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iT4Communities Helps Techies Share Their Time & Talent with Charities

Josh Hoole writes:

iT4Communities (iT4C) is the UKs' leading national IT volunteering organisation. We make IT work for charities by introducing volunteer IT professionals to charities needing IT help and support.

There are over 5,000 volunteer IT professionals registered with us and over 2,500 small and medium sized charities and voluntary groups looking for help with their IT. The skills of an IT professional can save months of headaches for small charities and the business perspective they bring can help organisations be sustainable.

There are many ways people can volunteer from a 10 minute telephone advice chat to a 6-month dynamic CMS website project and volunteering can help improve people's skills and boost their CV. iT4C volunteer Matthew Hughes realised there were so many charities crying out for support he could easily give so signed up to help. Matthew says:

Whilst I get a great deal of satisfaction from helping others (as well as good Karma) I also realise the great benefit I get on a career level from working with different people up and down the country. I get to build up my web design portfolio whilst helping people improve their web presence.

Anyone is free to have a look at the hundreds of opportunities available on the RSS Feed and if you see something simple and fun then all you have to do is register online. Once you find a charity you click with you can start creating the solution, although you're not committed unless everyone's happy.

Have a look at the iT4C website for more information or register to share your time and talent. And don't forget to tell us your success stories!

PyCon UK 2008 - Call for Papers, Talks and Tutorials

Last year's PyCon was a roaring success, and the organisers of PyCon 2008 have high hopes for this year's iteration. It will be held at the Birmingham Conservatoire from the 12th - 14th September 2008, and they are just in the process of calling for speakers:

PyCon UK 2008 is an independent, community-run, community-controlled and not-for-profit conference dedicated to the Python programming language, Python applications, toolkits and frameworks. It also features social events and a chance to meet fellow Python users. It is organised by members of Python User Groups from across the United Kingdom.

Last Year, PyConUK 2007 was attended by over 200 delegates and featured around 50 talks and tutorials, as well as a conference dinner and two pub events.

PyCon UK 2008 will be taking place in Birmingham City Centre from the 12th-14th September. We are after Talks, Tutorials and Other events. To submit a talk, please visit our submissions page:
http://www.pyconuk.org/submit

We're looking for proposals on all aspects of Python - programming from novice to advanced levels; applications and frameworks, or how you have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation.

TOC Tutorial DVDs

Our American colleagues at O'Reilly have announced the availability of DVDs containing the tutorials given at Tools of Change 2008 - TOC - in New York in February. The four DVDs available are: Digitizing Your Backlist, Making Mobile Work, XML for Publishers and SEO for Book Publishers: Beyond Book Search.

          Digitize Your Backlist
Your backlist promises long-tail sales and newfound revenue. But to tap this potential, your books must exist in a digital form. Learn practical information to make decisions about digitization.

O'Reilly UK Usergroup Newsletter

The latest O'Reilly UK Usergroup Newsletter, assembled by our own Josette Garcia, has just been posted. Complete with Reviews, Events, Conferences and salient articles on the O'Reilly Network.

Liquid Crunch - Andrew Dubber's Online Music Store

Andrew Dubber, of New Musical Strategies fame, has started an online music store with a money back guarantee:

As far as we can tell, for fairly obvious reasons, there has never been an online music store with a returns policy. But at Liquid Crunch, we're so convinced that you'll absolutely love the hand-selected releases our panel of music experts, consultants and tastemakers have picked out for you, we're taking an unprecedented step: a money back guarantee.

Yep - TRY ANYTHING from Liquid Crunch before the end of April, and if you don't love it, send it back to us within 14 days for a FULL REFUND.

Remember - we don't sell good music on Liquid Crunch. We only sell mind-blowingly great music.

Each of our categories has what we consider to be the ten best possible releases in that section. If you've never heard of the artist before, or the genre's a little unfamiliar to you - doesn't matter. We know you'll love it. You are, after all, a consumer of exceptional taste.

But if we've got it wrong, and it's not to your liking - WE'LL GIVE YOU YOUR MONEY BACK.

