Oggcamp12 is
the fourth meetup of the Oggcamp unconference, this time held in Liverpool at
the John Moore University School of Design.
Trystan Lea
of Open Energy Monitor and I, travelled there together from Trystan’s house in
rural Snowdonia, where I had overnighted after driving up from London.
Liverpool
and the North West has a strong tech community, as anyone coming up from the
South East will soon learn and appreciate. Trystan and I had previously
attended the Liverpool BarCamp held last November at doesLiverpool, so it was
good to meet up with old and new friends, from the Merseyside tech community.
As an event,
Oggcamp12 was sold out, with 400 or so people packing the main auditorium for
the opening talk. Following on from the
unconference format, there were two additional presentation rooms for parallel
sessions, and new for this year, an open hardware jam gathering on the third
floor.
Each year,
Oggcamp attracts new followers and new presentations, and it was good to see
the extent and mix of the talks being offered.
For anyone attending Oggcamp each year, it is a great opportunity to
meet up with friends from previous gatherings, and catch up on what is
happening generally in the open community. It’s not just Linux and open
software, over the 4 years it has spread out to include open hardware, the
Maker community, and a platform for presenting some of the wider thinkings of
the open tech community.
There is so
much going on at Oggcamp, so everbody comes away from Oggcamp with their own
ideas and memories of what they saw and did.
I found it particularly difficult to choose between some of the
excellent talks running in the parallel sessions, and so probably missed a lot
of good material – including Stephen Fry’s video link-up presentation – doh!
However, I did get to see most of Alan O’Donohoe’s (@teknoteacher) most
inspirational talk on getting kids to code in schools, and a fascinating talk
on the workings of the Enigma Machine.
The official
hotel for Oggcamp was the Adelphi near Lime St. Station, but I missed out on
the special deal and ended up in a satisfactory B&B in a very run-down
neighbourhood to the north of the city centre.
A £5 cab ride to the city centre on the Saturday night, allowed us to pig-out
on pizza before going on to the Adelphi for the evening of entertainment. It was held in a large function room in the
basement of the Adelphi, whilst at least 2 or 3 weddings were happening a floor
above in the main hotel spaces. You can
tell a good scouse wedding – when at least 2 cop vans and an ambulance turn up
at 11pm. Musical entertainment was by
@methoddan and his band, and this invoked some wonderful freestyle dancing,
amongst the otherwise reticent geek community.
My only gripe about the evening was that the beer was either off, or
crap (Tetley’s Extra) and the bar staff were a bit sullen. I stuck to bottled
Bulmers cider all evening, apart from the point when I accidently ordered a
Tetley’s, thinking “how bad can it be...?”
Sunday
proceedings started around 11am, and having rather ignored the hardware
workshop on the Saturday, I thought I’d better make the most of it on Sunday.
Last year, the hardware consisted of just 3 offerings, myself with Nanode, some
guys with a 3D printer and another lonely hardware guy. This year about a dozen different
organisations pitched up, and we had offerings including Textile repurposing
and computer controlled embroidery,
doesLiverpool with Bubbilino, 3D printing, Raspberry Pi, Howduino with
breadboard Arduinos and Fignition – a DIY Forth computer kit based on the
ATmega328.
My
contribution this year was a talk on the Saturday afternoon about the Nanode
project plus some examples of projects where Nanode had been used in the last
year – including the Malet St Gardens Sound Sculpture by Public Interventions,
and the Air Quality Egg.
This was followed
up on Sunday with a hardware workshop session where I built up one of the new
WiNode kits, as used in the Malet St arts project, proved the wireless range
from the 3rd floor workshop to the far corner of the JMU grounds
(about 100m), and rigged up a Sharp motion and distance sensor so that those
readings could be sent up to the Open Energy Monitor server.
OggCamp has
become an annual phenomenon, and is growing from strength to strength. It
offers an informal forum for the open
tech community, allowing community networking, presentations and entertainment
all washed down with lots of beer and music.
Oggcamp doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s just a bit of fun for
those who don’t get out much.
Thanks to
all the Oggcamp organising committee, and the Crew for all their hard work over
the last 12 months, and this weekend, for putting on such an inspiring event. –
see you all in 2013!
No comments:
Post a Comment