beTech :: Evolve Already

• Event: beCamp 2009
• Dates: May 8th 5 PM to 10 PM, May 9th 9 AM to 5 PM, 2009.
• Location: CitySpace (http://www.cvilledesign.org/cityspace/)
• Map: http://tinyurl.com/c6bxzr
• Price: $FREE
• Signup: http://barcamp.org/beCamp2009#Campers

If you’re a geek in or around the Charlottesville metroplex or even if you’re merely tech-curious, this is the event you don’t want to miss. beCamp is Charlottesville’s version of the BarCamp unconference phenomenon—organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. Realizing that the most energizing parts of any tech conference are the ad hoc conversations that take place in the hallways between the sessions, beCamp facilitates these types of interactions for an entire event.

This year we are using the bright airy CitySpace facility, on the downtown mall, underneath the parking garage.  CitySpace is directly upstairs of the space we used last year, and the open layout should mesh well with our OpenSpace conference. We’ll have a large room that can hold all 100 of us, as well as 4 or 5 break out rooms for the individual sessions.

We provide the venues, the wireless, the projectors, the food, da beer—you show up to teach, learn, and participate.

Each attendee should talk about something or volunteer (registration, set-up, teardown, etc.). We will suggest and pick the sessions which will be picked by the attendees Friday evening. For example, if lots of people want to hear about Google’s OpenSocial, then that will be on the agenda. If no one wants to hear about HTML5, then it won’t be on the agenda.

Think of it as an open-source geek gathering where you get to decide what goes into and what comes out of the event. It’s 2 days of creating, collaborating, and conversing with people just as juiced excited about technology as you are.

If you think you can help sponsor some of the needs, please let me know.  We’ve listed some of the needs on this page: http://barcamp.org/sponsor-beCamp-2009

Learn More

Homepage: http://barcamp.org/beCamp2009

Sponsorships: http://barcamp.org/sponsor-beCamp-2009

See other beCamp’s: http://barcamp.org/beCamp2008

Details

Dates: May 8th 5 PM to 10 PM, May 9th 9 AM to 5 PM.

Location: CitySpace (http://www.cvilledesign.org/cityspace/)

Map: http://tinyurl.com/c6bxzr

Price: $FREE

Signup: http://barcamp.org/beCamp2009#Campers

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Originally posted by Eric Pugh | Principal | OpenSource Connections, LLC | 434.466.1467 | http://www.opensourceconnections.com

On November 19th at 4pm in Harrison-Small Auditorium, noted map collector DAVID RUMSEY will present “Giving Maps a Second Life with Digital Technologies.”

Mr. Rumsey will show how technology has transformed his work as an historical map scholar and collector. Using imaging software, GIS, and popular applications like Google Earth and Second Life, Rumsey has given new life to old maps, both in their dissemination and in our ability to analyze and understand them in a variety of disciplines. He will demonstrate how he offers rare maps and innovative software tools on his free, public website:

http://www.davidrumsey.com/

Come early to the talk for a guided tour of the Seymour I. Schwartz collection of North American maps: “On the Map,” beginning at 3pm in the main gallery of the Harrison Institute / Small Special Collections Library:

http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/onthemap/

And stay late for a reception to follow Mr. Rumsey’s presentation!

This lecture is co-sponsored by CERSA (the new Center for Emerging Research, Scholarship, and Arts) and the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia Library.

The Scholars’ Lab is also hosting a luncheon, open house, and other map-related events on November 19th, which is International GIS Day:

http://www.gisday.com/

Today Ian Brill demo’d ITC’s VMware infrastructure. A similar system is hosted by BeTech to host any number of web software development efforts. Currently ITC hosts ~150 web servers utilizing four servers clustered and running VMware. Ian described Vmotion (product for moving live virtual running virtual machines), Virtual Center Server (product for managing the details of virtual machines), VMware High Availability (product for managing automatic replication and fault tolerance), and DRS (product for virtual load balancing).

This stable VMware infrastructure appears to be a solid solution for hosting systems with a high available requirement. Contact ITC Microsystem, ITC-Microsystems@virginia.edu, if you are interested in standing up a new system in this popular VMware system.

If you are interested in developing a test system in a VMware environment, you can get started free of charge by emailing betechlabs@virginia.edu.

Great talk Ian! Thanks from BeTech.

