Thursday 29 January 2009

Survey for a network for the IT industry

We have just created an online survey for any IT companies in Yorkshire & Humberside to fill in to help us decide what activities and events and so on the industry would like from a network for the IT industry.

As an extra incentive (as if for the good of the industry in the region wasn't enough!) there's an opportunity for one lucky person to win £100 in Amazon vouchers or to donate to a charity of their choice.

The survey can be found at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=pz8TuxfAF31vKeFbLYNTxQ_3d_3d

So if you're an IT company in the region, what are you waiting for :-)

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Ignite

I've been meaning to post about the Ignite event I went to last week at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds.

There were tons of speakers and I couldn't possibly blog about all of them so i'm going to have to limit myself with a couple of highlights:

* Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino: Could hardware hacking save us?

I really liked Alexandra's talk, mainly because I bought an Anduino set a couple of months ago:

http://www.tinker.it/en/Products/ArduinoNG

I also liked hearing about the different events that have been held and the idea of the creative aspects of building something physical yourself and how this can allow people to think more creatively in the future. I also had a quick chat with Alexandra afterwards about having an event in the region which I intend to follow-up on at some point, maybe this is something for me to discuss with OS4B as it is an open source product...

* Stuart Childs, Richard Garside, Dave Lynch: FriiSpray digital grafitti w/IR tracking

I also liked this presentation about using the wii with an electronic whiteboard to create an electronic spray can for grafitti work. My brain is still thinking about this one as i'm convinced there are all sorts of possibilities with it. Could be great for events, has obvious tie-ins with young people and artists, could have potential for interactive advertising boards? A way to collate information? I like the idea of having one somewhere that people can just come in and use and a snapshot is saved to file every 30 seconds or something like that... Anyway still thinking about it which must be a good sign!

There were loads of other speakers who were all very interesting and often very entertaining, i'm assuming the slides will go up online somewhere soon at:

http://www.meetup.com/Ignite-UK-North/calendar/9017862/

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Barcamp Winner - Dom ‘The Hodge‘ Hodgson

Happy New Year! The first post of 2009, how strange...

Anyway so just a quick one to let you know that the winner of the Yorkshire Forward competition at Barcamp Sheffield has been announced, you can see Jag's post (and the winning video) at:

http://barcampsheffield.net/announcements/live-like-barcamp-sheffield-people.html

Dom's video had over 400 visits within the time frame and we will be presenting him with the cheque on Wednesday evening at Sheffield's next Geek Up meeting. The fact that i'm a massive, life-long Pulp fan had no bearing on the chosen winner and is just a happy coincidence :-)