Barcamp LA 4 recap

Nov. 5, 2007

Filed under: Uncategorized Los Angeles

I spent a day at Barcamp LA this past saturday, and it was in fact inspiring! Whether the talks I attended hit or missed, each one inspired in me a half dozen ideas for new things to do or make. I met several excellent folks, including Eliot Philips, who was kind enough to let me store my motorcycle helmet in his car, Dan Kaminsky, who gave his excellent speech (ppt) on DNS rebinding that made us all fear for our lives and livelihoods, and Tom Longson, who had brain-stimulating things to say about wearable technology. Eric Gradman, who gave a talk on 3D LOGO at the first barcamp I attended, was using LOGO to generate fractals for tattoo purposes when I saw him. He claimed that those were the only two times he'd used LOGO in 20 years. I doubt this very much.

I also enjoyed Edward O'Connor's talk on 'Personal Unit Testing'. In software, a unit test is an automated test of a single building block of your application. The idea is that you break down your complex system into many many small parts, and ask 'is this working?' for each one. Then, if you make changes down the road to one part that affects another somehow, you'll know right away because the relevant unit tests will fail. Edward's talk was about following a similar practice in your daily life by asking yourself a series of yes-no questions each day, and keeping track of how well you do. (Of course rather than actually asking the questions, he has Emacs do it for him.)

I met a lot of other new folks, and saw many old friends. I briefly spoke with and shook the hand of rms (pictured below), who seemed friendly and generally pro-fun.

The unconference experience is one I recommend to all; as long as you can avoid the marketdroids and the ego trippers I think you'll find something or someone that sparks your own cleverness. Thanks to everyone who came together and made Barcamp LA 4 really great, and double-thanks to the organizers, Crystal and Jason.

Comments

Your name:

Comment: