BarCamp Boulder
BarCamp Boulder happened yesterday. Thanks to me.dium for hosting and all of the sponsors for contributing to a great event. BarCamps are a cool thing, this is the first one I have attended. Its billed as a “un-conference” where the attendees set the agenda and topics.
Certainly some good stuff today and interesting discussions. Some of the highlights below (personal filter applied, of course)
- Online Security and OpenID for online identity management - the discussion was fairly broad but one thing is clear. There are many different ideas about what online security and identity services should look like. The concept of a single, trusted online identity is interesting. The problem is who do you trust to actually host or manage that identity, and what open and yet secure and trusted framework/toolkits can are widely available for deployment by enough sites for it to matter. OpenID was discussed as an open, distributed security framework that can be used. What I’d like to see is a toolkit like this used to create a hybrid e-wallet and online identity solution that also has a browser plug-in to capture new site registrations and pre-populate logins (more securely than storing all of my u/p in the browser). We talked about why MS Passport failed as an identity solution. It seems the “closed-box” approach to security doesn’t instill trust.
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Web 2.0 - what’s good design, what sucks?
- kayak.com - online travel with new UI concepts and “when to buy” data
- google - great example of “doing it better”, existing online services done with faster, simpler, cooler UIs
- above the fold vs. below the fold design - you have to be able to tell what the site does above the fold
- flash - are flash based sites losing audience because of the plug-in requirement? acceptable requirement or not?
- can you do enough in html and js so that the need for flash is reduced?
- web 1.0= online newspaper vs. web 2.0=online media (tv)
- Slate.com - check out the pop-over menus that come up
- myspace.com is so ugly most of the BarCamp folks avoid it completely. Apparently they are working to revamp the page builder tools to improve it.
- are you translating a brand or starting from scratch? big difference
- you have to think about cell phones and search engines with every design these days
Half-baked game: the group played a game at lunch called “half baked”, we picked 3 words from a
hat and had to come up with a company name and concept with two of them. lots of fun. very creative process. Team Hyper came up with knifeRobot…and as an exercise they Hypersites guys hosted a session two hours later where we built the e-commerce enabled site, www.kniferobot.com, in realtime using hypersites.com. The company was concieved in 15 minutes, and the site was built in under an hour. Pretty cool. David Cohen details some of the other pseudo-companies here.
As a wrap-up to the day we had a session entitled “Starting Up - Art or Science?” that was a good discussion about some of the important areas founders and investors think about. We covered fundraising, business entity formation, board makeup, etc. David busted out a mic and recorded the discussion for ColoradoStartups.com. Stay tuned for a post announcing the podcast.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:14 am
This post, however off-topic it may be, is about Internet freedom. \”Network Neutrality\” — the First Amendment of the Internet — ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing Internet companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites.
But Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to gut Net Neutrality. If Congress doesn\’t take action now to implement meaningful Net Neutrality provisions, the future of the Internet is at risk.
In the end game, only large companies will afford domains if the communications monopolies have their way with this. This of course isnt new news, but its coming to a head and blogs like this one will be a ghosttown unless all of us figure it our pretty darn quick. I wont post any links, but advise that if you value the internet, and blogs likw this one, that you search Google for \”Network Neutrality\” and educate yourself on this issue as it effects all of us.