So click around, dig around in the categories, taste a few things, pick up a couple of goodies - like this incredible 80-track, 6 volume Brazilian Beats compilation digital box set for only £15.99.

Give it a listen. Live with it for a couple of weeks.

Don't think it's wonderful? Fine. Send it on back and as long as you haven't scratched the mp3s, or let them warp in the sun, then you can have your money back.

But in all honesty... we think you'll like what you hear.

While I like the gimmick of money back if a record isn't to the purchaser's satisfaction, I very much doubt that's why people will go to Liquid Crunch to shop. For me, the strength - and bravery - of the venture is in picking ten songs, and only ten songs, for each musical category. Much like Fopp thrives because it cherrypicks a subset of all available music so that you know whatever you buy there is cool, so Dubber is trusting that his taste is so impeccable he can nail each category, and that the public will spend money accordingly!

In a world of infinite choice, good quality is the one scarce commodity that can still affect demand. What constitutes good quality in any field is highly, highly subjective - and in popular music it is doubly so. Some people know it when they hear it, others know it when they are told about it - and some people are completely clueless and always will be! Yet every piece of music we hear has been selected by someone somewhere along the way, (buskers singing their own songs and friend's bands with their own material excepted!) whether that's a DJ or their programmers, the buyer in a record shop, A&R for a record label, a gig promoter, a friend with a mixtape, or more likely a labyrinthine mixture of all these combined, and that editorial process helps us narrow down the vast swathes of material available to us into a manageable quantity. Dubber's confidence that he knows what Good Quality is is part of that editorial process, and it's up to the individual whether to accept his assistance or not. In effect, he is offering to do the Taste for you, so you don't have to, and he will stand or fall on how reliable his decisions are! If you like his choices, you might well go back, if you don't like them, then chances are you'll stay away, whether you return the mp3s or not, and his reputation takes a hit.

Liquid Crunch is not Dubber's only source of income, so he can afford for it not to take off, or to be only mildly successful, and whether it fails or flies, it will have been a useful exercise to help him understand the modern musical retail climate for his day job as Degree Leader for Music Industries at Birmingham City University the UK and his blog. As I wrote a few months ago, New Musical Strategies is the most cogent precise of the Music Industry's throes as it stumbles blindly in these changing times, and as a chap dabbling at the peripheries of this scene, I'll be watching with interest to see how Liquid Crunch gets on!

Joe Armstrong presents at Erlang eXchange - 26th, 27th June 2008

Joe Armstrong, the creator of Erlang and the author of Programming Erlang, will be among the presenters at Erlang eXchange in London on June 26th/27th 2008. Other presenters include the Simon Thompson, the creator of Erlang's popular Refactoring tool Wrangler, and Klacke Wikström, the developer who brought the ASN.1 compiler, Distributed Erlang and Mnesia, Distributed Systems gury Steve Vinovski, Jinterface expert Dennis Byrne, plus many more. Erlang eXchange is brought to you by the good people at Skillsmatter.

Sign up for Erlang eXchange here. Register on or before May 1st and pay just GBP 250!

Also from Skillsmatter is the the three day event, Erlang eXchange University, from June 23rd to 25th with Beginner, Advanced and VC tracks.

And don't forget to read Gordon Guthrie's exellent piece about Erlang on Scenius.
 

Speechification - Radio Archive

Speechification is the brainchild of Steve Bowbrick and Russell Davis, with the generous help of Dan Hill, Roo Reynolds and Bobbie Johnson, among others. They specialise in finding and bringing to your attention the arcane glories of UK (and Australian) speech radio.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a ridiculously fascinating discussion of the wonders of the footnote, led by Ben Schott and with comments by Terry Pratchett and Lynne Truss. A week ago I listened to a series of four essays by Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy on the relationship between music and maths, (One. Two. Three. Four), and a couple of months ago I spent an hour contemplating a lecture by Oxford Uni ethical geneticist Julian Savulescu advocating for genetically modified human beings, (his point wasn't necessarily that we should go ahead with it, just that the science is nearly in place to make it feasible, and he was really advocating for having the discussion now of whether this is a good idea or not).

