walkah: democamptoronto

I finally made it out to another DemoCampToronto last night (my first since presenting back at DemoCampToronto13) and my first at the Toronto Board of Trade. I have to say, I'm continually amazed at how these events have continued to grow. Major congrats to the "stewards" (c'mon, guys, you're the organizers ... really) : David, Jay, Joey, Leila and Greg.

That said, the character of the event sure has changed... grown up? Sold out? Not sure. They're certainly *big*. There's lots of time spent on the sponsors (who's generosity I don't mean to belittle). There's little time for questions to the demo'ers. Few of the new people stuck around for drinks after the event and there were people in suits!?! Maybe I'm crazy, but perhaps the disruptive, un-conference events need to get disrupted?

There were some interesting demos/talks last night. My highlights were:

• SlashID : nice to see another Canadian identity startup. I have to admit, their demo wasn't great, but talking with Zeev afterwards was interesting. They took some pot-shots at OpenID which made for good debate. Enough to warrant a post of it's own... to be continued...
• ShapeShop (Ryan Schmidt) has a pretty awesome looking 3d modeling tool and was able to at least bring a laugh or two to otherwise well-behaved crowd.
• Mark Kuznicki: *rocked* the ignite format with Co-creating the Creative City. Good timing and good execution on a topic heavily laden in it's own jargon. I encourage you to check out his slides for all the missing info he wasn't able to get into his allotted 15 seconds per slide!

I will say, it was great to see everyone and it was really nice to not have to drive home afterwards ;) See y'all again in January (I hope).

I had a great time with my OpenID demo last night at DemoCampToronto13. Thanks to all who attended and for the good feedback I've received so far!

As I was recalling some of the conversations I found myself in last night, though, I realized - at some point I became a tech evangelist. The one conversation that stuck out in my mind where I was asked "So, is this sort of evangelism what you do for a living?" To which I responded, "Ha! No!" I mean, I'm a developer, right? I write code.. or, at least, isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?

It certainly hasn't been conscious (although, perhaps I should pretend that it has), but if I look at some of the Drupal presentations I've given, things like DrupalCampToronto and the Toronto user group, plus some of the OpenID talks I've done lately... it might just be true. Heck, I even like doing it!

walkah, tech evangelist : coming to a conference/camp/etc near you.

Tomorrow night I've volunteered to subject myself to the scorn and ridicule of the local TorCamp community by sticking out my neck and doing a demo at DemoCampToronto13. Actually, it was this post by David Crow that inspired me, specifically:

And if I have to sit through a demonstration of a tag cloud or web login form, so help me.

So, naturally, I'll be doing a presentation exclusively about login forms... and I'll probably throw in a tag cloud for laughs. As for the 6 questions, here's what to expect:

1. Have you attended a previous DemoCamp? Yes. I've blogged about my attendance in at least 7, 11 and 12... I'm pretty sure I was at others as well...
2. Who are you? Previous experience, what makes you qualified for us to listen to, etc. I'm James. My qualifications: I'm currently the guy working on bringing OpenID support to Drupal core. I've also been involved with "Identity2.0" implementations dating back to SXIP's 1.0 protocol back in 2004 or so. Most recently, I presented OpenID to the attendees of the OSCMS summit in Sunnyvale.
3. What does your product do? Er, well my "product" is the better way to login (tm).
4. What hard problem, interesting insight, or cool feature will you be demonstrating? Well, we're gonna look at eliminating the registration form from the internet and solving Identity2.0.
5. What are you hoping to get out of presenting? Well, aside from the guaranteed love, respect and admiration of my peers - I'd like to raise OpenID awareness amongst local developers and inspire them to OpenID-enable their applications. I'd also like to gauge interest in doing something like an OpenID Mashpit locally.
6. What does the community gain by hearing you present? Hopefully a better idea (or initial awareness) of what OpenID is all about - what problems it solves (and what it doesn't) - and the inspiration to start using it for themselves and in their applications. That's right, all in 5 minutes.

There you have it. If you haven't yet, sign up and I'll see you there.

Despite some rather nasty weather, I managed to make it out (along with over 100 of my good friends) to last night's DemoCampToronto12. Personally, I thought this was one of the better events. It helps to start off with some quality demos. I really enjoyed David Humphrey's overview the work his students have been doing with the Mozilla project. I had the privilege of meeting David at FSOSS, and love the exposure to free software development and community he's providing for his CS students - take note, UofT. It was also great to have Will Pate's overview of Flock, not 'cause I learned anything new about flock, but because it means Will's here (and thanks for dinner Will, it's on me next time!). Kudos also for a good demo from Alec Saunders of Iotum for their presence app for blackberries - I'd love to give it a shot when you've got series60 suppoort! Oh, and they said the magic word of upcoming XMPP integration :)

To me, however, the best part of last night's event was the general feeling or realization that there is actually a strong community here. Personally, as someone who can't make it out to all the events, I have found the "Always on Unconference" that we've started lately in the torcamp skype room as a great way to keep in touch, follow up, etc. However, as a relentless advocate for free software and open protocols and standards, I urge the community go pop in to either the #torcamp irc channel or the xmpp group chat - you can find me in both :) Looking forward to the next event!

Last night, I attended DemoCampToronto11 and enjoyed the ... well... mixed bag of goodies presented. The selenium demo made me make a note to myself to revisit that as a testing framework.

I enjoyed Arnold's presentation - not because the demo was really a demo - but because it reminded me how powerful a tool like drupal could be when focused for and tailored to a target such as artists and artisans. Sounds like a great install profile. I also had to laugh when someone (besides me) asked why he didn't build his tool using drupal.

However, like several other attendees, I had to stop and wonder about firestoker. I've heard Tom Purves speak at a couple local events now, and in general they seem to be rather well versed in "Enterprise 2.0" concepts... but the bit of their application (either version) we saw last night made me wonder "why bother"? I certainly didn't see any features or functionality present that didn't exist in hundreds of other free tools (not to mention their app design looks a heck of a lot like basecamp). I don't understand why they would build their own, proprietary system... seems like a lot of development time and resources better spent elsewhere. But, I'm biased. Again, I was left wondering "Why not build it in Drupal"?

I found Sunir Shah's design bibliography demo to be entertaining and well presented. I know Sunir's a wiki guy and all... but the design bibliography should really have been built in drupal too.

I hereby propose a 5th standard question for DemoCamp demoers: "Why didn't you just use drupal?" No?