seem to be obsessed with the stuff. Later on, there was a special showing of Dr Horrible, something I’d heard much-Tweeted about. Quite funny in places, purely bonkers in others!

The after party saw a few hardy souls do more damage to their livers, play Semantopoly, do silly things with Alistair’s BathCamp duck, and then go out for a massive curry. Great way to wind up the event.

[Jay and his Pirate Duck]

But I really think the last word should go to Ruby & Perl, Gemma’s ferrets who made a guest appearance on Saturday. Now I’ve experienced a BarCamp with ferrets, things will never be the same again!

[Ferrets ahoy!]

So that’s it really. A great weekend of geeking out. Thanks to all the folks who organised, contributed and turned up. It was a pleasure to meet you all. You can see the rest of my photos from the weekend on Flickr.