These are the kind of shows that air once and then are lost to the ether. The ability to listen to the pieces via the BBC website for a week after airing at least allows us a second chance to catch certain programmes. Speechification is the next step, archived for all time, allowing us to listen when suitable rather than when broadcast, and also, just as importantly, allowing us to recommend programmes to friends. I've listened to considerably more speech radio since Speechification came along - I'm listening to a fantastic programme about the Dundee-based comic publisher DC Thompson as I type - and I can say categorically that Speechification is my favourite website of the moment!

 

Richard Stallman Talks in Manchester - May 1st 2008

Richard Stallman, Free Software advocate and subject of Sam William's book Free As In Freedom, will talk in Manchester on May 1st 2008 on Free Software in Ethics and Practice       :

Richard Stallman will speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to establish these freedoms.

Thursday 1st May, 2008 - Talk starts at 6:45pm (ends approx. 8:30pm) with refreshments from 6:15pm.

Venue:  Room D1, Renold Building, University of Manchester, Sackville Street, Manchester M1 3BB
(Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)

Minibar - London, Friday 25th April

Friday this week brings another magnificent Minibar, deep in the heart of Shoreditch in London. The presentations include:

Seedcamp.com - 08 investment program - Reshma Sohoni

Kindo.com - new generation family tree

Jivelo.com - review site for dating and personal experience - Guido Picus

Make Your Mark - entrepreneurship campaign - Dan McQuillan

Social Innovation Special
the two winners of Social Innovation Camp will present - plus we will have  Paul Miller speaking about the .ORG revolution

The Carbon Account - personal carbon calculation - Jamie Andrews

Main Sponsor: London Development Agency and Make Your Mark

Drinks Sponsor: Gimme
Supporting Sponsor: Realeyes
Media Partner: Intruders.tv

Truman Brewery
Corbet Place
E1 6NH
London
02077706100
Info/Map

It's a benchmark of the benefit of presenting at Minibar that they themselves have begun using Webjam to build an online community. Webjam is a London-based start-up who presented in March.

Steve Bowbrick on the Word Podcast

Steve Bowbrick appears in this month's Word magazine and on their podcast, talking about Wikipedia. Always worth a listen.

Also worth a listen is The Word's new podcast about the music business:

We're launching another podcast stream called "Backstage" which features occasional conversations with people who know how things operate in different areas of the entertainment industry. Hopefully it gives people a chance to get a better understanding and maybe passes a commute or two. The first one is with Jon Webster of the Music Managers Forum and touches on money, rights, Radiohead, merchandise and a world where record companies no longer rule the earth. Get an extract and subscribe to the podcast for free.

geeKyoto 2008 - London, May 17th

Mark Simpkins and O'Reilly author Ben Hammersley are putting together a conference on how developers can help save the environment called geeKyoto 2008. geeKyoto will take place between 10:00 - 16:30 on Saturday 17th May 2008 at Conway Hall in London.

We broke the world. Now what?

Mark Simpkins and Ben Hammersley announce a one day conference in central London, with designers, technologists, artists, architects, policy-makers, explorers, economists and scientists, and clever people like you, to discuss the future and how we'll live in it.

geeKyoto 2008 is a cross-discipline event, targeted at everybody with an interest in the world we live in.

Speaking we have:

* Adrian Hon - ARG Games Designer
* Christian Nold - Artist
* Gavin Starks - Website
* Alex Haw - Architect
* Ben Saunders - Explorer, Speaker
* DIY Kyoto
* Richard Sandford - Futurelab
* Adam Thorpe - Vexed Generation & Design Against Crime (Central St. Martins)
* Emma Mulqueny - UK GovWeb
* Mitchell Sava - PolicyWonk
* James Smith - Do The Green Thing
* Bryony Worthington

We will follow the event with a social meetup nearby.

