GOOD MORNING CAMPERS!

Yes it’s another Barcamp, this time in Sheffield. Last light saw the pre-camp party, where vast quantities of alcohol were imbued by many, and the rest of us stood around to watch the tomfoolery. We’re now into the registration part of the Saturday session and people are starting to gently dribble in, some nursing serious hangovers. Hopefully we’ll be able to live blog some of the details as we go for those of you unable to attend.

The below are mostly crib notes. I make no claims to the accuracy of the content below, or that the speakers even spoke at the time.

Community (Chaired by Allistar) 11:30 – 12:00

Round-table discussion on the concept of community, can communities be built and who speaks for community.

Definition of community: Community by identity. Community by activism.

Communities operate in tiers: Highly vocal activists People who identify People who occasionally read “Is it people who care?”

Community leaders? Uncomfortable with the concept of leaders. Wrong term – shapers and activists.

The answer – it’s complicated?

Futurology – Paul Robinson 12:00 – 12:30

Suburbs generated by General Motors as a marketing device, futurology as a marketing device. (Does Futurology require community? – Asimov/Foundation Psychomathmatics) Own subjective wishes and desires being projected. Can make an subjective truth they discover come true. Science to promote a political view.

Science Fiction as Futurology Science Fiction inspiring science fact? Arthur C Clarke – The world would have three satellites. Manned 24 hours. All the world’s communication needs. One right – geosynchronous orbit.

Social Isolation in the proliferation of social networks – Kian Ryan 12:30 – 13:00

Run my me, I may post up notes later.

Arduino – 13:00 – 13:30

Hardware tinkering Interface with controllers, sensors, etc. Popular community of toy hacking (looks interesting)

Hands on with some real toys! Awesome!

STOP THE PRESSES!

We apologize for the lack of continued coverage of the event, however at this point some little oik managed to nick my bag containing my laptop, mp3 player, journals and my wallet. As you can imagine this made continued live-blogging rather tricky. If anyone sees it, it’s a Swissgear Rival backpack in red (see image below), with a Macbook Black, Sanse E280 and Shure SE-210 headphones, and two Moleskine journals with my names in them.

Luckily all the data was anally backed up onto my NAS and Subversion repo, so no work has been lost. I have a new MBP, and am currently getting myself back in the game. There’s some new ideas for blog posts coming.