Thanks to StickerGiant.com, we’ve got 500 spiffy BarCamp stickers to give away!

Luke Mysse, at Crossgrain Creative Studios, rocked out the tentpole design.

The time is upon us once again for DefCamp!

This time all the stops have been pulled out:

• No Hints
• Be aware of your surroundings, shouldersurfing and ‘recon missions’ against other teams are permitted. You’re hackers, remember?
• Teams must be registered before the event to participate
• Prizes are larger
• Challenges are harder
• There are dead ends
• All clues are there for a reason - skipping clues means you’ll fall behind

Currently there are only two teams signed up on the wiki, there’s still time to go sign up!

Take a look at our wiki for the rest of the details!

www.barcamp.org/BarCampSanDiego

Also, check out the pictures from last time.

We whipped up a flyer for folks who want to promote BarCamp San Diego ’round the office, etc. Available in color and grayscale versions.

We’re officially announcing BarCamp San Diego 3!

The last two BarCamps were a lot of fun, but we think number three is going to be special. We’ve got a couple of well-known tech rockstars coming. There’s an all new DefCamp challenge. The Wii Bowling Tournament is back. Folks coming down from BarCamp LA. Free t-shirts, food, and beer. It’s going to rock!

Dates

BarCamp is happening May 3 - 4. Just like last time, this is a weekend event. We’ll start Saturday morning, and finish up late Sunday afternoon.

Venue

Technical Training Resources has been beyond gracious for hosting our first two BarCamps, but our little San Diego tech community is wearing big boy pants now and had to find a new home.

This time around we’ll be invading the spacious, cozy offices at Microsoft, in La Jolla [map].

There’s plenty of free parking in the lot, but remember that carpooling and public transportation earn just as much good karma as free cupcakes.

Registration

If you’re coming to BarCamp San Diego, add your name and talk topic to our official wiki. Registration really happens on-site, but adding your name will help us know approximately how many folks to expect and what folks will be talking about.

Sponsors

BarCamp would be a couple of geeks out on the sidewalk with a projector and a pizza if it weren’t for our sponsors, and we sure do appreciate all the love and money it takes to feed and clothe so many people for a weekend.

We’re really pleased to have so many companies sponsoring this time. Microsoft, DivX, Opera, SureFire, LAMPhost.net, SuggestionBox.com, MindTouch, Integral Impressions, Achieve Internet, digitaria, StickerGiant.com, Startup Schwag, Starbucks, and Technical Training Resources. Thanks, guys!

Start preparing now

Even the most decentralized ad-hocracy can benefit from a little forethought on what each individual can contribute.

The session board will be broken down into 30 minute blocks available on a first come basis, but feel free to go nuts on it if you only want 15 minutes or think you’re awesome enough to take up an hour. Don’t know what you have to offer?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Demo a product that you’re passionate about
• Prepare a few open questions for a roundtable
• Show off something you’ve built or hacked
• Gather with a few friends for a topic-centered panel
• Present research of your own or from someone you’ve been following
• Or you can always just get up with a deck and ramble for a while

Don’t feel that you have to be on the bleeding edge of Web 2.0 development technologies to be well received at BarCamp.

San Diego’s community also includes hackers, linguists (who are all quite cunning, I hear), photographers, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, knitters, and ninjas.

The more different genres of knowledge are floating around during BarCamp, the more everyone gets more out of the weekend.

Help us get the word out!

Joshua Brewer made these gorgeous blog badges, so hurry up and show ‘em off on your blog, create a post, and use all the social media tools you have at your disposal to spread the message to every geeky creative type that you know.

Drag ‘em to your desktop. Or download the whole bunch.

Get involved

Thanks to the work of a whole slew of brilliant people, there are now dozens of San Diego meetups and ways to congregate online with the BarCampSD kids.

Here are a few to get you started:

• Sign up for the mailing list
• Follow @barcampsd on twitter for up to the minute updates
• Add yourself and follow members of the BarCampSD twitter pack
• Party in the IRC backchannel on freenode.net #barcampsd
• Join the BarCampSD Facebook group
• Read about local entrepreneurs and all kinds of events that geeks like on startupsd.net

Go forth and blog, San Diego, and check back soon for schedule details and volunteering opportunities.

Think you’ve got the guts to build a startup? Startup Weekend challenges teams to develop a concept, product, marketing plan, and revenue model, but here’s the kicker…you’ve only got three days. There have already been Startup Weekends in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston and DC, and now we have a chance to bring this opportunity to San Diego. Read the FAQ to learn more, or go ahead and vote now!