We are also in discussion with the organisers of 4Good, The festival of social innovation and 4IP, Channel 4's new innovations fund to find ways to progress the ideas and conversations that start at geeKyoto.

geeKyoto 2008 is being supported by:

Proboscis is a not-for-profit artist-led studio which combines artistic practice with commissioning, curatorial projects, design and consultancy. Collaboration is at the core of our creative practice and ethos: we work across disciplines and practices - with associate artists, writers, curators, critics, designers, technologists, filmmakers, scientists and theorists - to explore social, cultural and creative issues.

It costs £20 to attend. Tickets are available at http://www.geekyoto.com/

Java IDE Day - Italy

Carlo Bonamico writes:

JUG Genova and JUG Rome are happy to announce that the talk slides and demo screencasts, together with a full report of the event are online on the http://www.ideday.org website. A transcript of the final panel on the future of Java IDEs, as well as a photo gallery are also available.

The IDE Day started as a follow-up to the very successfull IDE shootout organized by the Cologne JUG.

The Genova JUG together with JUG Roma, which also was interested by the proposal, invited representatives from the four major IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, JDeveloper); everyone was very interested and supportive, although, unfortunately, Eclipse was unable to participate because it was already involved in other events (including, obviously, EclipseCon) in the same period.

We decided that the event had to be less than a “confrontation” of the IDEs and more of a community event, where experts, developers and students could discuss the innovation and the future of Java development tools.

We think that this idea did resonate in many places, since we received significant (and absolutely necessary) support in organizing the IDE day not only from Sun, Oracle and JetBrains, from the Faculties of Engineering of Genova and Rome Universities, but also from the Open-Lab student association and O’Reilly UK.

Moreover, a number of local companies active in the Java development,traning and consulting areas were happy to support the event by offering a coffee break and, more importantly, by promoting the Java IDE Day among their employees and contacts: Eptamedia, Finsa Consulting, ManyDesigns, NIS and K-Tech.

The IDE day took place in Genova on the 10th of March and in Rome the following 12th. It definitely was a success: more than 200 developers attended it overall (130 in Genova and 70 in Rome). Beside the number, a positive result has been that everyone could appreciate three very interesting speakers showing not just very high quality technical content but more significantly, a lot of collaboration between them.

The talk slides and demo screencasts, together with a full report of the event are online on the http://www.ideday.org website. This report is in English and more focused on the Genova event; for more information on the Rome event you can visit  Report on javaportal.it (in Italian). For a first-hand report in Italian see http://www.giampierogranatella.com/blog.

A transcript of the final panel on the future of Java IDEs, as well as a photo gallery are also available.

A big thank you again to all people and organizations who made the IDE Day a success, and parparticularly to Paolo, Angelo, Alessandro, Giampiero, Corrado A, Corrado L, Fabio, Fabrizio, Mara, Giorgio, and Carlo.

Dan Hill on Monocle

Dan Hill has written a fantastic dissection of the design and implementation of Monocle's website.
Monocle was launched about a year ago, and Dan joined from BBC Music and Radio Interactive to help create its web presence, building on the design of the magazine but also asking questions of what a website should be. What's interesting about this is that instead of going the Web 2.0 route, they chose a much more bespoke approach, putting together a highly designed site with carefully controlled content and layout which flies in the face of current thinking in this age of Social Networking and actively-sought contribution and community. The net result is a thriving hub of guaranteed quality and considered opinion, and as importantly, a successful business.
Get yourself a cup of coffee before reading it, because it's a long piece, but the fact that Dan has laid out Monocle's thought-processes and working practices so succinctly and transparently means this is required reading for anyone putting together a sizeable company website.

Monocle design notes
Monocle was conceived as a multi-platform brand from the start. Tyler Brûlé's work since Wallpaper* included a design and branding agency, Winkreative, and editorial production capacity, Winkontent. The latter had produced TV programmes (BBC4's The Desk and Counter Culture, for instance) and Tyler himself had started as a broadcast journalist (with the BBC and others). So an understanding of what makes good audio-video content was certainly present in the building to begin with, and my experience from the BBC reinforced that. It was definitely part of the plan for Monocle. We wanted to make Monocle a journalism brand that you had a weekly relationship with via the internet, as well as the monthly relationship via the magazine. Ultimately, this should be daily, if aspirations come to fruition. This weekly relationship would be through a form of broadcast media, using the internet’s ability for distributing video - something enabled only in the last couple of years, effectively - and thus conveying the sense of a Monocle broadcast news element, complementing the ‘book’.

