Monday was Democamp 12, I heard about it in the morning and managed to get a ticket (someone dropped out). It was really a great evening; I met some really cool people and won a model plane.
Events: Betidings and Twegather
First up presenting was Betidings. The concept is that you have a calendar of events that you’re interested in, and you can follow other people and events they add to their calendar will show up for you as well. So with very little effort I now have a schedule of events in Ottawa and I can see what days I’m free and what interest me. The downside – I was living in contented ignorance about the Girl Geek Dinner on Monday, and now I’m gutted that I’m missing it! I think it’s worth checking out, you can see what I’m interested in here.
This is still in the very early stages and is more of a proof of concept than a fully fledged application but I think it’s worth a go – the more data there the more useful it will be. And it’s a nice way to share stuff you’re interested in without forcing it on people. I guess it could potentially be for events what Twitter is for ideas and content. Not sure everyone got this though – one jerk said the user interface sucked. Not quite in the spirit of democamp! The UI isn’t fully there yet and I’m not a big fan of the colorscheme but they’re actively looking for feedback and welcome any comments to @betidings.
Twegather (not yet public) was created through TeamCamp – read about it here. It’s an event system using Twitter, you’ll be able to create an event using @WhoWantsToGo.
Crazy Planes
The planes were what I was talking about in this tweet. A full article on it is this one, by the lovely @loudandskittish. I thought these were awesome because to me they illustrate the programmer mindset applied to something not-programming. I’m definitely going to be taking mine (and hopefully a few more) to my Holiday Science Lecture in December!
Twitter Procrastination Tool: BattleTwip
This is kinda cute! Battleship on Twitter, played against everyone. Created by 76Design, you can follow @battletwip and play via Twitter when the next game starts. They also have a really awesome looking web interface which we saw a preview of, but as far as I can find it’s not up yet.
Advertising: Shiny Ads
Shiny ads is an alternative to Google Adsense. It allows you to attract your own advertisers, gives them the tools to make their ad or upload it and then you can approve it (or not) and earn a much better rate for click-through. Wasn’t so relevant to democamp – although most people had websites, they seem to use them to either promote their (non ad-based-web-) business or personal brand.
Overall
Great experience, great people, great opportunity to interact with the Ottawa tech community and it’s nice to see what’s up and coming. I love the vibrant tech scene here! Can’t wait for democamp 13 – wonder if I could present my graphs…?