Hello all, it’s been some time since I updated you properly on what’s been happening. Now that the OggCamp dust is beginning to settle though and life is moving back towards normality ( or my version of it anyway), I can afford to reflect a little on how things went. I’m not going to get into a detailed breakdown of every day events for the last 3 weeks I’ve missed, that would be like torture, for you and me both. So I’ll just concentrate on telling you my story of the OggCamp weekend itself.

The week leading up to OggCamp was very busy as I welcomed Fab and his party of four Germans to my home. We managed to find room for all the guests fairly easily with almost every room in the house doubling as an emergency bedroom, apart from the bathroom that is, nobody had to sleep in the bath but it was close. We even had an extra guest as Anna arrived the next day. It was nice to have a house full of people and everyone seemed to enjoy it, but I must confess it’s nice to get your own space back too after a week. I prepared for the Rathole Radio gig by practising with the band in between other jobs. On Friday 30th of April I headed over to Liverpool with my mate H and a car full of audio gear. He brought his decks to DJ at the gig and was a great help overall in setting things up. We dropped the kit off at Bad Format, did a little prep work and then headed on to meet Andy (another old friend and partner in crime) at the Everyman Theatre. He kindly lent me a lectern for OggCamp and we loaded that into my little car  then took it to The Black-E. Now, the weather had been nice 2 weekends in a row leading up to this and I’d already given up any hope of it being sunny again, but I hadn’t quite expected the torrential downpour we had on Friday. As we tried to move the lectern from the car into the Black-E it was already filling up with water. I joked to H “If this rain keeps up we’ll have to turn this into a canoe!”. From there I dropped him back at Bad Format and ran backwards and forth with various kit throughout the afternoon and evening. I was also planning to check into the apartment we’d rented with friends for the weekend. Luckily Kevan managed to take care of this though and it took a load off me. A very nice place I must say and I enjoyed staying there, a large city centre apartment on two floors with plenty of beds and a cool open plan kitchen/lounge. It made a great base for a few of us but I still don’t understand why they could only give us one key to a 5 person apartment. We toyed with the idea of going to Rapid and getting some extras cut, but didn’t really get time in the end.

On Stage With Reflect Harmony Group

Back at Bad Format I met Attila The Stockbroker on his way into the club and we had a good chat. David Rovics turned up a little later and we got everyone sound checked and ready for the gig. Adrian McEwen and Andy Goodwin were helping me with the technical side of things. I’d been promoting the gig as and interactive online experience and we’d put a lot of effort into that side of things, even making a little robot audience member to interact with people. Adrian did some amazing work with an Arduino and some other components. There was however one slight problem. The club only let me know a few days before the gig that their phone line had been cut off, and with no phone line there is no Internet, great! I tried to arrange to hop onto the university wireless next door, that failed. I talked to other neighbours in the area but in the end we were stuck using a 3G connection by the window. Adrian and Andy tried really hard to get all this working and by about halfway through the gig we had a connection thanks to them and JonTheNiceGuy. I was so busy that the audience bot fell by the wayside as I tried to hold it all together introducing bands and generally being host. The Reflect Harmony Group were a brilliant opening act and I really enjoyed performing a song with them at the end of their set. Up next I introduced Attila The Stockbroker and David Rovics who did their thing for about 90mins to the delight of the crowd. During that time I was still trying to fix up the Icecast stream, video camera and other things. We got the radio stream up and many people heard it later I’m pleased to say. I played a set with my new band and that went down really well. We all enjoyed it and hopefully we’ll take the band a bit further and do more gigs, I’d really like that. Time will tell. I’ve released some of the audio from the gig in a special episode of Rathole Radio which you can download from the website. I hope you enjoy it.