The challenge was to create a working environment that would produce it, and then an online environment that could distribute it.

Via Pete Ashton

Telegraph.co.uk Developer Weekend - 26th/27th April 2008

The UK media company The Telegraph is hosting a Developer Weekend 2008 at their offices in Victoria, London on the 26th-27th April, 2008:

This event offers the chance to:

# hear from some of the industry's best speakers about their views on where the news, media and technology industries are heading;
# meet and talk to key technical staff from Internet companies like Digg, Adobe, Apple and Google;
# gain a deeper understanding of the latest developments on these platforms and participate in focussed technical training sessions;
# participate in a product development competition, which will mix great content with great technology to create some fantastic products. Prizes wil be awarded to the top 3 products created.

You have till the 18th April to apply. Sign-up here.

BarCamp North East - 24th/25th May 2008

All eyes will turn to Newcastle-upon-Tyne over the weekend of the 24th and 25th May 2008 when Barcamp North East happens.

The venue is:

THE ART WORKS GALLERIES
Stepney Bank
Ouseburn
Newcastle
NE1 2NP
England
map

A fine list of participants already signed up include a healthy contingent travelling up from the M62 and Glyn Wintle from the Open Rights Group. Should be good. Sign up for free tickets here.

Barcamp Amsterdam and Lille

Kris Buytaert writes:

Barcamp Season seems to be hot ... Barcamp Gent with the accompanying GeekDinner is barely finished and it's already time to head to Amsterdam for this weekend's Barcamp Amsterdam IV which will take place in the Volkskrant Gebouw.

After these 2 you'll be exhausted ... so you'll get plenty of time to rest till Barcamp Lille which will be held on May 24 at the Lille Management School.

Don't tell us nothing is happening in mainland Europe!

Going Solo - Conference for Freelancing Internet Professionals

Going Solo is a real Scratch Your Own Itch conference. Stephanie Booth attended too many events that, in her opinion, weren't as well organised as they could have been, so she decided to stick neck out and create her own conference. Going Solo is a one-day event taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland on May 16th, 2008 that will look at the skills and knowledge needed to be a freelancer or business owner in the realm of the Internet. Proceedings take place at Hôtel Albatros-Navigation, Place de la Navigation, Lausanne, and you have till the end of the day today (31st March 2008) to register for the Early Bird knock-down price of 400 CHF (approx. 250€, £190, US$365).

The programme is still in preparation. However, here is an overview of the topics we plan to cover during Going Solo, on May 16th 2008:

• skills a freelancer needs (doing the work, marketing and networking, contracts and cash flow)
• fixing prices, closing deals, negotiating contracts (the hardcore businessy stuff)
• what kind of work freelancers in the 2.0 world do (some jobs are more suitable for soloists than others)
• marketing and taking care of one’s social capital (blogging… and being a good online citizen)
• tools of the trade (what software/tools/methods can assist you as a freelancer?)
• coworking and staying in touch with “colleagues” (compensating for “working alone” — we remain social animals)
• challenges in making a passion into a job, dealing with the blurring of the life/work distinction
• international clients, travel, different laws and tax rules, accounting
• soloist or small business?
• adapting to different kinds of clients (in particular, how do you deal with big corporations that you approach or who have approached you)
• is there a market for what I’m doing?

