[Edu-sig] BarCamp Portland

[kirby urner]

So this is turning out to be an amazingly productive venue from a networking
point of view.  I had no idea that US Bank had allowed its back office on
Grand to become this CubeSpace establishment, just perfect for geeks looking
to bliss out in some freewheeling social networking extravaganza.  It's all
managed by Wiki -- and I'm pretty sure that was Ward Cunningham I saw a
couple times (inventor of Wiki), but he doesn't remember me from PORPIG days
I'm thinking.

PORPIG was our Portland Interest Group, spearheaded by Kevin Altis, who has
gotten back in the loop, now that our Dallas friend, temporarily in PDX, is
taking the helm and steering our Python Meetups.  Just the other night, six
of us, unknown to one another, shared enough critical info to keep the ball
rolling, such that in 45 mins or so, we'll meetup again, this time in the
context of Barcamp.  The topic is restarting PORPIG, if that's what we're
even calling it these days.  Perlmongers certainly has their act together,
with lots of signage around.

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2007/05/barcamp-portland.html
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2007/05/qyoobin.html

One of the attractions here are the XOs, along with the Wii.  I've spotting
maybe four XOs so far, those Negroponte laptops, bright green with rabbit
ears, running Linux, lots of clever hardware adaptations.  I don't have my
memory card adapter on me, so the pictures, which I'll add to my Flickr
album and syndicate through Splashcast, will have to wait a few hours.
Anyway, you've probably seen loads of pix by now, given this is edu-sig, and
OLPC has been a topic for like months by now.

I also finished Class 4 of 5 today, bringing my middle and high schoolers
into the 21st century, climbing a 20th century ladder called "vector
algebra" (for the model), plus OpenGL and raytracer (for views), Python the
controller.

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2007/05/class-notes-session-four.html

It's all so "traditional," this stuff, in the sense that we're backward
compatible with the textbooks.  Vectors are not a new invention by this
time.  But who wants to publish to wood pulp anymore?  We're pretty
pixel-oriented these days, using screens as our mathematical canvases.

Anyway, back to the chat channel and networking.  Getting people to cruise
by one's cube is a fine art, akin to cosmic fishing -- something Nirel is
better at than me I'd hazard (maybe not though -- I'm pretty good as a
recruiter).

Kirby
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