OssBarcamp Ireland

It was a great day and there were some really interesting talks and discussions that took place. It’s great to see that many enthusiasts here in Ireland in one place taking part in the day.

We had two streams going on all day and for most of the day we had a round table discussion going on at all times followed by lightning talks which lead to new ideas being show cased and introducing new projects that are being set up.

Our first time running a programming competition was a great success and a lot of fun for those who took part in the event. The prizes were sponsored by Canonical and Vishal Vasta who gave 2 tickets for PyCon Ireland. Thank you to all those who took part.

A big thank you to IBM for hosting the day as it was a great location and without them there would have been no barcamp. Thanks also to Blacknight Solutions for sponsoring the refreshments after the event.

Any of the speakers who want to share their slides just let me know and I’ll add them to THIS post.
Finally, we hope to run a 2 day OSSBarcamp in September on the 25 &26 so keep the date free
Photos of the day

Just a final reminder now with a few days left to go

VENUE:

IBM

24-32

Pembroke Road

Ballsbridge Dublin4

If you would like to participate at the Programming competition please arrive at 9:30 to get the information needed.

Talks start at 10am – we have two streams full, however we have a free room where people can just sign up and do talks if they want – in keeping with a barcamp theme.

POST EVENT NIBBLES

Landsdowne Hotel – which is directly across the road from IBM so you can’t get lost.

Walking to venue from Heuston Station

1. Head south toward N4/St John’s Rd W 31 m 2. Turn left at N4/St John’s Rd W 95 m 3. Turn right at N4/Victoria Quay

Continue to follow N4 1.6 km 4. Turn right at Parliament St 140 m 5. Turn left at Dame St/N81

Continue to follow N81 400 m 6. Slight right at College Green/N81 53 m 7. Turn right at Suffolk St 180 m 8. Slight left at Grafton St 17 m 9. Continue straight onto N11/Nassau St 99 m 10. Turn right at Dawson St/N11 400 m 11. Turn left at N11/St Stephen’s Green 220 m 12. Slight left at Merrion Row/N11

Continue to follow N11 300 m 13. Slight left at Lower Baggot St 550 m 14. Continue onto Upper Baggot St 270 m 15. Continue onto Pembroke Rd

Destination will be on the left

Driving from Heuston Station to venue

1. Head northeast on N4/St John’s Rd W toward N4/Victoria Quay

Continue to follow N4 130 m 2. Turn right at N4/Wolfe Tone Quay

Continue to follow N4 2.2 km 3. Turn right at N11 450 m 4. Turn left at Grafton St/N11

Continue to follow N11 600 m 5. Turn right at Clare St/R118

Continue to follow R118 1.6 km 6. Turn right at Pembroke Rd

Destination will be on the right

Alternatively take the dart to Landsdowne dart station

With this being the third OSSBarcamp and in it’s second year there are a lot more hands needed and also being offered. I thought it wise to introduce you to the team behind the event.

Andrea Magnorsky- Many of you know her from Alt.net and Girl Geek dinners, she’s going to be looking after the programming competition on the day.

Tom Salmon- Is involved in the Ubuntu-ie LoCo organising events and will be looking after the wifi for the event as well as the lightning talks.

Rory McCann- Is the point of contact /Team Leader for the Ubuntu-ie LoCo and shall be running the new BOF sessions during the day.

Patrick O’Connor – Involved in Halo labs and Synchronicity he’s handing the Marketing and press releases of the event.

I can’t do it without the help of these folks as it’s gotten bigger and better so Thanks to them for coming on board.

We also have two new sponsors this year. Our new location is being kindly sponsored by IBM here in Ireland and it’s great to see companies who promote Open Source getting behind such an event.

Blacknight Solutions are coming on board also sponsoring the after party at the Landsdowne Hotel Bar. So don’t run away after the great day and come to the party afterwards for some light refreshments.

As with previous OSSBarcamps we’re sticking with the same format of having a timetabled event.  A blank timetable has been added and everyone is welcome to add a talk to it. Add your named and talk to a time that suits you.  You can either log in by using OpenID or if you have a problem mail me and I can add it for you. We have two streams at present and we hope to fill these, if uptake is more we may consider adding a 3rd stream.

Housekeeping

Talk are 40 minutes in length with a 5 minute break in between. How ever way you want to break your talk up is up to you.

There are 8 slots available for the lightning talks, these are 15 minutes long and with a 5 minute break to set up and change over.

BOFS – Birds of Feather sessions are something new this time we thought we  thought we’d introduce. A BOF session is one hour long and we’d love to see user groups ‘book’ a session. At present we’re contact user groups to see if they’d be interested in this, if you are pop in to #ossbarcamp on irc.freenode.net , send us a message on twitter or leave a comment on here.

Code Competition!

During OSSBarcamp we are going to be running a code competition. As well as the talks going on we thought we’d make it more fun to have participation through the competition and for folks to discuss what is the best solution and though which language.  The idea of the day is to have fun and engage with one another.

How this is going to work

- There will be a series of problems with an input and a desired output. Problem, input and outputs will be made available on the day.
- Solutions can be submitted in most popular languages: C, C++,C#, Java, Ruby, Python, etc (if you are unsure if your language of choice is supported please ask )
- Code will be judged on Correctness, as well as other criteria like good design, . Ideally your code should be unit tested

How to participate

Start early on the day, please turn up for registration at 9:30am for competition details which you will be given to you as you’ll need to register and get a password for the source control.
We will use source control as a way to receive the solutions to the problems ( on tight decisions, we ll use the time of the solution received as a decider)

There will be prizes for the competition which will be announced later on.

We thought we’d try something different this time. An easier way for us to keep an eye on numbers, the event is still very much free, and while you don’t need the ticket to enter the event it’s more a case of keeping an eye on numbers as the venue is slightly smaller than the previous venue.

So please sign up using the following LINK, it gives a list of people attending also who’ve signed up so another way to see who’s coming along for you meet up with!

Thanks folks

Last year we offered people the chance t do the LPI exams thanks to Howe Systems, it had a great uptake and once again they have very kindly offered to run them again during the day at OSSBarcamp.

Howe Systems are pleased to announce the availability of LPI exams at the forthcoming OSSBarcamp. These will be
offered at a 50% saving of £ 75 (invoiced through LinuxIT, England).

Prior registration is necessary as demand for exams could be high. To register and secure a place contact howesystem as they will be looking after this and do need to know who will be attending.

Howe systems will hold an LPIC-1 Exam Cram for candidates on the day if there is sufficient interest. This will take place prior to the exams and will cost €70.

We’re back again! Site has had a bit of a tidy up thanks to James Larkin for his work, not sure how I’d manage without him.  Also this year sadly Jaime Hemmett won’t be around as she’s moved back to Australia. Without her last year I’d never have been able to run OSSBarcamp.  When I told her about my idea she jumped on board so will miss her this year.

We have a date, a date you don’t want to miss. Saturday 17th April 2010.  We have a new venue this time, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank DIT and Deirdre Lawless for their help in running the previous events. Without them we’d never have gotten off our feet. Equally without our past sponsors of Echolibre and Open Source Solutions Centre we’d not have gotten ourselves off the ground.

Saturday 17th April event will be held  at the  IBM  offices  located in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. We hope to run this event a bit more laid back then previous events, with more ad hoc talks, more lightening sessions, and people volunteering on the day! Also we shall be running the LPI exams again on the day.

Any ideas on how to help or get involved, suggestions on how to run the day, feel free to EMAIL ME