Four speakers have already confirmed their participation:

• Stowe Boyd
• Suw Charman
• Martin Roell
• Laura Fitton

Steve Bowbrick Reviews Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

I always enjoy Steve Bowbrick's blog, and it was a particular pleasure to see his review of John Broughton's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Steve, who you might remember as a featured profile on Scenius, has been in the web business longer than practically anyone, and from the earliest days, has been longing for the web to catch up with its own potential for the sort of collaboration of which Wikipedia is only the most prominent example. He marks the day Marc Andressen removed the editor from the Mosaic browser as one of the web's most defining moments, so it's no surprise he's a champion of such a from-the-ground-up project. He sees the Missing Manual as a benchmark of how far the web has come, and how quickly we've got used to it:

Broughton's not interested in defending or explaining Wikipedia (it just doesn't come up). His book is a how-to (a 'Missing Manual'). This is as it should be: Wikipedia's part of the landscape now, not a libertarian fantasy or a half-baked geek experiment. Practical books like this always arrive after the first, experimental, phase and before the later, ubiquitous phase. They're an important sign. They say: "this phenomenon is real and durable."

Now it's got this far, it would be easy to surmise that should Wikipedia go away, a tremendous weight of knowledge would be lost. And of course, it would. But Steve's point is that now we've done one of these, there's nothing to stop us building more, and better:

Of course, Wikipedia's not the answer. It's not our era's final position on planetary-scale knowledge sharing. In fact it's a bit of a mess at the moment and seems to be showing signs of early-onset decadence. But I think this is probably a good thing. The idea that the first large-scale collaborative effort to organise knowledge should be the only one or in some way definitive doesn't seem right: we should probably have a few goes at this at least.

Personally, I'd love Wikipedia to evolve a sustainable future from the wildness of the current collaborative system, and I'm sure Steve would, too, but whatever, the time has passed when someone can wield the sort of power Andressen affected with regard the future of the web. People will work together to make new things, pooling their resources for the thrill, the fun, the satisfaction of building something a-fresh. And one of Wikipedia's stoutest contributions to these future projects is showing the doubters that it can be done.

Steve's article about Wikipedia will appear in The Word magazine, published April 8th 2008.

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual can be bought with a 40% discount when you use the code OR145 on the UK Shopping Cart.

 

Guardian News and Media To Up Their Developer Services

Guardian News & Media have hired Matt McAlister from Yahoo's developer network in order to open up their web services to outside web developers:

Mike Bracken, technology director for development at GNM, part of the Guardian Media Group, which publishes the Guardian, Observer and MediaGuardian.co.uk, said McAlister has a "formidable track record and an international reputation for innovation".

"The significant thing is to think about the Guardian as a platform, and not just a publisher," added Bracken.

He said Yahoo had built an offering around search and maps, so the next question for the Guardian would be to work out which assets would be most relevant to make available to the developer community.

"We want to allow people to connect, and will provide data that people they can reuse and be creative with a vehicle that will help engage smaller agencies and development team in other companies create applications," Bracken added.

Minibar - London, 28th March 2008

For those of you in London tonight, you could do worse than wash up at Minibar in Shoreditch. Proceedings begin at 6.30ish with talks from:

Piins.com  - currently in stealth mode - first public appearance - Charly

Webjam.com - create your own social network - Alberto Barriero

Trampoline Systems - enterprise software harnessing social behaviour - Charles Armstrong

Truman Brewery
Corbet Place
E1 6NH
London
02077706100
Info/Map

Quality stuff.

Social Innovation Camp 4th-6th April 2008

Social Innovation Camp takes place in London the weekend after next:

When: 6pm, Friday 4th - 4pm Sunday, 6th April 2008

Where: The Young Foundation, Bethnal Green

The idea is to bring together web developers/people who want to make a difference in order to create and re-purpose Web 2.0/Social Networking tools to address the real issues in society:

So, the ideas that will be developed at the Social Innovation Camp, 4th-6th April 2008 are:

- Barcode Wikipedia

A site for storing user-generated information – such as carbon footprint, manufacturing conditions and reviews - against a product, identified by its barcode number.

- Enabled by Design

A resource for anyone looking to make adjustments to their lives, be it as a result of disability, injury or impairment.

- Personal development reports

An online system that supports young people to identify their personal skills and qualities.

- Prison visits

A tool to support the families of prisoners coping with the experience of being apart from a loved one.

