OpenWebCampHelsinki

last chance to sign up for the event

2010-03-15T07:13:00.001-07:00

Santeri (from Codento) has confirmed that the food is vegan compatible, and that there will be enough for 25 people (based on current attendance names on the facebook event page).

Also in case you had not noticed, Martin Paljak is making the trip from Estonia (he is one of the people behind OpenID.ee and seems to also want to cover the social part of open web!)

dispite TNSTAAFL, we have a cost free food

2010-03-08T03:19:00.001-08:00

The generous folks over at Codento have volunteered to pay for lunch (so we can keep going for as long as possible in our mission to open the web ;) )
If you have any specific allergies or diet restrictions, let us know in the comments (here or on the facebook event)

FYI: if you were wondering about the long acronym in the title, here is an explanation.
oh, and as suggested in the post title, it's free as in beer so it supports the workshops around the free as in Freedom subjects on the day.

Second event in Helsinki

2010-02-16T03:43:00.000-08:00

so I dropped the ball a bit on this one, and let it drift a bit of a long time without a second event.

So with that in mind, the folks at HUB Helsinki have once again stepped up and have offered their prototype space at 16-18 Aleksanterinkatu for us to use on Saturday 20th March 2010, here is the Facebook event (and again, the irony of using something as closed as Facebook to help organise an event aropund open is not lost on me!)

We can start at 11, and once again run until we run out of things to do and say, or 18:00, which ever comes first ;)

I think it is a good idea to use the BarCamp style unconference, "planned on the day depending on who turns up" as the agenda builder.

Lots of interesting things happened over the last week, I guess due to the announcement of Google's buzz (which uses many of the Open Web standards we talked about last time)

So that was fun, what do we do next?

2009-11-10T04:10:00.001-08:00

Once again a big thanks to all those who came and participated.

As the orginal "tag" line was "Something with more action and a bit less talk?", here are some of the things that should be done:

Set a date for the next one (late January or Early Febuary seemed popular)

Contact people who have actually used Open Web technologies

I have also setup an annoucement only mailing list at openwebcamphelsinki@googlegroups.com (email is the lowest common demoniator for this type of thing and is Open).

I have started a conversation with Martin Paljak (OpenID.ee), about him coming across for the next event.
I still plan to use this blog to keep an open dialog about what is happening around Open Web and Helsinki.

Notes of what happened on the day

2009-11-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

Here are my notes from Saturday's event.
NOTE:this is a rather long and link heavy post, if you were present and notice any errors or omissions let me know (via the comments)

The day started off quite slow, but once we numbered something around 6, the event kicked off.
As we were such a small group, a traditional unconference grid seemed overkill, so we went with a more, "does anyone have anything on this topic?" approach.

First up was Teemu Harju who gave a brief overview of PubSubHubbub. In Teemu's opinion XMPP was not that much harder to code for than HTTP, it's just different.
Teemu saw PubSubHubbub as very important contribution for the move towards the real-time web. He is also working on his own PubSubHubbub server written in Erlang. Teemu also pointed out that the PubSubHubbub definition was only at version 0.2 currently, and still a project dominated by Google Engineers.
As an aside, due to most of the attendees being non-native English speakers they had not realised that hubbub was a real word.

As PubSubHubbub was a Google technology, this brought up the question of "What is the use of Wave?".
After some back and forth conversations, it seems that still for many people Wave is attempting to solve a problem they don't think they currently have.
One good thing to come out of the conversation to use the example of Etherpad to demonstrate the basic use of Wave without having to actually use wave. A useful tip as invites are still relatively limited/restricted

The next topic was OpenID.
The main point from this session was around the usability of OpenID. Once again there seemed to be some confusion around the exact problem that OpenID is attempting to solve.
The use of a URI to login rather than the more traditional regular username or email style username, seemed to be the main sticking point.
One important point was that OpenID would be preferable for Government organisations as it is not tied to a single commercial entity (like Twitter or Facebook)
Although, now the large user communities (Google, Yahoo AOL etc) are all OpenID providers, there is still understanding gap for more mainstream users. The use of a Facebook login was considered more understandable, although most of the people attending had never attempted to use Facebook connect. The actual use of FacebookConnect was at least as poor a user experience as OpenID for me.
One of the attendees (I think it was Aapo Rista) was involved in a project that was building a site based on Django and also using Trac, but was having problems with OpenID. The good news was that during the day he was able to get a working demo up and running, and at least from the demo he gave it seems the Django plugin makes use of OpenID easy.

