Let’s see, where did I leave off, Oh yes, now I remember, LUNCH!
After lunch, we started back into the sessions, however we now had a new twist. During the morning sessions, attendees could list topics the were interested in presenting or attending and everyone voted on the sessions they would like to see added to the afternoon schedule. This “twist” is what makes BarCamp unique among gatherings of this nature. The sessions aren’t just what the organizers think we might like, but are a mix of what we as attendees would like to hear or present. This naturally presented a problem for me as I saw several sessions I would like to attend. It almost came down to a coin toss on some, but in the end, I decided on a group of sessions I thought would be great.
The first session I attended after lunch centered on FriendFeed and was facilitated by Daniel Pritchett. Here is his Twitter and of course FriendFeed. Daniel’s presentation did start out a bit rocky. His slides were hard to read and the selections of screenshots suffered, but then Daniel did what every good presenter is supposed to do; he improvised. Daniel gave us links to go review his slides on Google (that link is to the finished slides on Slideshare) and then forged ahead by dropping out of the powerpoint and using his web browser to literally show us FriendFeed in all of its glory. We discussed using rooms and link lists to keep feeds separated and easier to keep up with on a daily basis. We also discussed a feature I was unaware of until this session, Imaginary Friends. ”Imaginary Friends” is a tool which allows you to enter feeds from people who do not use FriendFeed. Using this, you can continue to gather information, posts, tweets, or whatever in FreindFeed so you do not have to visit multiple sites to keep up with your Friends. This feature was an eye-opener for me and has given me a real reason to use FriendFeed. From here, the discussion took an unexpected but interesting turn. We started talking about RSS feeds in general and how people use them. For instance, I currently use WordPress’s own RSS engine for the feed from this blog. It’s simple for me to work with and I don’t have to “think” about it. Others use tools such as FeedBurner to keep better track of their feeds as well as modify them from simple lists to straight forward copies of their format. Then the discussion drifted to how people use RSS feeds to keep people informed as well as publish information for specific audiences. Yahoo Pipes was briefly discussed, but a quick survey of the room showed Pipes didn’t really have much of a following in our group.
All in all, this was an excellent session, not just because of Daniel’s quick thinking, but because we all started contributing to the conversation. This “Open Conversation” was, to me, the defining ideal of the second half of the day. We as a group of interested and committed individuals came together and discussed topics WE thought were important. My next post will show how that carried forward through the next two sessions I attended.
On a side note, the BarCamp Memphis website has been updated with pictures and info and a Zoho Wiki was setup with links to a lot of the session presentations and the Flickr picture pool from the day. If you look close you will see me in WAY too many pictures. If you have a collection of posts or info from BarCamp Memphis, please list them in the comments and I’ll compile them into a list.
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November 14, 2008 at 9:23 pm
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