I’m sure everyone who signed up on the list has been diligently fine-tuning their talks and debugging their demos, but here are a few last minute suggestions for other items to prepare for the weekend:

Business cards: You will meet a lot of interesting people this weekend, and a lot more people than you may realize will find YOU interesting and will want to know how to get in contact with you after barcamp. Moo cards work great for this purpose, but take several weeks to ship. Write your name and URL on a dozen index cards if you have to.
Power strips: There should be plenty of power outlets available in the main congregating area, but it never hurts to have backups available in case you end up forming an ad-hoc team of awesomeness and need to slip off to create an application that will change the world.
Audio / video recorders: Whatever your medium of choice is, it is definitely appreciated to pitch in and record sessions. There will also be some Belkin voice recorders available for volunteers with iPods.
Wiimotes: There will be a Wii bowling tournament on Saturday night, so bring your own controller if you want to show off and swap your Miis.
Backchannel: The official #BarcampSD irc channel is located on irc.freenode.net, and Josh Brewer also set up a relay bot to use with the Pibb online service. Join now to get a head start meeting your fellow barcampers, or slip in over the weekend to tap into the additional discussion and link sharing that will happen here.
Camping gear: Yes kids, we do take the “camp” in barcamp pretty seriously down in San Diego. There will be quite a bit of room outside to “assemble your portable shelter apparatus,” but we have also proved that Crystal Williams’ 12-person tent fills up one of TTR’s classrooms quite nicely.

On behalf of all the BCSD organizers, we are extremely honored to be able to bring so many talented individuals together for another weekend of creativity and camaraderie. And we’re just as anxious to see what will come out of it as everyone else. =]

See you at barcamp!

Based on feedback received from BarcampSD1, we’ve created a public Google calendar to help people keep track of all the Barcamp festivities over the next two days. Only the barebones schedule is in place now, but since this is an unconference be aware that this schedule can and probably will change throughout the weekend. Take advantage of gCal’s mobile notification features!

Calendar ID: 09a99o1iu60tilomhbccasq6a8@group.calendar.google.com
iCal
HTML

I’ll also be sending out twitter updates before the start of each session to let people know what’s coming up next. If you’re not following BarcampSD on twitter, you really should be. :)

The time is upon it once again for another round of BarCamp in San Diego!

Here are the deets:

• When
  November 10 - 11, 2007
  10am Saturday through 5pm Sunday

• Where
  Technical Training Resources
  6920 Miramar Rd., Suite 105, San Diego, CA 92121

What to bring

• Laptop + power cord
• Sleeping bag + pillow + tent?
• Bean Bag Chairs, Beach chairs, and other fun stuff
• Cool stuff to share with new friends
• New ideas, new product demos
• Games for the evening
• A sharp wit for the contest!

Barcamp Contest: DefCamp!
-by Dan Tentler

Barcamps little slice of Defcon!
Think you have what it takes to hack/google/ninja your way past my challenges to the prizes?
No skimpy prizes this time around. This is for real!
Recruiting 5 teams of 3. Prizes will be awarded to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.
Contest details will be announced during one of my talks. Be prepared to to be challenged!

Get involved

• Sign up for the mailing list.
• Join us in IRC at freenode.net #barcampsd.
• Join the Facebook group and meet interested people.

Tags for flickr, delicious, ma.gnolia, technorati, etc:

• barcampsd
• barcampsd2
• defcamp

I’m pleased to announce that the planning crew has begun meeting and going over the initial data points of getting BarCamp San Diego 2 off the ground!

Current News:
• Tentative Date: Nov 10/11 (dependent on venue)
• Sponsor roundup has begun!: Want to sponsor barcamp? let us know! we have a wide variety of sponsorship options available!
• Current Venue Ideas: We’ve begun the search for a venue, so if you have any leads for us, please let us know! All avenues will be explored.
• Current Information: Our wiki page has been updated to reflect the newest information after our first meeting! Visit http://barcamp.org/BarCampSanDiego
• Stay tuned for more updates!

Feel free to join us on irc! We’ve created a space for the Barcamp SD community to hang out on irc and chit chat!

• irc.freenode.net
• #barcampsd

Greetings, Barcampers!

Hopefully everybody had a great time this weekend! Here are a few things you might be interested in:

• Survey: Please take a few minutes to let us know what you thought of this event - http://www.barcampsd.org/forum/survey
• Presentations: Please post your slides and recordings of the sessions to the wiki here - http://www.barcamp.org/BarcampSanDiego1-Sessions (Dan is gathering all the recorded sessions for Belkin, please email him at dan@itkinetix.com for login credentials to his ftp server if you don’t have a place to host yourself.) Note: Slideshare.net is a great place to host presentations!
• Flickr: Browse through our group’s pictures and feel free to add your own shots from the weekend - http://www.flickr.com/groups/barcampsd
• Technorati: Want to hear what people are saying? http://technorati.com/tag/barcampsd
• Calendar: Keep in touch with all your new friends by scheduling your own meetups between barcamps - http://www.barcampsd.org/calendar (Hurry up and schedule something so I don’t have to make a pretty error message for that empty RSS feed the page is importing!)
  

Before wrapping up, I’d also like to take this opportunity to send out a special thank you to Billy, Desiree, and Phelan for the amount of time and work they put in all weekend to make our tshirts. Another special thanks goes to the guys at Technical Training Resources for being such gracious hosts for all 80 of us. And to the rest of the sponsors…we love you guys, too. =]

The next Barcamp will likely be in November, so keep watching tthis blog for the official date announcement. Until then, let’s continue to build our community so this city’s ready for an even better BarcampSD2.