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Barcamp Tampa Bay – A First For Tampa

I have known about this event for some time as I was at the one of the original planning meetings for it. But, yes, the Tampa Bay area is finally hosting its own Barcamp. There was one over in Orlando, however I haven’t yet made it over to that one.

Barcamp Tampa Bay will be taking place October 11-12, 2008 at the University of South Florida College of Business. From the website:

Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software, programming languages, and the future of technology.

This will be my first Barcamp. I’ve been to a lot of tech conferences, but never been to a Barcamp before and I’m stoked that it is going to be taking place right in my hometown.

As I have said for some time, Tampa is a hidden powerhouse of technology. Hell, Florida is. Most people in my field tend to think California, Silicon Valley, the SF Bay Area, perhaps Seattle. I, for one, am tired of having to traverse the country for so many tech conferences. We have a lot of people living here on the East side of the country, and a lot of them right here in Florida.

Registration is free, although they are asking for a voluntary contribution to help pay the bills. Hope to see you there.

Guest Appearance on Tampa Radio Show

On Saturday, I was a guest on the SOS Computer Talk show which airs on 1040AM WWBA here in the Tampa Bay area. This is actually the third time I have been an in-person guest for the show. I also do the news bytes for them every week. I just record the news here in my office and send it to them as MP3. Gotta love technology.

This is a picture of the host of the show, Sean O. I posted a few other pictures to my Flickr gallery.

Also cool, I had one of my readers from PCMech call into the show to ask a question. Kick ass.

But, it is always interesting doing other forms of media besides the blog. I don’t know if I would want to do radio all the time, but it is fun to partake from time to time.

Tampa Blogger Meetup

We had our third meeting of local Tampa bloggers and the meetup is developing every time. It is organized by Loren Baker, of Search Engine Journal. I was in attendance and we also had Mark Jaquith, one of the core developers of Wordpress and a developer for B5 Media. Most of the rest of the people there are getting their feet wet in the blogosphere and it is cool to see them there. They’re starting out on a much stronger footing than I ever did – attending meetups.

I posted some more photos of the meetup over in my Flickr gallery.

I don’t care what your experience level is in the world of blogging, these types of meetups are great to go to. It is good networking and it is good to help others with things you may have figured out already. It is nice to see something developing here in the Tampa Bay area.

One of the things about Tampa is that it is a hidden powerhouse of tech. Most people think west coast when they think of tech people. San Francisco and Seattle. But, I tell you, there are a lot of big tech names living over here on the East coast. We are just more spread out and need to go a little more out of our ways to meet up.

I’ll fly to the west coast when I have to, but it kicks ass when I can meet up with a lot of great guys without going too far.

Gnomedex 8.0 Review

Today is my first day back from attending Gnomedex 8.0 in Seattle. I will likely have several follow up posts on this blog as well as over on PCMech regarding some of the things talked about, but today I wanted to post a quick summary of my thoughts on the event itself.

Gnomedex is a different kind of conference. What I like about it is how it focuses on the things we find interesting. It isn’t an instructional conference at all, like so many others. There is value in the instructional stuff, but there is also value in the motivational, the inspiring and the thought-provoking. Gnomedex does well at this.

Last year was my first year attending Gnomedex. I must say that I was left questioning the value of my trip. It isn’t easy for me to go to Gnomedex. After all, I am coming all the way from Florida. After last year’s experience, it took some personal deliberation for me to decide to give it one more try. I was going to use this year’s Gnomedex as my deciding factor. If it was too much like 2007, I would not travel to Seattle for it again. If, however, it rocked, I would come again.

And I’m happy to say that it rocked. Let me hit the summary points:

• The parties were awesome. Good socializing and it was nice to put a face and voice to so many of the online personalities and Twitter usernames I deal with online.
• The food was great – the best food I’ve ever had at a conference.
• The venue rocked. As a Floridian, sure, it’d be nice to have Gnomedex somewhere a bit more central. But, Seattle is a beautiful city. It has a bit of a homeless problem and I witnessed a few drug deals while walking the streets, but I expect such things when I go to a west cost city (as unfortunate as that is).
• Speaker selection was great. Day one was a lot more interesting for me. Day two was much more technical and not all of it was interesting to me.
• Wifi was strong. Nice! Last year, the wifi frickin’ sucked.
• Thank you for leaving out the conspiracy freaks and political stump speeches this year. It stayed techie just as it should have.
• Dave Winer wasn’t there. Big plus. The guy would have spammed the conference with Obama talk the whole time and I, for one, didn’t miss that one iota.