On Wednesday, March 26, Madelyn Wessel and Bethany Nowviskie will present their experience in making the Library’s Blacklight project (http://blacklight.rubyforge.org/) open source.

When/Where:
* Wednesday, March 26
* 3:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
* Byrd Seminar Room in the Harrison/Small Library
(http://www.lib.virginia.edu/harrison/facilities.html#byrd)
(http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/ACentralGrounds.html)

Blacklight is an OPAC (online public access catalog) developed at the University of Virginia Library; it has been made public under an Apache 2.0 license. Blacklight was the first project made possible by beTech Labs and is the first project to come out of beTech Labs as open source.

Madelyn Wessel is Special Advisor to the University Librarian and Liaison to the General Counsel, focusing on a broad range of library system legal issues including intellectual property, copyright, licensing, and special issues arising in the area of digital scholarship.

Bethany Nowviskie is the Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at U.Va. Library. She is active in digital humanities and is an advocate for academic open source.

Below is a quick synopsis of the meeting today. The room was packed. The meeting and info shared was great. Thank you Eric Pugh.

Eric Pugh started off the meeting with the following hilarious youtube.com video “Code Monkey”:
  http://youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA

Eric explained the wide adoption of OpenID by many of the internet powerhouses like Yahoo, Google, and others. Interesting resource links include:

• http://openid.net (for more explanation about the standard)
• http://openiddirectory.com (to discover who is participating)
• http://spreadopenid.org
• http://www.37signals.com/openid/ (37 signals is using open ID for their systems)
• http://myopenid.net (popular openID provider)
• https://pip.verisignlabs.com/seatbelt.do (verisign offers a firefox plugin and openID service too)
• http://www.opensourceconnections.com (Eric will offer more information about his presentation on his company web site soon)

Eric also show a demo of his “Fish4Brains” application using OpenID put together at the 48hour long Rails Rumble this year. We also discussed the upcoming BeCamp event. Last year this event was tremendous, get involved this year and make it even better. Visit http://barcamp.org/beCamp2008/ for more information and keep up on the developments.

Great information, thank you Eric!

This Wednesday, February 20th, Eric Pugh will present on OpenID (using RoR specifically), a decentralized single-sign-on system now used by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and the rest of the world. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID for all the juicy tidbits/history/etc.

Fascinated by the “craft” of software development, Eric Pugh is the owner of OpenSource Connections, a member of the Apache Software Foundation, and a committer on many projects including DBUnit, Maven, and Jakarta Commons.

When/Where:
* Wednesday, February 20th
* 2:00pm-3:30pm
* electronic classroom in the Science and Engineering
Library, Clark Hall. (http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/ACentralGrounds.html)

Also, Eric would like to get the beTech community involved with the planning and organization of the next beCamp and bring us up to speed with the progress that has been made on beCamp Squared…, beCamp Redux…, beCamp Part Deux…

Hope to see you there!
–Doug

NOTE: For Post Meeting Notes, Read The Follow-up Meeting Post and Any Comments to This Post

This is the conference you’ve been waiting for: beCamp is happening this June 15-16, from 5PM on Friday to 9PM on Saturday—non-stop! It’s 24+ straight hours of coding, collaborating, and conversing with people just as juiced about technology as you are. And the venue couldn’t be more perfect for such mayhem: the Fry’s Spring Beach Club!

beCamp is Charlottesville’s BarCamp-based unconference where the participants actually organize and create the conference. Think of it as an open-source geek gathering where you get to decide what goes into and what comes out of the event. Said one of our beTech colleagues and a two-time FooCamp alumn, “…we need at least 2 days of 24/7 tech talks, caffeine, robots, and heavy-duty geeks that can hang all night long!” We setup a beCamp wiki for you to register as a camper and, better yet, help enroll sponsors, propose sessions, etc.

If you’re a geek in or around the Charlottesville metroplex—or even if you’re merely tech-curious, this is the event you don’t want to miss. Reserve the dates on your calendar (e.g., Upcoming), register on our wiki, and take a closer look at what “camping” is all about:

• BarCamp | What to Expect
• When Geeks Go Camping, Ideas Hatch (CNN report)
• Foo Camp: Ad-hoc Learning (attendee report)
• BarCamp NYC - The Nuts and Bolts (a BarCamp debriefing)
• Dummies Guide to Organizing a BarCamp In Your City (how-to organize)
• Advice for Planning a BarCamp