2009 Sessions

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Last year's session board
Last year's session board
Proposed Sessions for BarCamp Boston 4

BarCamp is lives or dies by the sessions that you, the attendee, run. Add a proposal here, or wait till the day off.

Here's an template to use: 

== Using AWK Programming Language to Pickup Chicks ==

This long overlooked programming language can be used to streamline your poultry operation

* Tags: Agriculture
* Requested by: Sam Perdue;
* Proposed Presenter: Seymour Geek

For BarCamp Boston 3 sessions, see 2008 Sessions.


Contents

Using Ruby on Rails with Twitter OAuth

Mark Bao — Twitter is coming out with the OAuth authentication model to do away with the need of username/password to use the Twitter API. Learn how to hack together a Ruby on Rails-based Twitter API-powered app with OAuth. (any interest?) interested, esp. to see OAuth in action -- Joe Slag

Sex and Design Axioms

Sex and Design Axioms describes the minimal rule set for designing interfaces: the foundational concepts that are required knowledge for designers and engineers to create usable and elegant interfaces.

There is an impedance mismatch with the design community (and with company cultures) on the skills and practices required for designing software interfaces. Rather than concentrate on a single discipline within interface design (such as interaction or usability), this session takes a system engineering approach describing the key concepts of the entire act of creating an interface from prototyping to using real data to visual design and layout to interaction patterns.

Turned into a Igstinguish talk on Saturday evening: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juhansonin/3471231115/

—Juhan Sonin

Analysis is Painless

Data analysis is scary. You have a volume of log files in what seem to be un-parsable formats. Simply installing a DBMS can take a day or two, never mind the schema design, ETL, tuning...and days later you're still trying and make heads or tails of your data.

I'll show a couple of examples of how to turn your data nightmare into a daydream using simple distributed frameworks such as Hadoop and new analytic databases such as Vertica. We'll look at some examples of how to tackle each of the data challenges and highlight what these tools do to make life easier. We'll also discuss when to use each and hopefully help some people overcome their data analysis anxiety.

—Omer Trajman

Web 3.D - The Future Of Desktop Manufacturing

Content management systems changed the face of publishing. Custom manufacturing technologies like 3D printers, laser cutters, etc. have the potential to democratize manufacturing in a similar fashion. These tools combined with web apps will give people the power to make anything they can imagine. Are you interested in hardware hacking? A founding subscriber of Make:? If so come by to discuss the technological and business ramifications of combining bits and atoms. If you are interested in custom manufacturing please get in touch!

—Joseph Flaherty

Frameworks: Coding on the Scaffold

Tired of writing apps from scratch? Let's face it, how many times do you want to write/copy & paste the mysqlconnect class? Or the user login function?

Frameworks like Django for Python, Rails for Ruby, and Zend for PHP provide a scaffold for web applications. No matter what language you choose to develop in, using a framework can free you to focus on the innovative and creative aspects of coding.

I know s**t about Rails and Zend so that will make this more interesting - this presentation has morphed into a screencast of creating a blogging application in each of these frameworks. Incidentally, since I started looking into this presentation from a month ago of when I first got the idea, I've become less attached to the idea that frameworks are THE way to go (especially after experiencing for myself just how much is involved in simply _installing_ Rails).

—Sara Streeter Get in touch at sara AT sarastreeter DOT com

Analytic Animations

With this open source software, you can see what any function looks like in 3D space + time. Real and complex number animations are boring as hell, which is kind of interesting. A 4D wire cube really has 16 points you can point to and understand. I will take the sine of a 4D cube just because I can (using a pipe command). All the groups that make up the standard model are on my iPod, and I will share them with you. I can even demo things that show up in quantum field theory (gamma matrices), and reveal what they mean visually. The future of mathematical physics moves.

— Doug Sweetser, sweetser@alum.mit.edu, VisualPhysics.org


Free Latte Art Classes

Create fancy Latte Art with our robot. See your picture or logo on latte/cappuccino or Guinness by sending images to us ahead of time, or just drop by our setup. I'm a founder of OnLatte,Inc. I thought it would be great if we can bring in our Latte Art Machine and show off some fancy Latte Art. Organizers, we need space for the espresso machine/frother/latte art robot setup to make it happen. 6" inch table or behind the bar works best.

— Oleksiy Pikalo, opikalo at onlatte com, OnLatte,Inc.



Code Secrets

Throughout the weekend write down your deepest darkest development/design related secrets and leave them in the code secret box. During his session, presented near the end of the weekend, we will read them out loud and discuss the implications and similarities in our secrets. (Think of it as a coder PostSecret. Last year's secrets are available on the wiki.)

— Justin Russell, justin at justinrussell dot com & Kelley Muir, kelley at sundermedia.com Sundermedia,Float Left Labs

Entrepreneur Anonymous

Nothing is more stressful than going it yourself. And we all know its addictive. This group discussion will focus on the different routes we have all taken, where they have lead us and what has worked. We've all heard its the new business development which is going to save the economy but who is going to save our sanity? Investors welcome to attend :)

—Kelley Muir, kelley at sundermedia.com Sundermedia,Float Left Labs

Sounds like a good discussion Kelley; I hope to attend. JayNeely 16:46, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

Computer vision -- face detection and recognition

I would like to talk about computer vision for face detection. I will go over the basics of different techniques and algorithms being used today as well as the open software frameworks to make it all happen on different platforms (linux, windows, iphones, etc). I may also touch on non-face object detection or things like bar code reading.

This is my first bar camp so I don't know how these talks typically work work but it would be great to have discussions with other people doing work in this field.

—Terrence Curran

Just came across this new PittPatt software that seems worth discussing, in terms of how accessible this technology is becoming to home computer users. - Matthew Craig

Right Brain Design

Damn those designers. They use all those left brain powers!!

Contrary to popular belief (aka designer propaganda) most design follows rules and patterns that we developers can embrace. This session will cover some basic techniques to make interfaces that don't suck. We'll be covering all the basics like typography, colors and even a forray into form design.

Presented by Ian 'WoogyChuck' Muir World Domination, INC Sunder Media

Programming like a Saiyan

Dragon Ball Z is arguably the best television series ever. Over the course of 295 episodes, Goku and the Z fighters have much to teach us about life, and software development more specifically.

We'll start out with some lessons learned from DBZ, and move on too other tips and lessons that help you raise your power levels to the max.

Being an unconference and all, be sure to bring your thoughts, ideas, and lessons towards becoming a truly super saiyan developer.

Proposed and probably presented by Josh Nichols

Battlestar Galactica: The Aftermath

What the frak do we do now?

frak yes, I'll be there. JayNeely 16:45, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

Development Processes, And Considerations When Setting One Up

We all need some form of development process, whether you work yourself, or whether you work in a massive team. The big question when you decide you really need one is: Where do you start?

I will help answer that question, and any further questions that come up as you go. Having setup processes for both agile startups, as well as monolithic companies, I have encountered a number of the problems that come up, and managed to get around them. Now you get my knowledge.

Proposed By Brian Matthew Bommarito

Rapid Application Development Frameworks Showdown

Have a web application spec that can be implemented in a half hour. Different people will code it on their laptops using each person's favorite framework and language. Whoever finishes the app first wins! Follow it up with a code demonstration. People who do not wish to develop can watch participants if the participants allow it. Developers can be part of teams.

Example problems: Blog with comments, To-do list, Contact list

Example frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Cake PHP, Django, CFWheels, .NET

--Jazzmaphone 15:57, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

Functionally Filtering Images In Processing, Pixel-by-Pixel

Processing is a nifty graphics API/IDE for Java. You can do lots of high-level 2D & 3D graphics programming, and you can muck with the raw pixels.

I'll show some simple image filters to brighten, saturate, color-shift, invert, or flip your image. But the fun part is, they're functional, and easily composeable. I'll talk through how it works, and talk about some of the trade-offs.

--Dan Bernier


Silicon Valet: Create Voice Apps to Unlock the Power of Google Data

OAuth has been described as being like the valet key you give to the guy who parks your car. It's designed to let him drive the car, but not get into your trunk. Similarly, OAuth gives users a way to grant certain privileges to an application that needs to access their data.

Google has published some great example code and libraries to help you add OAuth to your web applications. But Google OAuth takes it as a given that users are coming from a browser, and hence can be logged in to their Google account.

I've hacked the Google code up a bit to get it working for my mobile apps. I'd like to share some of my lessons learned, including talking a bit about my experiences with Python and Google App Engine.

Along the way, I'll talk a little about Tropo, a new mobile platform by Voxeo, that claims to be the "Google App Engine of telephony".

Update: Ok, my talk is over, and I am pretty sure I'm going to open source this project. I just can't pass up that free hosting on GitHub. Follow me on Twitter, so you won't miss this momentous announcement.

--Ted Gilchrist

Big MySQL: Tips, Tricks and Challenges

I'm running into more and more people who are building very large Terabyte+ databases on MySQL. I've been talking to people who are literally planning Petabyte databases using MySQL.

I've actually built and managed a Terabyte+ database on MySQL. This session should provide a place for those who have experience with very large MySQL databases to share what they've done in addition to just me talking.

I'll plan on doing 20 minutes or so of presentation/demo with some insights I've picked up, but I'm hoping we'll also hear from other attendees that have faced similar challenges.


--Kevin Bedell

Art Software Omnibus: A speedy trip through a dozen or so software tools for new media artists

This talk is a starting point for artists and technologists who are interested in exploring art software environments. A variety of tools will be demonstrated along with examples of what people are doing with them. Example environments include Processing, PureData, Supercollider, LÖVE, and Context Free.

NOTE: I'm running an electronics workshop at Megapolis at exactly the time the session board is open. I'm hoping somebody will schedule this on my behalf for early Sunday afternoon? Can somebody interested in this presentation please ping me to be my proxy for signup? (david@davidnunez.com)

--David Nunez, dorkbot-boston

Online Privacy Awareness in business

Why you should care about your customers online privacy? Why does online privacy matter in the competitive business world? How can those wishing to protect their identity and privacy online interact with your company? Are there opportunities available in this area?

