BarCampSDK

Major thanks go out to Brienne from Datasync for finding us an after-party location!  Don’t forget your sleeping bags and tents, this is going to be a REAL BarCAMP!

Also, if any locals want to help out with the BBQ, let us know.

A couple items we might need:  (Just add a comment if you can help with any of these — contact us if your company does!)

• Items to grill
• chips/dips/snacks
• BEER!  (any local brewers around?)
• Soda/Water
• Wii (and/or extra Wii controllers for the Wii Bowling Tournament)
• Television?
• Surge protectors
• Projector - Movies on the side of the barn!
• Tents
• Napkins, plates, silverware
• Beanbags?  Other ideas?

Thank you in advance to all who can help!

Also, since this is a camp-out you’ll probably want to bring necessary “overnight personal items” and sleeping bag/pillow/etc.

I met with Brienne Zimmer from DataSync this morning and we now have a venue!

SD Technology Business Center (venue sponsored by DataSync and SDTBC)
2329 N Career Ave
Sioux Falls, SD 57107

Get directions

A BIG THANK YOU to DataSync for providing us a place to meet!  Please take a moment to check out their website to find out about their services.

The dates are also set for May 30-31st, 2009; so make sure to get registered and put it on your calendar!  If you’d like to help out please contact us, we’re still looking for sponsors for food, t-shirts, and other items; so if you’d like some community recognition and mad props please contact us.

We’ve also added a couple new fields to the profile page, so please make sure to update your profile as necessary, so we can keep track of who’s attending.  If you’d like you can also add a short post about your selected topic to give others a peek at what to expect.

-Justus

We’ve changed our list of locals to a list of registered attendees on the sidebar to the right. So if you don’t see your name on the list, just update your profile and let everybody know know that you’ll be showing up.

We also tweaked the code so that all of your profile URLs should be working now. If anyone is still having problems please let us know.

..or HP, Compaq, Sony, etc.

I will be doing a session explaining how this task can be accomplished.  I’ll explain hardware selection, software patching, and installation procedures.  If time permits I will also outline some possible issues you might face after installation (device recognition, etc).

If you’ve been considering a Mac but can’t budget one right now, or perhaps you want to keep using your Dell but can’t stand Vista; this is a great way to test out the Mac OS on hardware you already own or can get cheaper.

NOTE: I do not condone piracy, and my procedures are based off the assumption that you have a legally purchased copy of OS X.  There are other “pre-patched” distributions of OS X floating around the web and although I acknowledge they exist I prefer to do my own patching so I can be sure of what is going on.

-Justus (a.k.a. dellintosh)

As indication of the difficulty of this decision, we have chosen a winner in our logo contest.  We would like to thank all those who submitted their designs for this contest.

The website design will be updated in the coming days to include the new logo, but in the meantime please feel free to share this design on your blogs, etc. to help spread the word! 

Once again, thank you to all who submitted their great designs!  :)  We look forward to seeing you in May!

A few of the runners-up:

Submitted by Barb Stacey and Kathy Smith:

In a effort to better explain what BarCampSDK is really all about, we’ve added a couple videos from BarCampSF (San Francisco) and BarCampOrlando (I’ll let you guess where that one is located).  Each video has folks just describing in their own words what BarCamp is all about.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then at 24 frames a second this should be worth at least 7,680 words.

Since we’re lazy programmers (that’s actually a good thing) we didn’t want to have to manually update the list of Local BarCampers.   But since we’re extremely lazy we didn’t write all the code ourselves, so instead of reinventing the wheel we used what was already published and working to start from.  We wanted to pass along what we learned in case you’re planning on running your own BarCamp site.

Originally we tried to use the WordPress template tag function wp_list_authors.  However we found this to be too limiting for our needs.  We briefly considering overriding the function but decided against it.  So instead we decide to write our own .  Using some sample code from Justin Tadlock as inspiration we quickly wrote our own function to print out the list of registered users of this site.  We also used Snipplr.com to check our users for a valid URL.  Finally we bundled it all up with the PHP Code Widget so we could easily place it in the sidebar.

We’re looking for a designer to help us with a few items, first order of business being our logo.

Please check out this page at our Google Group if you’d like more info.

We’re pleased to announce that the planning crew is going over the details of how to get BarCamp SDK off the ground.

Current News:

• Tentative Date: May 30/31, 2009 (dependent on venue)
• Sponsors: Want to sponsor a BarCamp?  Let us know, we have a variety of sponsorship options available.
• Current Venue Ideas: We’ve begun the search for a venue.  If you have any leads for us please let us know!
• Our Google Group has been set up! Be sure to join here to keep informed of all the latest news.
• Stay tuned for more updates!