Neil Phillips’ blog

I’d not been to barcamp before - here’s a rundown!

@voirol delivered an impassioned case for custom CMS development (as in completely proprietary) - which seems vaguely compelling for a small organisation, but scary in terms of TCO and maintainablity. He made a fine point on throwawayability, and the benefits of ‘do just what it needs to do’.

@pamelafox introduced the google appengine, a kind of platform as a service currently for python, which looks altogether very nifty.

@chieftech on enterprise 2.0 reconfirms my thinking that.. there really isn’t any yet.

@maymaym great intro into practical semanticness-really first class stuff. Talked about oomph, microformats, icalness.

random (in a good way) conversation about community management from Scott

@spellrus - interesting techcrunch sanfran intro, and a really interesting idea on how to quality assure content on websites

intro into xblui which went a little over by head.

weird off topic ‘mind hacking’ thing - not entirely sure it hit the barcamp mandate. And @http://headwellred running the session seems over aggressive and controlling of her victim (@nickgonios) in the audience.

@pamelafox reminds us about HTML5, which now does some really useful things - better canvas stuff, form elements (like datepicker, slide, flex style data sets) and better form validation too.

Completely inconclusive conversation on Android.

The man Burch gave a helpful prod into using eLance.com - am persuaded to get my Symbian app developed at last.

Annoyed I missed the first bits of the dataportability discussion from @liakos and others - mainly because I had no idea from the title what the topic was.

Thanks for to the sponsors, who know who they are. Also big thanks for the unorganisers. Now.. to beers.

We went to look at Wisdom, an exhibition by Andrew Zuckerman at the State Library. It was really quite bad, which was a shame. The idea was great, the photos good, the participants mainly worthy (Willie Nelson - WTF?), but the curation was just plain mad. The photos were in the middle, with numbers, the text matching them was sprinkled around the wall no where nearby, and the biographies were thoughtfully posted at the very end of the exhibition. The result was altogether quite physically jarring.

Curious curation - how not to label an exhibition

So, we had a great lunch today at Coffee Cup on Crown (just up from Blank Space) - it’s a fine addition to the area’s eateries. Anyway… they’re doing DIY breakfast from Monday - all the toast you can eat - you toast it yourself, organic breads galore and condiments aplenty. Seems like a bold idea.

Coffee Cup on Crown
368 Crown Street, Surry Hills
Ph: (02) 9368 0004

Not my headline (see Coolhunter), but a sincere hope that Americans will get out and vote.

In one hour the (main) polls open and there’s a very real chance we’ll see President Obama duly elected, which surely would mark the end of the beginning of racism in America, and, equally importantly a bold generational change in leadership.

So.. I caught a taxi last night, and we pulled up behind a Prius Hybrid. The taxi driver asked me what a Hybrid was… which got me thinking about (a) how taxi drivers are typically inquisitive and conversational people (b) why most grown-ups feel foolish about asking questions (c) whether the taxi driver really didn’t have access to the internet (quite possible) and (d) why the Hybrid manufacturers aren’t putting their message across better.

I met up with the STUB folks last night, and it was great. Next stop the Cricketers’ Arms.

We saw Geoffrey last Friday, and he was brilliant. I confess his album took a couple of listens before I liked it, but then it just clicked. Try it.

Forgot to mention that we went to Sculpture by the Sea - the annual, uhm, sculpture by the seaside event in Sydney, and it was nothing short of a little bit better than last year. It’s always a nice walk anyway, but there were a couple of bits I thought were great.

Sculpture by the Sea example

I’m going to do the Sydney to the Gong bike ride (90kms) next weekend - it’s for MS Australia and raises money for people affected by Multiple Sclerosis. I’m doing the ride with my ex-neighbour George - if you’d like to sponsor me that would be great.

Whilst it may be a trend, I’m surprised Springwise (normally excellent) didn’t pass judgment on these smashing people - a company which lets you pay money to smash perfectly good crockery. Is it just me or is this just plain wrong when the majority of people on the planet earn less per day than a set of crockery would cost in the states ?