I never had so much of learning in one day. I understand the concept of un-conferencing but could never imagine the fun of it, it was a place where language was no barrier, you talk in binary and people could understand you.
Devcamp started with introduction of session and Martin Fowler explaining the real meaning of un-conferencing. First session I attended was – what applications fall under enterprise-grade apps and is Facebook an enterprise app? People discussed about uptime, trust, scalability, future proof features, pluggable arch etc to support their views. Next session was on developing a publishing website in minimum time using open source utilities. Learnt about RoR features, ngniX and a search engine they were using.
I moved on to a session – How to hack Nintendo DS and what all can we do with it. It was very interesting session and now I want to explore same things on my iPod too. At this point of time it was getting hard for me to select which session should I attend, I wanted to go everywhere, so I had to use my lazy strategy, sit at one place only and if you don’t find current session interesting move to different place. It was a session on Django and how you can write small apps for some of your hobbies. This session I not only learnt about technology but also about wargaming and how interesting it can be.
Next session was on RoR, not from a fanboy perspective, since I had heard a lot about Ruby and its advantages I enjoyed the session, got more idea about Scala. Then I moved to open area and did some networking, learnt about a company just based on FB apps.
Martin on unconferencing and sharing experience
After lunch, I got time to meet Martin, I told him how much I liked his paper on IoC. From that I moved to a session on Lipikaar – a FF plugin using that you can type in any language, this is not based on dictionary but on phonetics. At first we did not like the idea and were in favor of ‘Indic translation’ but as we played around with it more it seems easier and better. We spent next one hour breaking it but couldn’t do it. Went to a XUL session and had a nice discussion. Javascript session followed it and we discussed about design principles, editors and its future.
Last session of the day was on semantic web and I must say it was the best session of the day. I don’t have much idea on the topic, but since it started from ground level I could participate in it.
It was 6:30 PM and I did not realize how fast time has passed, it was a memorable day where I wished I could have multiple instances of me so I could have attended more sessions.
PS : I thought of devcamp as just developers talk, but it was more than that, most of the sessions were on how people have started a startup and were sharing ideas and getting feedback.
Related Posts :
- Live from Devcamp
- Another Live blog
- Devcamp picks up steam, Acknowledgment and Thanks
- Flickr photos
- One more Live blog
- Link to all blogs @ wiki