After the gig I went out with David & Attila to show them to their hotel and sort out a few other things. This took a while longer than I’d expected and sadly the battery on my phone died at the same time. I had the key to our apartment, my friends were back at the club unable to contact me and wondering where I was. Luckily they managed to get into the apartment by talking to the people at the desk, but I was still gone a couple of hours. I didn’t realise but this really worried them quite a bit, leading to all sorts of crazy theories that I’d been killed or mugged and other such things. I was perfectly fine though and once I got back I convinced them of that. I know Liverpool pretty well and that’s not to say that something couldn’t happen to me here, but I keep my eyes open and I know the people and places to avoid well enough. I was sorry I’d scared them but the phone dying at a crucial moment was just bad luck. I collected some of the stuff from Bad Format before they locked up for the night and headed back to the apartment for some sleep.

Rafflecasting Again (Pic by m0dlx on Flickr)

Bright and early the next day OggCamp work began. I started at 7:30am I think but can’t really be sure as I only went to bed about 4am. We all headed to the Black-E just up the road and began sorting out everything for the day. There were lots of people running around and plugging things in, setting up stalls, testing projectors and much more. The main stage was pretty much ready to go which was great, I picked up my crew radio and proceeded to run around putting out various fires and seeing that things went well. We got a wireless network set up thanks to the wonderful folks at The Linux Emporium. There seemed to be a healthy number of people queued up outside by the time we opened the doors at 10am. Simon Phipps kicked off the event in style with his keynote about digital rights in the modern world. The speech was entertaining and well received, it led into many more great sessions across the weekend on various stages. I didn’t get to see many of the talks myself as there was always something to be done and a crew radio blaring down my ear. That’s one of the things you learn in organising events though. You don’t really get time to enjoy them, it’s about making sure things run smoothly and the people who attend enjoy it. Having said that I did get to moderate a panel discussion on the main stage in the afternoon which was a lot of fun. Sadly Ian Forrester from the BBC was ill and couldn’t make it. As he and Simon Phipps were lined up to be on the panel we had to quickly fill the slots with some excellent people. I roped in Ade Bradshaw and Chris Proctor of LugRadio fame,  along with Samantha Bail and Brad Pierce they did an amazing job. Finally, to close the first day we did a raffle on the main stage. There were so many great prizes it was hard to keep track of them all in my mind. Here’s the ones I remember: we gave away some Viglen machines, a Aleutia fanless PC or two, a 1.5 TB MyBook external hard drive, some Ubuntu backpacks and a stack of books from Apress and Wiley amongst other things I’ve forgotten. Last but not least it was my great pleasure to give away the amazing cuddly Ogg cushion made for us by Beccy Newborough. For me this was by far the coolest prize, and I said so on stage. It’s gone to a good home and I hope we’ll see more people creating them from the pattern Beccy made.

After a brief trip back to the apartment it was off to Studio 2 at Parr St for the evening festivities. A very cool venue indeed for any party and one of my favourite bars in the whole town. I was delighted we were able to get the place and while we didn’t have exclusive use we certainly took it over with OggCampers. It’s part of a working recording studio where many gold and platinum discs have been recorded over the years, I think a few people were impressed by that. I had a great time catching up with friends and I also tried to get around the tables and do my bit for the community. I wanted to get people’s thoughts on the event so far and make time to chat to them all for at least a short while. It’s hard to do this with a large group though and remembering everyone’s name isn’t always easy. I think I’ve become better at that and being in a room full of people who know your name while you’ve never even met them before is quite an experience. Everyone seemed to have fun and I left at about 1am to get back to the apartment with my gang. I believe some of the others were out much later but after working on the gig Friday night I was happier retiring to the apartment for a quiet drink and chat with friends. I forget what time I went to bed but it was much earlier than Friday I’m pleased to say and we had some amazing laughs in our little luxury pad, Will, Anna, Kevan, Alistair and I. The TV only seemed capable of showing one channel but it really didn’t matter as we had no time to watch it anyway.

