BIG, big day... ahhh, i am now living under dire consequences. i'm stuffed with hot cheese fondue, and contrary to everyone's warning i am drinking a cold beer and will polish off a 1.5l of water.

later tonight, i'm going to summarize my thoughts in a separate post, and toss them up here tomorrow morning. my new hostel (really same old hostel, just a different room, a single room no less...) doesn't have wee-fee so my online activities are confined the hostel's bomb shelter. I AM NOT KIDDING. You'll see a few pictures of the door tomorrow. until then, these are my running thoughts from today's sessions. i have to apologies to all the speakers whom i couldn't attend... don't worry, i'll watch your videos and comment on them later... ;)

many kisses goodnight!

full notes after jump...

not only am i going back to Geneva this year, but i'll be hosting the open stage at LIFT '07.

LIFT was one of the best conferences I attended in 2006. the mixture of ideas, minds and languages led me to leave the country three times, leave two jobs, actively participate in 5 unconferences and take the past two months off. Now with a wealth of unconferences under my belt, I'm looking forward to a mixture of LIFTers-proposing sessions and providing conference content.

With less than 200 seats left, if you have thought about attending, make LIFT plans now. Not only is this a great opportunity to meet like-minded Earthlings, but the cheese is also bovine!

ps - Thank you Laurent for giving me this opportunity!

According to Heise Online, the capital of Bavaria plans to migrate 80 of it's desktops to an open source operating system using Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, Desktop KDE 3.5 and OpenOffice 2. Munich's mayor Christine Strobel is quoted "I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software."

Fundamentally I think the primary argument for open-source desktop operating systems comes down to... the old saying, "you'll never get fired for purchasing I.B.M." Just look at these quotes, they speak for them self...

• "politicians do not know enough about Open Source and are afraid of making a mistake" - Wilhelm Hoegner, the Muich's IT director.
• "Although some of the standard programs are very similar, some people do have trouble switching in the first few days because they have developed certain habits with the computers they work with," Jens Barth, director of the client project, recently told the German weekly Münchner Wochenanzeiger. "But that will change quickly when people notice that their computers still perform their tasks just as well -- and in some cases even better -- and are still user-friendly."

...and for those of you doing further research, the background on this story gets really interesting... Two years ago, the project was temporarily mothballed to clear up patent issues, and then the Berlin's Senate administration charged LiMux project director, Peter Hofmann, with dereliction. woot! It's good to see that German patents and politicians are as impatient with progress as they are here in the States.

believe it or not, i've had all my photos from brussels {i.e. - DrupalCon, GovCamp, EuroOSCon} up for a while. check out my flickr set.

there is one thing to be said about overextending life, coming back to reality.

shout outs and thank you!

• Peter Laudati from Microsoft - Thank you for support at BarCamp. I will never forget our first email. ;)
• Darrel O'Pry from TheThing.net - Thank you for coming up with such a wonderful solution at the last moment!
• Nate Warner from RedBull - Thank you for giving me a good reason to stay awake till 4am, sleep on a hard floor and waking up a few hours later.
• Dries Buytaert and the drupalcon planning gang - Thank you for your leadership and hard work!
• Amit Gupta from PhotoJojo - Thank you for your leadership!
• Juliette Powell from The Gathering - Thank you for opening your doors and allowing the cross pollination of ideas to thrive in NYC!

personal lessons learned

• know when to say when - the creation of the drupal foundation - drupal is huge. not just huge in the notion that it's serving up some of the world's best media sites, but the infrastructure to support it is large. just like members of the LAMP environment, Dries has set out to ensure the viability and longevity of the software by creating the drupal foundation.
• simplicity is beauty - Arthur Foelsche, from CivicActions, and his drupalcon presentation on integrating Amazon's S3 service with Drupal to create a YouTube for politics - Flunkarnold.com
• don't talk too much and look at it from the user's perspective - Dan Robinson's presentation on event.module at drupalcon - Dan is a genius. his presentation to a room of hard core php programers blew me away. from Dan's perspective, start small, focus on the user functionality, and build a list of use cases. only then can you really focus in on features.
• inspiration is all around - stop turn around and look at it upside down - when confronted with a problem don't think harder about how to solve it; look at the problem from a different angle. i spent three days listing to a barrage of speakers who all said the same thing "do it differently... ok, so that might be an over simplification of their presentations, but after listing to Jonathan Harris... apple's old adage applies - be different.
• say thank you - never stop saying thank you! try this... next time you want to scream Fyou! say thank you! i promise the world will be a better place for it...