We'll discuss an introduction to online privacy, anonymity, and pseudonymity. The session can expand into any number of areas, depending upon your interests. Interests could be around how to monetize privacy, how to offer business services with pseudonymous customers, and how to avoid sounding like the wearer of a tinfoil hat.

Proposed by Andrew Lewman, The Tor Project

Aspect.NET: A New Twist on Aspect-Oriented Programming

Reduce the length of your code and greatly increase its manageability by making the boundaries between your application layers purely declarative. Aspect.NET is a lightweight yet powerful tool that constructs class types and methods transparently from delegates and interfaces. Grailtek Research will present the open source first release and cover the following topics: avoiding the problems caused by traditional relational-object mapping; introduction of the Method Pivoter; future releases of Aspect.NET: IDE enhancements and the new language syntax.

Paul Gordon, Aspect.NET

Making games in 5 minutes with Mekanimo

I will demonstrate Mekanimo rapid game development application by creating some simple games. Mekanimo let's users create games by mixing GUI and Python scripting in a unique fashion.

To see it in action you can watch this 5 min. video at http://mekanimomedia.s3.amazonaws.com/tangram/Tangram.html.

For more examples please visit http://mekanimo.net

Fahri Basegmez

Creating a Local Code Commons

I am interested in creating a Boston "Code Commons" - a combination of GitHub, its API, and a new application that would be able to expose useful information about local development projects and the people who do it. I think this would help people find projects and ideas, as well as give local developers the chance to become better known for the coding they do.

I will give a brief presentation of how it might work, and what benefits there would be. After that, I would like to start a moderated discussion about this.

  • Proposed Presenter/Moderator: Ed Lyons

I accidentally an entire RubyGem in less than 30 minutes

RubyGems are the packaging system used by Ruby to distribute libraries. They are the means by which Rails, and many extensions to Rails are distributyed. What people forget is that it’s pretty easy to make and distribute your own gems. This talk will cover the basics of creating and managing a RubyGem using Rake and GitHub. Jeweler, a tool for automating these tasks, will also be covered.

If you have a crazy short idea for a RubyGem, we'll probably release it during this session.

Oh. And. Live coding.

Multilingual Web Application in Django

Want to develop a website that works in more than one language? What does that mean? How to do it? Can we do it using Django/Python easily? I'll share my experience on this topic. particularly a social networking application that we just launched for used in Paris, MuseTrek.

  • Tags: Django Python Multilingual
  • Proposed Presenter: PK Shiu

Live web applications with TurboGears2 and Moksha

TurboGears2 is a next-generation Python web framework that is built using pre-existing, best-of-breed technology, such as: Pylons, SQLAlchemy, Paste, ToscaWidgets, Repoze, Mako/Genshi/Jinja/Cheetah, and much more.

Moksha is a platform built on top of TurboGears2 for creating live web applications that can extract and extend data from arbitrary resources. Moksha brings technologies like AMQP, Twisted, Orbited, and jQuery into the mix to provide a framework for easily creating powerful real-time mashup applications.

Multiple applications are currently being built using Moksha, such as the new Fedora Community portal, as well as CIVX.US.

CIVX.us - An Opensource Public Information System

Public Information generally comes in 3 Flavors: Unavailable, Available, and Accessible. Our mission is to increase the level of transparency of each category, and collaborate with other organizations/individuals who are doing the same. Version 1.0 was released March 31st following the first ever Pycon Open Government Hackathon, and has been featured as one of Wired.com's "Reader's Choice - Best Gov Sunshine Apps 2009," There will be an overview of the underlying architecture (The Moksha Platform), followed by a live demo of the site, concluding with Q&A and Discussion.

  • Presenters: Luke Macken & Remy DeCausemaker
  • URL: http://civx.us
  • Trac: civx.fedorahosted.org
  • Tags: Python TurboGears2 Government Transparency Openness Access Politics Moksha CIVX
  • Contact: civx(at)civx(dot)us

Git and the Feature Branch Methodology

Git is cool. But are you using it to its MAXIMUM POTENTIAL? Find out in this exciting, fast-paced introduction into the fast-paced, exciting world of feature branches. See how git itself is maintained! Experience the wonder of doing lots of merging, all the time! Basic git knowledge required.

  • Tags: version control, git, tutorial
  • Presenter: William Morgan

Copyleft Gaming Business Models

How could you fund game development when players are encouraged to use, modify, and redistribute games? How could you encourage and incorporate player-created content?

A round table to brainstorm and explore various copyleft development and business models that for different styles of games.

Proposed by Arc Riley, Copyleft Games Group, maintainer of PySoy 3d game engine

Business and Social Media

This is a discussion both of the role of businesses and brands on social networks and a few specific examples of businesses who get it and businesses who do not. What do / should brands & businesses tweet about? Do they belong in social networks and how to use them responsibly. And a few tips to use social networks and social media to benefit your startup or business.

  • Presenters: Zach Braiker
  • URL: @quiverandquill
  • Tags: marketing, brands, twitter, social media
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