Fluffy Ogg Made By Beccy Newborough

Sunday didn’t start quite as early, we left a lot of the stuff set up from the previous day. I collected my crew radio again and got to work making sure all the rooms were functioning. We couldn’t use the 3rd stage for a couple of hours in the morning as there was a martial arts class booked in there. I had agreed to this in the rental but I’d been told it was Tai Chi which is quiet and these guys made a lot of noise, they had very big swords though and I decided it was best not to upset them. The day went without a hitch and everyone seemed to have fun. I think the venue worked out well and despite some minor disagreements about covering up artwork we managed to settle in nicely. The event culminated in a live show from ourselves and the Ubuntu UK crew. I was late as usual and I arrived in the room to chants of “Dan! Dan! Dan!!!!” in a very Alan Partridge fashion. I suspect people think I was trying to make some kind of grand entrance but it really wasn’t that calculated. I was just late because I’d been working downstairs cleaning up the other rooms. The live show was fun and we will have the podcast ready for release later this week so you can all hear it too. At the end of the event we packed everything away in a surprisingly quick time, this was largely due to the amazing crew of helpers we’d been blessed with. Every one of them made the event possible in their own way and I’m really grateful for the support. After everything was packed away I was off in the car to unload it all again at home in my garage. Everyone else headed back to Studio 2 for post-event drinks. I had some dinner at home and then joined them later on. No rest for the wicked hey.

Main stage before opening (photo by KevanV)

Overall I think the weekend went really well. It was the result of 4 long months work for me but it was all worth it just to see people having a good time. I was also pleased that quite a few people who’d never been to Liverpool before realised there’s so much more to this town than stereotypes would lead you to believe. It proved a great host city, as I always knew it would. I’m proud of this place and I certainly don’t try to hide it. We did have a lot of loud stag and hen parties around town for the Bank Holiday weekend but I don’t think they disturbed OggCampers too much. I’ve learned a lot of things from doing all this but I think the main one has to be not to run two events on top of each other. One event at a time is quite enough for anyone. The gig went well but the technical problems and other hiccups could have been fixed if I’d had more time to spend on it. I also think doing this on a Bank Holiday worked against us in the long run. We had a good crowd don’t get me wrong, but originally I thought we’d get more people because it was a holiday, in fact I think it meant we got less. People tend to have family things planned on holiday weekends and it also pushes hotel and travel prices up dramatically. You live and learn though, and I always learn best by my mistakes Thanks to everyone who came along and particularly all those who helped us out. Leave your thoughts on the weekend in the comments below if you like, I’d be interested too hear them.

Upcoming:

This hasn’t been a regular Weekly Rewind but I’ll still try and fill you in on what I expect to happen in the coming week. We should release the OggCamp Live podcast episode and another episode of Linux Outlaws we recorded reflecting on the event. I’ve edited a new Software Freedom Law Show this weekend and you should hear that soon. There’s a Liverpool Tweet-Up on Thursday night which I should be attending, I might see you there. At the weekend there’ll be another new Rathole Radio at 9pm (UK) Sunday 16th May. I also have a lot of new Linux distro releases to catch up on now that event madness is calming down. I want to get into reviewing and testing some of those as soon as I can. I’m meeting up with the band on Wednesday night and we’re gonna try and learn some new songs. We’ll also try some original stuff I hope and it’ll be good to get more gigs, I’ll keep you informed when I report back next week. If there’s one thing that remains to be said in the aftermath of OggCamp I think it has to be this… PHEW!

See you all soon, take care out there,

Dan

Something awesome this was comes…. yes that’s right we’re going to do another OggCamp this year. The first one was such a success and we all enjoyed it so much that we just had to really. It’s a bit earlier in the year this time and it’ll be in Liverpool rather than Wolverhampton, but we sincerely hope you’ll come and join us. I’ve been very busy since the New Year putting all this in place. I’ve braved the ice for meetings at various venues, set the phone alight with negotiations and I’m pleased to say things are really coming together. We announced the dates and other details on Linux Outlaws last night. They’re also all over the microblogs, but for anyone who missed it here goes…

Date - 1st and 2nd of May 2010.

Venue – The Black-E, Liverpool, L1 5EW.