conference lessons learned

• WiFi coverage - at inspiration festival, they planned on having 12 laptops, yet on the first day twice as many appeared. combine that with a flaky linksys router, doom ensued. if you are planning a conference and inviting people who do technology/business/marketing/sales/xxx type of things, plan on 50% of your audience having laptops, and have a backup router.
• Power - at inspiration festival and drupalcon, i came across a power outlet shortage. granted the idea of people working while attending an festival on inspiration may be a misnomer, but people attending a open source software conference is another. make sure you have a section for people to juice up.
• Internet access - always make sure you have internet connectivity to the following clients(AIM, Jabber, IRC, SSH, and TLS/SSL) as a conference planner, i've always tried to go in a few days before to test out the internet connection. this time, do to conflicting schedules, i wasn't able to get in and ensure connectivity until the night before. while i can't stop thanking Peter Laudati from Microsoft, we did have a small snafu where the guest network was locked down to a small number of ports. it was my fault for not getting their sooner, nor for pushing for earlier access. if it wasn't for my buddy Darrel O'Pry from the thing.net, we would have all been fish out of water... within 12 hours, Darrel built a VPN solution that allowed attendants to SSH, SSL, and IRC all weekend long. amazing!
• Location, Location, Location - having the right setting makes everything easier - Euro OScon was in an old theater {flickr photos of OScon} - drupalcon was in at a swanky space called the sap lounge {flickr photos of Sap Lounge} - Inspiration Festival was in a series of galleries {Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3} - BarCamp NYC 2 was held in Microsoft's Midtown location {flickr photos of Microsoft space}.

barcamp nyc 2 - lessons learned
please understand, i am grateful to all of our sponsors and most importantly our host, Microsoft. the following is a bare bones, no hold bars listing of things that worked and that didn't work.

• the law of two feet
• shoes off! - yes, a bit new age, but it levels the playing field. it also helps keep the place tidy. convenient when food and bathrooms are kept away from shoeless area... a luxury aforded when you have a big big space!
• limit your list or remind them more - it was great that we were able to find a space for 250 people, but i feel if we limited the venue's capacity (even artificially) we could have seen a higher commitment of people. though, if we would have sent out three or four emails the two weeks leading up to the event... we might have seen a higher attendance. who knows... maybe JCN is right and the fundamental issue boils down to what is "camp?"
• watch out for what you wish - when Amit and I were running around looking for a swank pad for BarCamp NYC 2, we thought - "humm, Microsoft - big, free reign, overnight, spacious." yet, while we were planning for optional capacity - 250 - we peaked at 150. the space was almost too big, perfect for us who were sleeping over, but a bit of a labyrinth for everything else. microsoft's offices also gave a completely diffrent feel from the first nyc barcamp. the intimacy of nyc's first barcamp created a very unique environment. this same intimacy was missing from the boardrooms and white boards. editor's note - please understand i'm not trying to be greedy; just honest. i know that many un-confernces would love to have the same opportunity we had with microsoft.
• rooms - when you plan for 250 people you think you'll need 6 rooms, on Saturday morning we shrunk down to 5 and then by the afternoon we were back to 6. a luxury afforded by ample space. plan to be flexible.
• central room / club house - one of the benefits from the first barcamp was the ability to congregate in the kitchen and chat. with 2.0, we had many areas... maybe too many areas for people to sequester them self and act anti-social. i love sticking out my hand and saying hello, but forcing someone to be in a confined area is much more appropriate.
• communications - the wiki is great for organizing and the google group is great for communicating, but there is something that is still lacking. i can't quite put my finger on what tool need to exist. maybe it's not the tool but the internal hype machine. i forgot to post and by the looks many people just didn't feel like they were aware of the barcamp "jazz." in the future, make a round of calls to organizers and have them call their friends to ensure two things 1. they call their friends... 2. ensure the spice is just right... it never hurts to call and invite people, lord knows i sent out several emails far and wide reminding people that barcamp 2 was in the works and it was time to get on board. yes, at one time i was a political organizer.
• Internet access - See above
  

i've landed in brussels for a week long open source extravaganza! from DotORG day at Euro osCON, GovCamp, and DrupalCon... the discussions will be long winded, entertaining, never ending and always educational.

if your interested, in hearing what i have to say about using CiviCRM in state government, come to GovCamp Brussels! otherwise, drop by 2go4 hostel or i'll see in the narrow winding streets of brussels.

It's been one week since i sat though the theoretical discussions on the future technology, web2.0, and life. The following is an odd extrapolation of my thoughts in the concrete bunker we called LIFT '06.

LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.

Well if that was the goal...

• tags are the way of the future.
• only one way to a good design - open communication and thinking through everything - once that's done, ask someone else to do the same - this idea is not just for conversation but for physical devices.
• play as education and activism - consumerism is too strong and the only way to shape someone's understanding is through play or games
• vanity terms or are we predicting the future - which is which - see mr. sterling or mr. comtesse

the seed to attend LIFT came by happenstance. In November 2005, i discovered Mauro Cherubini's site - moleskine. Needless to say the idea of Life, Ideas, Futures, Together was very ambiguous and somewhat appealing. It wasn't until an intoxicating night at Barcamp NYC before i finally pulled the trigger. Though there were two problems...