- Rate My CV

A site for helping jobseekers using Web 2.0 tools, with a focus on migrant workers.

- Stuffshare

Freecycle meets Street Car: a stuff club.

Think Tomorrow

Kris Buytaert writes:

An De Jonghe is organizing a fresh new event in Brussels Thursday, June 5th 2008.

Think Tomorrow will take place at the Crowne Plaza Brussels Airport.

Think Tomorrow will try to teach companies on how to integrated Web .20 trends profitably into their corporate strategy. You'll meet organizations that have successfully implemented Web 2.0 elements into their online recruitment campaigns or sales & marketing departments.

An has speakers lined up such as Wim De Waele (BE), Director of IBBT, Octavio Pitaluga (BR), Founder of TEN, Emeric Ernoult (FR), Co-founder of Affinitz and Marco Ripanto (GER), Founder of eKaabo.

Plugg Startup Competition

Kris Buytaert writes:

The votes for the first round of the Plugg Startup competition are in, out of the 18 startups that were selected to take part of the Startup rally, a professional jury combined with the audience to select 3 Startups:

In alphabetical order:
Bragster
Viewdle
Zilok

They are giving a 10 minute pitch now ..  we'll see what happens...

The polls are later today.

Minibar - London, 28th March 2008

Friday 28th March 2008 is Minibar day, the day in the month when developers in London get to forget their cares and worries for a while and drink beer to a soundtrack of the hottest start-ups and the happeningest notions. Presentations begin at just gone 6pm at the usual place:

   Truman Brewery
   Corbet Place
   E1 6NH
   London
   02077706100
   Info/Map

This month brings:

Piins.com  - currently in stealth mode - first public appearance - Charly

Webjam.com - create your own social network - Alberto Barriero

Trampoline Systems - enterprise software harnessing social behaviour - Charles Armstrong

The Drinks Sponsor is Webjam.com. May the multitudes speak their name with reverence.

InfoQ - the Movie

Over the last three days, O'Reilly have been working a book stand at QCon in the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in London. While we haven't been able to get into any of the presentations ourselves, word is this has been a fantastic conference, both stimulating and friendly, and it's certainly a pleasure to be here.

James Cox has been patrolling the halls with a video camera interviewing speakers:

QCon Day Two from James Cox on Vimeo.

Libre Graphics Meeting in Wrocław, 8-11 May

Daniel James writes:

LGM brings together developers and users of the best in free software graphics applications, including Scribus, Krita, the Gimp, Inkscape, Blender and more. This year, the event is taking place at the Wrocław University of Technology in western Poland. The event is free to attend, but registration in advance is suggested, via the LGM website:

http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org/2008/index.php?lang=en

Scenius - Belgian Tech Scene - Kris Buytaert

The great Kris Buytaert has written an overview of the Belgian Tech Scene for our Scenius blog. Kris has been posting for us for months, reporting about events at the heart of Europe, so it's great to have him condense all his knowledge of the Belgium into our fine article:

I love Belgium, but the fact is that we are a multilingual country, and it's mostly these languages defining the communities. Luckily there are some exceptions. But still localisation is one of the borders. Where the Flemish speakers will mostly only work either for a local audience in their own language or for an international audience in English, the French speakers often stick with French as they have a big enough audience with that language.....

... On the Flemish side, we have the IWT and the IBBT. I've seen a lot of people trying to get funding from the IWT and few succeeding. The IBBT is doing a good job at getting people together.
On the French side, we have Agence Wallonne des Télécommunications (AWT): their people are also pretty active talking to new businesses, helping them getting started.

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Gerard Meijssen writes:

When you are interested in a good review on Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, I recommend reading Brianna's review. As this covers most of what I had to say, I will only comment on what I have in addition to this.

When you read a book like this and when you are involved in Wikis, you first look for the issues that are important to you. As I am particularly involved in localisation, the explicit statement that this book is about the English language Wikipedia makes this irrelevant. As I am mostly a reader in this project, the policies and vagaries of this Wikipedia are not familiar to me. I read the book with a great deal of interest because it is often said that many of the policies described show the maturity of the project. I found that the book explained the policies clearly.

