Tag: SpreadSpread

BarCampAustin, BarCampPlannersSummit and CoworkingMeetup

BarCampAustin logo

Hot on the news that co-organizer Whurley has joined BMC Software as Chief Evil Genius, we’re kicking off the start of BarCamp/Refresh/Dorkbot at Bourbon Rocks in Austin alongside the start of SXSW.

A couple notes… BarCampAustin starts started today and continues into tomorrow (yes, this overlaps with the first day of SXSWi). Highlights include $10 screenprinting of your own custom BarCamp tshirt and Austin favorite SoulHat will be playing Saturday Night — along with other surprises throughout. As co-organizer Erica O’Grady says, This is definitely going to be a BarCamp you won’t want to miss 😉

Now, as for agendas… just want to point out that we’ll probably be doing both a session and a coordinating meeting of some kind related to coworking tomorrow. This is the meeting that we previously discussed but didn’t set a definite time on. I think it’d be best if we planned to take this on tomorrow from 3:30 to 4:30 — trying hard not to conflict with too many panels… so that Tara can join in, since she’ll be jetting off to Vegas to perform reconnaissance at Community Two Point Oh Con.

Otherwise, the rest of the week is pretty well covered by Jeremy Keith’s microformats mashup until we arrive at the on Thursday.

So, while I’m at it, I want to pimp out Twitter (not like it needs it — but you can follow what’s going on by sending the command join sxsw — though unfortunately there’s no “unjoin” if you want to tune us all out) and Conferenceer — both will prove indispensable tools throughout the week and beyond.

Mac Mash Pit/CocoaDevHouse tomorrow at Obvious Corp

Mash Pit logoJust in case you’re still in town and your fingers are itchin’ to push some pixels or get some code out, tomorrow there’ll be a Mac Mash Pit at Obvious Corp’s offices in South Park from noon till late afternoon. If you’ve got an hour or two to spare, it’ll be a great chance to meet the folks behind ODEO and Twitter and to get a little hacking done.

Rumor has it that Larry from Ma.gnolia will also be there as well as R. Tyler Ballance from the infamous Bleep Software and Blake Burris, the host, from CocoaRadio.

What’s a Mash Pit? Well, historically they’ve been day long events getting together multi-disciplinary and talented folks to work on projects that focus on problems described in human terms, like, how can you make it easier for folks to send contact info to each other. And so on. Recently, Mash Pits have become more theme-driven, with a number of OpenID Mash Pits popping up. So, it only seemed appropriate that while MacWorld was going on to bring the event to Mac developers and designers.

Hope to see you there tomorrow!

MacWorld events and Citizen Central

A bunch of upcoming events this week during MacWorld… many at Citizen Space, our coworking space. As usual, you can add these events to your calendar by clicking here.

Bonus next month:

Oh, and don’t forget to use Twitter to catalog your exploits by prepending your messages with macworld! Let’s annoy Buzz!

Project management on the Mac has a new name

OmniPlan 1.0

I’m rather excited that the Omni Group has announced the One Point Oh release of OmniPlan, now the Mac’s answer to Microsoft Project.

It’s funny, but here around Citizen Space I’ve already had two encounters with folks other than myself using it who are loving it. Lee even claims that after showing it to his Microsoft Project-prone business instructor that next semester they’ll be upgrading to something that… just works.

Personally, playing along through the beta program afforded me an opportunity to put together an OmniPlan timeline for a potential client that I’m quite sure left them rather impressed. And, it already looks like we’ll be planning out our work with Edgeio using OmniPlan, as John Dowd is already an eager user.

Don’t forget, if you took advantage of their November deal on OmniWeb you can use your registration for 5% off your purchase (you can actually use any non-bundle Omni license to get this stackable discount).

‘The Corporation’ released on BitTorrent for free

The Corporation Now on BitTorrent (by factoryjoe)

Now here’s something clearly to be thankful for.

Sundance award-winning documentary The Corporation has been released for free on BitTorrent.

TorrentFreak has the details:

The new torrent download includes a high-quality rip of the master DVD and a 40 minute interview with Joel Bakan, the author of the book and writer of the film. Mark Achbar actually dedicated a computer in his garage to do nothing but seed.

Although the torrent download is free, the filmmakers encourage people to donate a small fee if they like what they see. We asked Mark Achbar how the first round of donations went. He said, “since my initial torrent launch of The Corporation at the end of August, there have been $635.00 in contributions. They ranged from $2 to three very generous gifts of $100 each. All are very much appreciated.”

The makers of “The Corporation just launched a Campaign for Corporate Harm Reduction (C4CHR) in collaboration with Hellocoolworld.com. The purpose of this campaign is to collect stories about the impact of the film, asking people what they did, or something they’ve heard happened as a result of the film.

“We want to create a feedback loop on the “what you can do” front, and perhaps turn it into a book. The torrent is a great way to stay in touch with people about our current activities Achbar” Achbar explained.

He added, “my only regret is that I didn’t put up my own torrent sooner.”

Download the official torrent (DivX or iPod formats available) and start seeding!

Bonus: ChomskyTorrents has a bunch of other awesome mind-freeing stuff to check out! Definitely fodder for CitiCinema.

The origins of DevHouse

businessw00t

Following , Jeff offers the origin story of teh DevHouse:

Let me tell you how I saw DevHouse get started.

He goes on to describe his hope for future events:

My vision, if any, is to have a whole ecology of specialized and general purpose DevHouse events that are self-organizing and take place wherever there are hackers. : )

So, we’ll see. I’m going to make an effort to make this happen when I can. I want to first try to work with CocoaDevHouse better, and figure out what kind of relationship works. I also want to try starting another specialized event for indie game development. And we’ve been talking and working a bit to make some software to help with the network infrastructure of these kinds of events. I’ve been talking with some people about writing some software to help complement the wiki-based way of promoting and organizing these events.

Nice.

So don’t miss SHDH13, coming up Nov 4-5 in Los Gatos.

MC Chris at Isotope

Just coz I think you should be aware and that I’m up and jet-lagged back in SF after a horrendous experience with the worst airline ever (possibly even worse than American Airlines), I thought you should know that MC Chris (mastermind behind Fett’s Vett) is coming to Isotope Comics in Hayes Valley tonight at 8pm to perform a free, all ages gig.

Ok, now to go sleep.

CanUX 2006

Thought I’d pass this along (like Tara has) since two of our friends, (Kevin Cheng and David Crow) are involved:

CanUX 2006, the Canadian User Experience workshop, is rapidly approaching. Held in Banff, we’re bringing in a set of industry leading speakers. Because CanUX is a grassroots event, it’s an amazing deal – only a $100 fee for a world-class user experience event. A single room at the Banff Centre is $176/night, a double is $91. With two nights accomodation, a meal plan at the phenomenal dining room, and the conference fee and taxes and we’re able to offer an all inclusive package that’s unmatched: $650 for a single, $450 for a double…that’s less than the registration fee for many similar events, and includes your room and meals too. CanUX runs Thursday Sept. 14-Saturday Sept. 16 at 107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Banff, Alberta, T1L 1H5.

Space is limited, so check out the conference speakers, schedule, and registration

Add this even to your calendar.