OAuth was next up. Everyone had heard of it, but all the examples initially were just around Twitter.
Luckily as Kai Lemmetty of Floobs and Arto Luikkonen (who knows the API well) showed an example of using OAuth using the Floobs API.

The next major topic was Open Micro Blogging. Although there was not much interest in this topic by itself, it sparked an interesting conversation about how in places like Africa, services are being built on top of SMS. The concrete example given was of the Masai learning of cattle prices. Also, that this information was increasing the desire of the local peoples to learn to read and write.

As Petri Kola was present (and had just finished two days of rather intense discussions around the topic of Openess at OPEN Symposium) he gave a short presentation of the work he had been doing around open data and getting open access to Government data.

There was also a short session around our generous hosts for the day Hub Helsinki.

As a final note i have to say thanks to Jukka Pellinen for all the help on the day with extra equipment.

last few practical things before tomorrow...

2009-11-06T03:45:00.001-08:00

thanks to Petri Kola and Taik it seems we will have at least one projector for those that have something to share.

The doors will be open from 11, my phone number is +358 40 848 8455 if you get lost or can't get in.

It might still be a little "cool" at Hub Helsinki as the space is still "in development", so don't forget your jumpers :)

is this a good usage example of OpenWeb technologies from Google?

2009-11-05T07:45:00.001-08:00

A couple of days ago, on their googlecode blog, google documents how they and Facebook are making use of OAuth and OpenID.

Having read it, it seems like a good thing, but after a little time it seems that we might be in a situation where we replace one "Evil overlord" (Microsoft?) for a currently not evil one (Google).

Can you help with equipment for the event?

2009-10-26T12:09:00.001-07:00

So Hub Helsinki have donated a space for us to hold the event in.

In addition to the space they have;
- a working WiFi network (uses a 3G uplink, so bandwidth may be a bit limited!)
- coffee machine
- tables and chairs
- limited power points (so depending on how many of us there is, there might not be enough power points)

The challenge is that as they are still in "start-up stealth" mode, there are some things that we (the attendees) will need to bring to help make the event work.
These are;
- flip chart paper
- pens (to write on the paper with)
- data projectors (beamers)
- extension cords/multiblocks
- kettle or water boiler (for tea drinkers)
- large thermos flasks (to hold coffee once brewed, helps prevent it becoming "stale")

write in the comments what you can bring please.

P.S. I used the UK version of Clas Ohlson for pictures so that it was clearer exactly what the equipment was, not that you need to bring that specific thing!

location now confirmed

2009-10-23T01:29:00.001-07:00

After a short but very productive meeting with Sami from Hub Helsinki, we now have a space to hold the event!

Sami tells me that the space is still "a little dark & cold" (so just like the weather currently then ;) ).
From his description there will be plenty of space to accomodate whatever we want to achieve on the day.

first volunteer presenters found

2009-10-21T08:05:00.001-07:00

I was visiting the nice folks at Scred yesterday, and was asking them if they had done anything around any of the current open web standards.

Turns out they had, and would be willing to do a short thing on what they had learnt from using django-piston.

Facebook Event

2009-10-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

We are using Facebook as it seems the most common event co-ordination system in FI.
Also it is kind of ironic to use a *very* closed system for an event around openness :)

Anyway, the event page is here

Why use the BarCamp.org Wiki?

2009-10-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

Again following the theme of openness, using a public Wiki to organise the event is better than private emails.
Barcamp.org already has a well known wiki space

Also the event is initially going to use an unconference format i.e. those that attend will determine exactly what will happen on the day, however, if someone is only available for a short period, we are willing to allow you to "pre-book" a time for a session.

We decided to use this format as often people who live and work around the open space are very passionate, and the unconference format, in our opinion, is the best method to senure that everyone can put their point across.

What has happened up to now (Tuesday 13th Oct)

2009-10-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

This event was born when Ville was at Mindtrek and saw Chris Messina's presentation.
He then emailed me about it. I think as I am the main push behind the upcoming BarCamp in Helsinki :)

I then decided to try for a day long event on the day after the BarCamp. When I subsequently told some people about the event, turns out the date I had picked was not so great, so it moved to the following Saturday, November 7th.
Then a moment of happy serendipidty occured, one of the more "vocal" people (about openness) on the Helsinki Tech Scene is Petri Kola, and he is part of a conference all around openness, that is happening on 5th & 6th of November.

Purpose of this blog

2009-10-12T23:00:00.000-07:00

As OpenWebCampHelsinki is all about Open Web and open standards, so rather than hiding things i email, IM conversations, I created this Blog to record as much as possible.