Given that this is a "missing manual", I would like another book about the MediaWiki software. One of the more relevant criticisms of the software is that more and better documentation is not only welcome but needed. A missing manual for MediaWiki would be about installing and setting up a MediaWiki installation, it would discuss many of the extensions available to improve on the basic functionality and it should even explain about some of the basic issues that need to be considered for what is to become the community for a MediaWiki project.

It is interesting to compare "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" with Wikipedia, Das Buch, Both are about one particular Wikipedia, the biggest difference is in the outlook of the book. The English book has been written in a way that ensures that the copyright of the book is with the publisher. The German book includes much material from the German Wikipedia and is consequently freely licensed. Both approaches have their merit. As my German is not as good as my English, I cannot make more of a comparison.
Thanks,
     Gerard

Wikipedia: The Missing Manual can be bought with a 40% discount when you use the code OR145 on the UK Shopping Cart.

Localisation of MediaWiki

Gerard Meijssen writes:

MediaWiki is best known as the software that runs Wikipedia. Currently there are projects in over 250 languages supported by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and new projects are regularly proposed and initiated. The MediaWiki software is continuously under development and there are over 200 extensions to the software.

Both the development and the localisation of MediaWiki software are done by volunteers. Finding volunteers for so many languages is a challenge and once they are found, the most important thing is to retain them. This means that we have to provide the localisers with compelling reasons to work on Betawiki.

No programming skills required
The people that provide the localisation are typically not the people who develop the software. When you insist that localisers submit to CVS or SVN, most potential localisers will find that to much is asked of them and consequently localisation is unlikely to happen.

Daily commits of the newly localised messages to the WMF production systems
When people have worked on the localisation, it is extremely important that they see the benefit of their work. The WMF uses the bleeding edge of MediaWiki for its projects so by committing the latest work, all projects benefit straight away.

Improved functionality for the localisation job
Betawiki is a wiki optimised for working on localisation, this means that many of the screens help people understand the work flow that is being used. The extensions that Betawiki uses are also localised this makes the environment look friendly but business like. Some of the localisers want to use specialised tools like computer assisted translation tools, for them we allow for the export and import of "gettext" or ".po" files.

Provision of information what messages are used for
Often messages are cryptic, it is not immediately clear what they are used for. By providing extra information it is made clear what the messages are used for. This improves the quality of the work done and it tells our localisers that we value their contribution.

Active support for the localisation of MediaWiki extensions
The developers that support Betawiki have a great track record collaborating with the extension developers to make sure that localisation is properly supported. Details like name conventions need to be considered.

Requirement of set levels of localisation before new projects may start
There is circumstantial evidence that shows that a relation between the quality of the localisation of the software and the success of its projects. By requiring localisation prior to the start of new projects, the new projects benefit from this effect but it also helped people find their way to Betawiki to do the localisation.

A localisation project needs the same kind of attention that any project requires. There are always new issues to resolve. With improved awareness, requests will be made like support for the six forms of plural for Welsh. People will ask for the consistent use of terminology in their language...

Betawiki provides a necessary function for the MediaWiki software. Freecol is the second application supported by Betawiki and more applications may follow. What Betawiki offers is localisation independent from projects and distributions. It is there to get a job done.
Thanks,
     Gerard

Fireside Conversations - Outerthought and Seth Gottlieb

Kris Buytaert writes:

The nice folks over at Outerthought are organizing a Fireside Conversations with Seth Gottlieb On Open Source Content Management.

Outerthought will host an exclusive "fireside conversation" with Seth Gottlieb, on the subject of evaluating open source content management systems. The concept of a fireside conversation is a leisurely-paced discussion between participants sharing common interests.

Seth Gottlieb, founded Content Here where he advises clients on the opportunities (and challenges) associated with using open source content technologies.

Outerthought are the authors of Daisy, an open source CMS in use primarily for content and knowledge management, and the management of complex information repositories.

You can request your invitation here.