BarCamp Saskatoon 2008

BarCampSaskatoon08 is September 25th, 2008, part of the first ever Canadian Digital Media Day!

BarCampSaskatoon08 will take place on Thursday September 25th, 2008 at The Cellar. The Cellar is an ambient and very cool conference room in the basement of the Senator Hotel (243 21st Street East). There are two small conference rooms (one holds about 35 people and one about 25 people), a learning lounge, pool table room and “beverage station.” Internet access is available and has been upgraded from last year. Projectors will be donated. Bring your gadgets: laptop, mobile, camera, laser pointer, whatever.

BarCampSaskatoon08 is part of National Digital Media Day. BarCamps will take place for 24 hours across the whole country and around the world. We will be able to see sessions from other locations and broadcast ours via uStream.tv.

We need some Whuffie in Saskatchewan

"a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. A person's Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her overall reputation, and Whuffie is lost and gained according to a person's favorable or unfavorable actions."
Cory Doctorow

It seems that there is some work to do locally with building community online. More often than not I get blank or confused looks when I talk about any of the social media I use.

When history dictates competition and information protection (or hoarding) versus sharing, a major cultural shift needs to occur before people are open to the idea that we can learn more and improve the quality of our work and lives via the power of connecting.

From what I understand, there are concerns regarding privacy and safety and potential users are reluctant to voluntarily expose themselves to potentially dangerous or embarrassing situations - forever immortalized on a website. Reputation and credibility are so important, and it is easier to opt out than put yourself in a situation where they might be compromised.

Another barrier to entry might be the perception that if you didn't adopt early and aren't already participating and using social software in useful ways that you will look like just another bandwagon jumper. I notice this effect in the technical community a bit. Some people are reluctant to experiment, try things. This concerns me. I fear that without a connection to these issues so relevant to how the web is being shaped, we might not be progressing in the most productive way.

I'm pretty sure there are other factors that contribute to a reluctance to participate in online communities. These aren't the Millennials (who, by most reports, live on the web). The people I'm talking about are gen x or older. Sure, there were computers around when we were growing up, but it was much different. It was considered high technology when we accomplished networking of computers, and I remember hand coding very large websites in static HTML, because we barely imagined anything different.

Since 1994 when I was as a network administrator to what I do now so much has changed. There have been times when I've been confused by or afraid of technology and the people behind it, but mostly it has opened the world up as a much more accessible space. I have found both the technologies and people I've connected with to be very useful, uplifting, kind and forgiving and I cannot imagine my life without this in it.

The Importance of Keeping It Up

I've had a Twitter account for over a year, but only started paying attention about 4 months ago. It's kind of like an acquired taste. At first you aren't sure if you really like it, but if you keep going, you are basically hooked.

Because very few of my actual friends are twits, I had to make up a community to belong to. I started with my virtual mentors and "thought leaders" in the industry. To see how they lead their lives, what I could learn from them and if they were normal people - just like me. Turns out, yeah, they are, they just seem to travel a lot more.

I also liked following local people in the industry. "Local" meaning anywhere in Canada and "industry" being anything related to technology and/or education. The thing is, you can learn a lot about what's coming up and what's going on in your field of work, but I think, more importantly, you get a sense of the person because in 140 characters or less they are encapsulating what they are thinking or doing at that very moment. Assuming the guard is down and every tweet isn't planned in advance, it seems intimate.

My tweeting has been sporadic lately. In part due to being busy with work and with my family, but also due to the unreliability of the site. It seems that every time I spend any time on Twitter, I'm met with the all too familiar "Something is technically wrong" error page when I submit. This is so discouraging. Especially when I've just started to get into an interaction with someone and I'm replying, and coincidentally, that seems to happen all the time.

I don't even log into the site anymore unless I'm bored with the news or have found what I'm looking for online, and that's a bad sign. I'm a patient person and put up with the downtime and the excuses for quite a while. I'm even sympathetic. I understand the obstacles they're facing with growth... but, the expectation of consistency of service is still there.

I hope they can get it together and keep it up, in spite of the obstacles, because I like the concept and I acquired a taste for it. If they can't something else will come along.