Wired pimps Ritual Roasters, birthplace of Bar Camp

Ritual Roasters: Birthplace of Bar Camp

A hip Mission District cafe has become the unlikely nerve center for a new wave of software innovators, amid signs of a second internet gold rush.

Ritual Coffee Roasters opened just this May, but thanks to free Wi-Fi, French-pressed coffees and gourmet espresso, it has already become a favorite temporary home to some of the best-known Web 2.0 startups.

…

Ritual’s espresso drinks also fueled the first planning meeting for Bar Camp, an ad-hoc, open-source complement to O’Reilly’s famed Foo Camp.

Wired News: Cafe 2.0: After the Gold Rush

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Bar Camp gains a sponsor, gets design, spreads

Flickr PhotoChris Pirillo of LockerGnome and Gada.be has stepped up as a Bar Camp Amsterdam sponsor:

I’ve also informed Chris Messina that we’ll be giving our support to BarCamp Amsterdam as well. Why? Because even if I can’t be there in person, I can be there in spirit. Both Gnomedex and gada.be are fueled by the greater community, so we (in turn) are fueling them.

Here a Camp, There a Camp (Chris Pirillo)

It’s this kind of community support that makes these events not only possible to organize, but enables us to offer them for free. While the logistics of arranging and planning big conferences like Web2.0 and EuroOSCON certainly have historically had large costs associated with them, it’s really very inspiring to be able to, from thousands of miles away, organize a microconference that costs little less than the time, attenion and dedication of a few wired (or mostly wireless!) folks.

We’ve got folks offering their design talent, organizing skills, office space and hard earned dough to make this happen. And it’s spreading…

Just this weekend I talked to Amit Gupta about him organizing a Bar Camp NYC. And I just saw that there’s a Sunday Startup Social being organized in Boston. Very excellent.


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Bar Camp Comes to Ireland as TechCamp

techcamp_logo.jpgBar Camp has a new cousin!

TechCamp is the Irish version of FooCamp and BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/). Following on from James Corbett’s post on why Ireland can’t have more get togethers like they do in the States, we’ve decided to hold the first (of many!) collaborative meetings. The aim of the day is for us all to share what we know and learn from everyone else.

Tech Camp Ireland – BDMwiki

They can rest assured that if they need any help, the original Bar Campers will be available to answer any questions they might have. Interestingly they seem to have dispensed with the open space session organizing practice in exchange for predefined sessions. I’m interested to know why they chose that model and if it will result in a more productive meeting…

In any case, good luck to them!

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Open source getting a unified desktop

Tango! Project

Steven Garrity, my good friend and creative director of silverorange, has announced the creation of the Tango Project, an effort that aims to provide:

  • A specified default native look.
  • A subsystem to help standardize toolkits on a common look and feel.
  • A complete, standard set of application, mimetype, and stock icons to build upon a style guide.
  • Cross-desktop humane interface guidelines.

    • Looks to be an excellent project. Can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

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    Bar Camp Amsterdam gets a venue

    Flickr PhotoThanks to Mies, Bar Camp Amsterdam now has an excellent venue for our event coming up Oct 20-21 in Amsterdam. Everyone’s welcome to attend, though we only have space for 40-50 folks.

    Also want to shout out to Chris Heuer’s Web2.1 Brainjam event. As an original Bar Camp alum, we’re very proud to hear that his event was a tremendous success!

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    Take a gander at Flock (pun intended)

    Flickr PhotoIt’s still pretty early on in Flock‘s history, so a Slashdotting now and then certainly isn’t a bad thing. Not to mention homepage coverage on BusinessWeek and a great write up by Stowe Boyd, who I had the pleasure to meet today.

    But the feeling that I’ve gotten from Slashdot and around the blogs surround two things:

    1. What the heck is it? … and …
    2. Why do you have such an ugly website?

    Well, the first answer would take forever to explain, so I’d rather just show you.
    For the second one, hey, it took me like 2 hours on the day of our initial private launch. I was focused more on the browser and less on the site and if you don’t like it, well good – more time to spend using Flock on other sites!

    Anh, no, seriously … I’ll be taking another whack at it eventually but at least as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have it be super simple, super plain and super lean. I’ll tone the volume down in the next release but at least the design, for whatever reason, seems to have inspired some kind of derivitive work.

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