Announcements

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To BarCampLA-6

With about a day left until BarCampLA-6, I thought I’d run down everything you might possibly need to know.  Please keep in mind that I might have recycled some of this material from a previous BarCampLA guide — so if the material seems familiar, it probably is.  We’ll just chalk it up to being under the gun, okay?

Location

Malaho/Causecast HQ
902 Colorado Ave.
Santa Monica, CA 90401 [Google Maps]

Our fantastic venue sponsors at Mahalo and Causecast have given us a really great space — and it couldn’t be easier to reach.  Take the 10, get off at Lincoln Blvd., make a right on Colorado Ave. and you’re there!  Seriously, we’re a cinch to get to.  There’ll be plenty of parking in both the lot and on the surrounding streets as well — so that’s a bonus.

Checking In/Registration

Once you’ve parked, you’ll need to swing by the table we’ve put out front and fill out a name badge.  Didn’t register on the wiki?  No problem!  Well, okay, minor problem.  To be 100% honest, we’d prefer it if you did.  Knowing who is showing up will give us a better idea on how much food and drink we need to have.  Nothing’s worse than a thirsty/hungry BarCamper.  As somebody who has done these before, I speak from experience here.

Since we have a few extra bucks in our food budget, we can afford to buy more grub — but we have to get a bit of a heads up.  So go register if you haven’t.  It’ll only take a minute, honest.

rent a car bulgariaSchedule

Saturday
We said 11 AM, and we seriously mean 11 AM. There are loads of reasons that will make you want to get out of bed early and come to see us. We’ll have plenty of delicious Peets coffee and some breakfast type things. If you’re just getting your day started — and let’s face it most of us probably will be — it’ll be good to get something with caffeine (and other essential nutrients) in you.

Of course, you could show up at 9 AM to help set up.  In fact, if you did that, we’d love you forever.  And I’m talking about the sort of love where we write your name and ours together in our notebooks with little hearts around them.  So as long as you’re cool with that, you might want to consider lending a hand.

But if you decide to show up at 11 AM instead, it’s a great chance to hang out and mingle before the talks start. Slots for sessions (45 minute talks with a 15 minute passing period) will be open to fill then, and we want you to get to know where everything is laid out in the space. Also, we have a crazy delicious (and totally free) lunch planned for Saturday. We’re planning to eat and do intros (no talking with your mouth full, please) as people finish getting their grub on then roll promptly into sessions. So please get there early, enjoy the food and the company and help us get started on time.

We’re going to try to keep intros short. If that means the return of the gong, so be it.

Saturday Evening
We’ve got a delicious dinner (recent BarCampLA meals have had carnivore, vegetarian, and vegan options — this one will be no different), an awesome keg of beer, acoustic music jams, video games, ice cream and great company. It’s worth sticking around for, so we hope to have you do so.

BarCamp After Hours
Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to sleep at the venue this time around.  What does this mean if you’re coming to BarCamp from out of town and you haven’t lined up a hotel?  Actually, we’ve got you covered with our Satellite Campgrounds.  Okay, so that’s just a fancy term for couch/floor space.  But hey, at least you’re not high and dry.

Sunday
Breakfast is served at 10am. More yummy coffee will be provided. Breakfast foods will also nourish the famished. Come early to nurse your hangovers with possible leftover beer.

Oh, and please try to plan to hang around for a little while after the closing ceremony to help clean up. With 30-40 people helping, it’s a whirling dervish of cleaning and we end up getting done in no time.

General Tips

• Bring surge protectors and extension cords if you’ve got them laying around. Keep them in your car unless we need them, but it’s always good to have extras.
• Rehearse your talks and leave room for questions. Your audience will thank you for it.
• Don’t plan on having wi-fi for your talk. You probably will — but always plan for Murphy and his blasted law. If it’s really crucial to show things to people, take screenshots and do screencasts just in case.
• Be kind on the wi-fi. No torrenting or crazy 12-megapixel full-size HDR Flickr uploads, please. Share the bandwidth, share the love.  If you don’t, we have ways of finding you.  We are computer nerds, after all.
• Speaking of sharing, share and be helpful.  We’ll get into this more down in the conduct section below.
• Shirts are free, but please don’t take more than one for yourself.
• Please don’t bring anything illegal. It’s not that we care, necessarily, but we would like to not get shut down over anything silly.
• No, you don’t have to speak, but we’d hope, if you’re there, that you have something to share. This is a good place to come out of your shell.
• Follow BarCampLA on Twitter for updates. Our own Andy Sternberg has also set up BCLA on Twitter.  It looks for any mention of BarCampLA or BCLA on Twitter and reposts it.  Since Twitter’s track feature is currently off, it’s the best way to keep your fingers on the pulse of BarCamp without following everyone there.  The only downside is you may see an occasional repeat.
• Any and all photos uploaded to Flickr should be tagged with ”barcampla” and ”barcampla6″. Try your best to do this as we’ll be dusting off the Flickr Wall for an encore performance.

Conduct

As always, the best thing people can do is to just set to doing whatever you see that needs to be done. No one is going to mind if somebody up and takes out the trash or steps in to help set up lunch. Just make sure to wash your hands in between, okay? There are a million tiny things that have to happen at an event like this and it’s impossible to schedule out all of them. It’s honestly best for our sanity (and logistics) if we don’t even try to. Larger cons have event staff for this stuff, but we have BarCampers. Just be active participants (which is the BarCamp way, after all) and help out wherever you see. If you do, we should all have a good time.

Oh, there’s also a copy of our “Code of Conduct” you ought to read over. Nothing surprising there, but it’s been linked for reference.

Take it easy on this fine Friday, BarCampers! We’ve got a lot in store for you, so plenty of rest — and maybe some light stretching — is strongly suggested.

On behalf of my other BarCamp Counselors (Chris, Bronwyn and Kitchen), we’ll see y’all really soon.

-jason!

Header photo by eecue. WiFi equipment provided by Location Connect.