Also, I saw a tweet from Chris saying he almost wished he could turn off the Internet so people would stop twittering. No! Chris, there is a lot of value in the back channel communications at Gnomedex. It improves the experience, in my mind. Honestly, if I wouldn’t be able to get online during the conference, I wouldn’t go.

All in all, it was a success and I’m glad I went. Big thanks to Chris and Ponzi, his parents, and to the rest of the team who helped put it all together.

Update From Seattle

Tropical Storm Fay, Screw You

I am supposed to fly out of Tampa on Wednesday morning. I was to be using a non-revenue, standby ticket on Southwest Airlines. Why non-rev? Mainly because I had the opportunity and figured why the hell not…it saves me about $500.

However, now I am left trying to figure out how to play things. Tropical Storm Fay is set to come right through the Tampa Bay area on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning. The storm looks like it will be north of here already by the time my flight leaves, but that doesn’t mean everything goes back to normal at Tampa Airport.

You combine a standby ticket with probable flight delays and cancellations due to this storm and…well, it isn’t looking good.

Talk about timing.

I am monitoring the situation and may end up purchasing a one-way ticket to Seattle in order to get the hell out of here before the flight schedule gets all screwed up here in Tampa. Buying a ticket this late in the game isn’t exactly cheap. But, I need to make the decision soon. And the problem is that I won’t really know what this storm is going to do until it is bearing down on us.

As for the storm itself…it doesn’t worry me. Sure, it’ll mess some things up, but it is mainly going to be a big rain event. It doesn’t look like it will be a hurricane when it comes through. So, we’ll have flooding, down trees, maybe some lost power. But, I’m not worried about anything. Been there. Done that.

Except for it screwing up my flight to Seattle. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Fay is now shifted and they predict it will come in down near Ft. Meyers. For now, I have elected to re-list my flight for the early morning on Wednesday. Then, if I get bumped, at least I have every flight that day to get the hell out of dodge.

Watch The Olympic Opening Ceremony Online

I missed the opening ceremonies for the Olympics in Beijing and I wanted to watch them online. Searching around, it took quite a while for me to find them. Perhaps I’m just dumb, but I imagine I’m not alone.

So, if you want to watch the replay of the opening ceremony, you need to go to the Great Hits section for videos at NBC’s Olympics site. The opening ceremony is in 4 different parts which you can stream online.

Interestingly, the site is using Microsoft Silverlight rather than Flash (at least on the Mac). So, you’ll need to install the Silverlight plug-in. You will be prompted to do so.

It is definitely worth watching. It is a most awe-inspiring show. Really amazing.

Audio Update From Dave

Test Post From Iphone

This is a quick little test post using the Wordpress app for the Ihpone. It obviously works, however it would obviously be totally grueling to write a long this way. Also, it would be nice if the app could tilt sideways like Safari will. The keyboard is so much easier to use in the wider format.

So, while it might not be my preferred client for blogging, it is still pretty cool that I can even do it at all.

End of post because typing on this thing is still a bit slow.

EDIT: Obviously, I made a few typos, too. Fat fingers. Tiny keyboard. Oh well. I’m going to leave it as is for posterity.

Bloggers: Don’t Be a Fat Ass

One of the biggest drawbacks of this job (being a professional blogger) is that you sit – A LOT. And if you’re not careful, it will catch up with you.

I’ve let it catch up to me. Hi, my name is David Risley and I am a fat ass.

OK, if you saw me in person, you probably wouldn’t think so. I’m about 6′2” and am currently sitting at anywhere between 225 and 228 pounds, depending on when I jump on the scale. My ideal weight is probably around 190 pounds. So, I am overweight. Not a fatty, but overweight. It is actually sad to say that I’m average. I probably am, but that doesn’t bode well for America.

I’m not a big believer in fancy diets. Fad diets are just that – fads. I think what it all comes down to is eating healthy, not over-eating and, of course, exercise. Reminds me of the Mad TV skit where the secret of dieting is “eat less, move more”.

So, I need to get exercise into my daily routine. There is a new gym that has gone in right down the road and I think I’ll go down tomorrow and join.

Local Tampa Bay tech blogger Robert Nelson, of Gadgetell, is putting me to shame. He’s out there running frickin’ marathons. What the hell is this, Robert? You trying to make me look bad?

So, I guess I’ll have to eat less and move more.