Gawker: valleywag, barcamp

Indie, grassroots conference advertises on a truck

Scott Kidder — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:15:54 EDT

Spotted all around Austin during this week's South by Southwest conference: a moving billboard (truck, actually) for BarCamp Austin, the "unconference" originally created as an alternative to Tim O'Reilly's exclusive Foo Camp. The billboard's owner, Anderson Mobile Advertising, says their trucks "provide businesses with a creative solution helping them break through today's media clutter." They bought the entire truck, so the same ad keeps rotating, promising "tech, beer, and the karaoke apocalypse."

To-Do this weekend: Get FUBAR at FooBar

Nick Douglas — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:40:38 EDT

Unless you're a Friend of Tim O'Reilly, you're not invited to his Foo Camp. So you can't go; I just wanted to remind you of that. [Upcoming]
Stanford hosts the latest BarCamp (think "McConference" — think it, don't say it out loud) one year after its first iteration. It's the official meetup for people who aren't mad they didn't get invited to Foo Camp. [Upcoming]
Or go to any of the many BarCamps around the world. It's the official meetup for people who aren't mad they can't get to BarCamp San Francisco. [Upcoming]
As if you didn't get drunk before these camps, you can get drunk after. Trust us, dealing with these people is nearly tolerable that way. (We kid. You need to get high too.) [Barcamp.org]
Saturday, suit up for the Women 2.0 BBQ and pool party, co-hosted with the bad boys of IM startup Meetro. [Entrepreneur27]
Burn on, burn in, burn out at the most anticipated desert campathon of tech: it's the Burning Man Festival, it's all next week, and tickets are for sale at the gate. Clothing optional, hallucinogenics mandatory. [Upcoming]

Remainders: Get it off your chest

Nick Douglas — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:17:27 EDT

Barcampers spread the gospel of their unconference ("It's not religion, it's faith") in a slick mini-documentary. [Freevlog.org]
Gnomedex conference founder Chris Pirillo sells keywords on his chest. How long did it take him to airbrush that photo? [Rent My Chest]
More harrowing tales of inconvenience as California faces ~~the result of its gluttony~~ another blackout. [ZDNet]
Please, it's only news when a hacker conference finishes without the FBI dragging away one or two speakers. [Washington Post via Boing Boing]
The back-dated stock options scandal rocking the Valley may not be as fun as watching the Google boys fill their plane with hammocks, but it is important. So here's someone else to explain who's charging, who's charged, and whether it's more appropriate to call anarchocapitalist execs "criminals" or "dicks". [Spot-On]
Blogger Om Malik prints an excerpt from that hot new "Silicon-Valley-biotech-changes-the-world" book, which I really mean to read after one more episode of Battlestar Galactica. [GigaOM]

How to survive Mash Pit, Supernova, Bloggercon, and BarCamp this week

Nick Douglas — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:35:47 EDT

Hoo boy, four San Francisco conferences in one week! Starting with today's MashPit, this week is a con junkie's dream, as long as you have a guide to getting through.

MashPit III: Tuesday 10-5
Made by: "Pinko Marketing" evangelist Tara Hunt; designer Chris Messina; Technorati coder Tantek Celik
Gist: Coders make mashups of their favorite Internet tools
Attendance: About 22 people as of 11 AM, room for more
People to meet: Tantek Celik, Chief Technologist for blog-tracking startup Technorati and king of Microformats (meet him again at Supernova)
People to avoid: Kevin Burton, because he's not allowed to talk until he sells his startup.
Fringe benefit: Free Starbucks and pastries, unless you'd rather watch the live video feed.

Supernova 2006: Wednesday to Friday
Gist: Speakers like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Technorati founder Dave Sifry, and Yahoo Senior VP Usama Fayyad speak about the business of technology. But you're here for the networking.
Attendance: Several hundred geeks and wonks hailing from Wired Magazine, Microsoft, Plaxo, and other places you want to get hired
People to meet: Kyle Brinkman, co-founder of MySpace, to ask if he's grown up and joined Facebook yet
People to avoid: The Ponytail (and Jon Schwartz, the interim Sun CEO attached to it)
Fringe benefit: Have fun drawing six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon maps connecting all the panelists — "So he's from Technorati, and she's on Technorati's board, but she also used to work for Sun, where this other guy works after leaving Microsoft...and these two are totally sleeping together."

Bloggercon IV: Thursday night to Saturday evening
Gist: Bloggers like RSS innovator Dave Winer and Gnomedex conference founder Chris Pirillo discuss blogging, how to make money from it, and how to win elections with it — things that bloggers currently suck at
Attendance: Capped at 125, with a long waiting list
People to meet: MAKE Magazine blogger Phil Torrone, man of many tech toys (jammers! robots! LEDs!)
People to avoid: Winer — which might be hard, since it's his conference
Fringe benefit: Winer declared the whole conference "on the record." Exploit this every time you overhear a whisper.

BarCamp: Friday to Sunday
Gist: Much bigger, funner version of MashPit — one of many BarCamp coding and collaboration events held around the world. Hosted by Microsoft, who really wants to prove how indie they are
Attendance: Room for 250, with 204 signed up so far
People to meet: Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera, if only to ask whether he and roommate Michael Arrington really have a "Tech-cave" and "Tech-mobile" in the basement
People to avoid: Anyone with a podcast microphone
Fringe benefit: Brag about getting invited to O'Reilly Media's Foo Camp, so "I just thought I'd drop by to see the little people."

Chris Messina taking your spotlight, Tara Hunt? Join the club.

Nick Douglas — Tue, 30 May 2006 11:00:00 EDT

Web 2.0 (TM) marketer Tara Hunt is less than pleased with how "the media" (read: the SF Chronicle's embedded reporter Dan Fost) covered her event this weekend:

This past weekend, Chris and I (as well as a huge number of other people) were behind a very successful WineCamp, yet, when reported by the media, Chris was the only one mentioned as being behind it.

Funny, Tara, that sounds familiar. Kinda like Fost's note before heading to Winecamp:

The event is part of Chris Messina's Bar Camp un-conferences.

Oh really, Dan? So Barcamp's founding fathers —

Andy Smith (back left), Ryan King (back right), Tantek Celik (front left), Matt Mullenweg (front right), and the Eris Stassi (founding mother, not pictured) — Chris (center, squinting) didn't mention them when you fact-checked with him?

You...you did fact-check about Barcamp, right? I hear fact-checking separates real journalists from unreliable blogs like Valleywag.

Sometimes, being a PiC really sucks [Tara Hunt]
TECH CHRONICLES [Dan Fost at SF Chronicle]
Photo: BarCampPlanners, where are you now? [Ryan King on Flickr via the ryan king]