Fostering a community driven framework
It has been about two years since the unconferences started in Toronto. Shortly after it started, David Crow coined the community is the framework discussion and helped inspire folks to help build communities. It took me a while but September 29th, 2007 saw the first BarCampWaterloo. We are now six events (plus DemoCampGuelph) into it and I think with StartupCampWaterloo I feel confident saying there is a solid community in Waterloo that finds community driven events useful and are willing to participate.
Why organize these events? Personally I am not an entrepreneur with a few attempts or successes at starting my own business under my belt. I have not experienced the joys and fears of starting a business but I have experienced years of feeling isolated within both the University community and the larger regional community. I have had more web technology contacts in the US than I do in Canada, more of a sense of community when I attend the big Adobe MAX conference.
Starting and continuing a ‘BarCamp’ movement in Waterloo is about the entire tech community: the web developers in big companies, the entrepreneurs, the inventors creating things for fun, the people that are researching the application of technology and/or how people interact with it, the business minded folks that would love to help something grow. However, the desire for topic specific events is there and that is why we (Mic, Simon, Brydon and Ali in Guelph, and myself), with the help of the community, have broken the events into three main forms:
- BarCampWaterloo – something for everyone who attends. We have talked about how to age a good ham, use two keyboards at once, cool coding, and how to build the technology in your business. Its a day long event that strives to include everyone who attends.
- DemoCampGuelph – this event aims to showcase working projects. You demo something that works, no slides, no time to babble.
- StartupCampWaterloo – the most recent experiment that borrowed from the spirit of DemoCamp. This event focuses on the start-up experience and aims to give folks a place to get the feedback they need to keep going and succeed.
The events are staggered monthly and all three events offer a place for folks to connect. Through these connections comes a sense of community. Someone other than your dog or the voices in your head that share the same passion as you are out there and they want to help. You may leave an event inspired to try something new at work or in your own business or find something to work with on your next big idea. That is the potential power of the community that I currently see in Waterloo. With the success of the Accelerator Centre and the construction of another Accelerator Centre along with a Research Accelerator Centre it really feels like Waterloo is on the verge of something. Infrastructure (we do need a free community wifi) and the brains are here… a vibrant BarCamping community will certainly help I think.
It is not that I don’t acknowledge the groups that have been organizing events for a while. The first one that comes to mind is WatStart which is an effort led by Gary Will. The launch of the new WatStart site I think offers a great place to organize community resources, I hope people start using it. Then there are some of our now regular BarCampWaterloo sponsors: Communitech and TechCapital, they have done a lot positive things for the entrepreneurs in the community.
No matter where you are I would encourage you to seek out the local community and participate. Every person that contributes enriches the experience for everyone. There are other events in town and groups that meet mingle. DesignCampWaterloo, UX group, a new RailsNite Waterloo, a .NET users group, and others. Get out there and meet people, you never know what could come of it.
StartupCampWaterloo October 23rd at the Accelerator Centre
The BarCampWaterloo group brings a BarCamp/DemoCamp event to Waterloo that is aimed for those that are interested in or already have a start up. It is called StartupCampWaterloo and will run from 6pm to 9pm on the 23rd of October at the Accelerator Centre on North campus (295 Hagey Blvd). Sign up on the wiki if you are going to attend, all are welcome!
Baby research: where do percentiles come from?
Addison (my son) had his 9-month visit to the doctor this past week. All things are good, he is developing quickly, healthy, etc. But when referencing the baby height/weight chart the nurse found he was 25th percentile in weight, 75th or so in height. Concerned for his weight meant a friendly lecture from the nurse and an order to increase the fat in Addison’s diet. Keep in mind, this kid has more energy than anything I have ever seen. If he is awake he is moving and/or making noise.
So my wife comes home, thinks about it, and then last night found a paper explaining the chart our doctor’s office uses. As it turns out the research they use is from one town in the mid-west US and has bottle fed babies. Breast fed babies deviate significantly and negatively, especially those from other parts of the world. So the chart’s data source is flawed yet modern nurses and doctors follow it.
I wonder where the obesity problem starts? 
Lesson of the day, if you are handed facts and you are not comfortable with them always do a little research. The web is really handy for that.
Building a UI from blocks: background and approach
My role at work has me looking at a UI for a fairly complex application (known as jobmine) that has three distinct audiences with three distinct reasons for using the web app. The web application is the primary business tool for the co-operative education process at the University of Waterloo. This process sees anywhere from 10-25K people using it at least a couple times every four months. Staff in the CECS department use it for their day-to-day activities.
What is a co-op system? My definition is based on being a student and now an alumni, it is no way the ‘official’ take. Co-operative education is an approach to education that gives students a chance to learn outside of the classroom (and in the case of UW, make some good money) and gain experience in the ‘real world.’ If you are a student you look for and apply to jobs, manage your resume/CV, and find out about interview times and locations, accept and decline job offers. For an employer you post jobs, sort through applications, arrange interviews, and offer jobs. For staff you make sure this all works by supporting both students and employers, generating reports, manage a massive amount of data. Generally speaking.
It would seem easy enough if you walked up to it from a user perspective. You have your role, an idea of what needs to get done, and off you go. The expectations aren’t a whole lot different than say Workopolis or Monster.com.
A boat load of research (which involved many interviews with all audiences and was conducted by UW profs/grad students) later and I now have a bunch of what are essentially feature lists along with rationale. What I need to do along with my team of three co-op students is absorb the data, digest it, and come up with a set of ‘consoles’ for the UI. The problem is that this sucker is hugely complex and dynamic… it is expected to be 100% AJAX, so how do you do it?
My first thought was to approach this with a wire frame for each console. We can mock up a look once we get the bits we need on the page in the location that works. The problem is that many bits (or blocks) have dynamic states that can change how the data in the block or the block itself is presented.
So our approach is to break these blocks down to their basic elements (submit buttons, textarea, label, input, etc) then put those elements into the blocks themselves. From there we assemble the console. The plan is to have all this done in HTML with DOM scripting to present the UI. This approach seems to be working and more importantly seems to assist greatly in ensuring our HTML/javascript code follows best practices.
I will update once we have a block to look at it. I just wanted to get this initial bit out of my head and into text.
Zoomii: more of a bookstore feel for Amazon
Looking to browse book covers but not wanting to walk down to the book store? Check out Zoomii. You can fly around the book shelves and get a feel for the book size, select what you want, and then purchase it through Amazon.
Chris Theisson has been busy over the last few months showing off his new Amazon affiliate site Zoomii to folks at DemoCampGuelph, DemoCampToronto, and BarCampWaterloo.
This store shows you 20 000 or so book covers and their relative size. You can simply browse the shelf and check out the interesting looking books. For an AJAX based site it is just amazing to fly around the book shelves. I love how fast it is and the search results are just nicer than what Amazon normally gives you. If you are a visual person, this store is certainly more fun than the typical Amazon experience. You have to bounce over to Amazon to make your purchase (maintains your comfort level with Amazon).
If you want to try it out I have a couple invites available to me so just post a comment.
