Barcamp Ottawa 3 was today, and it didn't disappoint. There were over 150 people registered to attend in the new venue at Carleton University's Tory Hall. Awesome!
The first session I saw was Tony Bailetti's Talent First Network and Open Source Businesses. This is a relatively new initiative out of Carleton U focused on pairing tech execs with technology coming from Carleton, as well as fostering open source based businesses. Tony was looking for feedback on the initiative, and there was a pretty spirited discussion, especially around the legal aspects of using open source in projects. The discussion centred around where to get competent legal advice on all the different license types for open source. The consensus was that the most knowledgeable Ottawa legal minds in Ottawa on this topic were probably in corporate legal departments.
I missed the next couple of sessions because… I was unprepared. Yesterday I chatted with Barcamp organize Peter Childs yesterday, and asked if he needed another presentation. I took the opportunity to grab a network connection and finish up my presentation.
I caught the session on legal activism hosted by Russell McOrmond. Russell runs a site called Flora.ca focused on copyright reform, open source, and other intellectual property activism topics. His Barcamp session was awesome, generating a very robust discussion of these issues. For me, this was one of the best discussions I've ever participated in at a Barcamp. Unfortunately, no slides.
My session on viral marketing was well attended. There were probably 40 people in the room, which was terrific. It was a case study of what we researched, and what we've learned from the Talk-Now. Slides here, courtesy of Scribd.
A promising new initiative from Carleton U is the Ottawa Tech Wiki.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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got the slides, thanks!
Thanks for posting slides. As is the case always with these types of (un)conferences, it there is always overlap of sessions we would like to go to.
I did post a BLOG article about my session at http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3850 for anyone who wanted to get a summary.