GlitchNYC

I’m gearing up for my trip to South By Southwest, and I’ve set up a new blog for the occasion! I’m going to be clip-to-blogging everything interesting I see around SXSW and Barcamp Austin, so I don’t want to flood my loyal readers here. If you’d like to follow along, you can check out the “Skiff at SXSW” blog or subscribe to the feed.

By the way, if you’re going to SXSW and you’re not heading to Barcamp Austin, you’ve seriously got to come check it out. Sure, you’ll have to skip a few talks at SXSW to attend, but there’s going to be some seriously smart and passionate people sharing ideas at Barcamp. You’ll be very glad you came.

BarcampBoston is coming up, and one of the members of an email group I’m on wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The following was my response. I think it sums up barcamp fairly well from a personal perspective, so I’m reposting it here.

Barcamp is, simply put, an unconference. No vendors, no high level keynote speakers, no preset agenda.

People get together in a space (which is often loaned by a local business) and talk about things they want to talk about. You’re very much encouraged to present if you go. Attendees are also enlisted to run all the tech, bring wifi nodes and projectors, and do just about everything (including developing the presentation tracks) themselves. It ends up working surprisingly well.

Oh yeah, and it’s free.

At BarcampNYC, I heard presentations from people who were actually excited about what they were doing. I chatted with Andrew Baron of Rocketboom and got inspired. I gave a well-attended talk with John Resig on “gaming social networks” and using myspace for promotions. I met and began working relationships and friendships with  Amit Gupta, Chris Messina, and Tara Hunt. I connected with bloggers, podcasters, coders, and “web 2.0″ business people.

At BarcampAustin, I chatted with Matt Mullenweg from wordpress and sat next to Doc Searls for hours as we attended the same talks. I heard about the municipal wifi network Austin is building and the business and technological opportunities there. I talked endlessly with folks about the potential of IPTV and why 100mbps to the home might not be enough. I heard the beginnings of Tara’s Pinko Marketing and how she’s using and building upon the cluetrain to promote Riya. I learned more and interacted more in the 1 day at BarcampAustin than I did at the whole of the much bigger and more expensive SXSW.

People don’t just present, chat, and connect at barcamp. Sometimes they just sit right down and code. Mashups and new projects have resulted. It’s an incredible event that’s spreading across the globe like wildfire. You don’t need a massive convention to convey and consume good ideas… We don’t need a “convention industry.” We don’t need to fly all over creation to meet the movers and shakers - we’ve got plenty in our own backyards. We just need to start getting together.

That’s what barcamp is about.

The longer I’m in Austin, the more I like it.

There’s an expectation you have of Texas when you live in the northeast, that it’s this place of sand and sparse grass and bleached white cattle skulls.

So far, Austin is simply like a smaller new york. Actually, I think it’s fair to say that Austin, TX and Rochester, NY share the most similarities of all the towns and cities I’ve been in. The only real discernible difference here is that the older cars look better. I saw a 1988 Honda accord that made me drool! It was in perfect condition, with none of the rock salt body rot that we face in New York.

I’m writing this from a bus stop, sitting outside in 78 degree weather and just soaking in the breeze.

Let me go back a second.

I’m writing this from a bus stop.

I’m on a open wireless hotspot, provided by chiropractor across the street. It’s one of many. in fact, Austin was voted “most wired” city of 2005. I met John Cooper at barcamp, who is working on extending that reach even further, and building out a full coverage wireless mesh network with access points hanging from the lamp posts, which would provide access to every square inch they deploy it over.

How do you make money giving away wifi? Well, many businesses find that it simply attracts customers (in fact, sometimes it attracts them a little too well! Coffeehouses sometimes have to kick the cybersquatters out after a few hours without purchase.)

With a city wide mesh network, you’ve got an added advantage. You know what node the user is connected to, and you know where that node is. You also know what businesses are local.

Imagine firing up your laptop (or maybe even a smaller device) on any street in your city and having full fast access to the Internet. When you fire up the connection, you hit the portal page, which welcomes you by giving you access to great community tools like a local wiki, customer review site like citysearch. The unobtrusive ads on the sidebar show you tasty looking sushi from a restaurant called Oslo.

You look up. Oslo is right across the street.

There were lots of great talks at barcamp, and as usual I had many more great conversations over a beer or during dinner. Doc Searls, blogger and senior editor of Linux Journal, sat two seats away from me for two presentations, and hung out most of the event.

Not bad for the free little upstart blocks away from the official conference.

Well, my bus is here, but I’ll leave you with some links that tell the story a bit better.

GlitchCast 23 features a BarCampAustin wrapup and music from the funny and excellent Pirate Party Band, “The Jolly Garogers”

The Flickr photostream has hundreds and hundreds of photos from the event. BarCampAustin was the #1 tag as of 4:30 yesterday.

Watching a presentation by Carl Decordova on “blogging behind the firewall,” I was just shown a fun little tool on mac… Select text, go to file -> services ->summarize. Move the slider, and it will automatically go from 1 line summary to full text. It’s brilliant, and available programmatically, so you can use it in scripts.

Carl also put together the blog for vistacare’s cto http://www.vistacare.com/ontheroad. Very cool, very cluetrain.