Website - OggCamp.org

Free Software, Free Culture, Free Thinking!

Don’t forget to get here on Friday the 30th and attend my Rathole Roadshow gig to kick the weekend off in style. It’s a Free Culture music gig featuring David Rovics, Attila The Stockbroker and myself, all playing live along with other guests to be announced. I’m working with the hotel arrangements with Liverpool Tourist Board right now. More details to come very soon. It’s a popular weekend being a Bank Holiday though and a popular destination, so book early! Keep an eye on the website of follow us on Twitter and Identi.ca for updates. For those who might be curious about the name, Ogg is a free and open media container format, it’s a barcamp style event and the 10 has a double meaning, it’s the year 2010 and also it’s a binary joke for all the geeks.

The venue is massive and the building is incredible, it’s going to be an epic weekend and it’s in one of the best cities in the world. Ok so I’m biased, but trust me. We need as many people to fill up this place as possible. Come and see us!!! …or I’ll come and find you

You can also sign up on Facebook if you’re a Facebook user.

Regular readers will notice I missed my Weekly Rewind this week but I’m afraid I’ve been so busy I can’t fit it in. I’ll do one next week when things calm down a bit I promise. Thanks for reading.

Dan

Just a quick post to let you know about an interesting event coming up in Liverpool next month. I mentioned in recent updates that I’ve been chatting with Ross Dalziel of Sound Network (amongst other people), about events in the city next year. He organised Open Source City which I attended, and did a really great job. He’s into creating music with technology, hacking and general geekery. What’s not to like about that? Well, Ross has an event of his own coming up soon at the FACT building in Liverpool City Centre. It will feature what he’s calling the “DS Orchestra” and anyone is free to come and join in. As the name suggests it will feature a lot of people using special software to make music with their Nintendo DS handheld consoles. There’s some custom software that’s been written for this by PixelH8, who some of you may well have heard of already. He’s pretty well known in the chiptunes scene and should even be there to play alongside everyone else on the day. You don’t have to have a Nintendo DS to join in you can use any geeky device as long as it’s capable of paying notes and making a tune. That’s good news for me as I don’t have a DS. I wonder if taking my laptop and midi keyboard along would be cheating? It might be a bit hard to carry around anyway, I’d need to invent some kind of harness, a true geek approach to the problem hehe

If you’re interested in getting involved have a look at this article on Wired.com. It’s 6pm to 8pm  on Thursday the 17th of December at FACT and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Part of the idea is to get kids excited about technology and show them that games consoles can do s much more with a little imagination. Who knows, maybe we’ll inspire a new scouse Kraftwerk somewhere along the way, “Kaftwerk La!”.  So if you have kids with a Nintendo DS bring them along to see what’s happening, it’ll be fun. I’ll see you there!

Beep beep,

Dan

This is just a quick event post but for all the International readers I apologise, if you don’t live within traveling distance of Manchester in the UK, this isn’t going to be very relevant to you. So you might want to duck out now, I understand. The rest of you, come closer and listen in.

I realise this is very last minute, as with many things I do, but Manchester Barcamp 2 (“this time it’s personal”, my tagline not theirs) is happening this weekend, 7th & 8th of November. Entry is free and there’s even going to be free beer I was told thanks to the sponsors. Free as in beer, nice! It’s an overnight Barcamp and you can stay there too if you like, you have to bring a sleeping bag though so don’t expect any 5 star hotel rooms. There are some spare places left and it could be a really good opportunity to meet other techy types, make business contacts and generally geek out. It’s happening at  Contact Manchester. Registration opens at 9am on Saturday and the welcome session will start at 10:30am I believe. If you’ve got some free time over the weekend come down and see some talks, even give a talk if you want, it’s gonna be fun. I’ll be there on Saturday afternoon and I’ll be around certainly into the early evening at least, if not later. Come along and say hello, I’d be pleased to meet you and have a chat.

You can reserve your place for free at the Barcamp Manchester 2 website now, so go and do it! There’s also travel information and anything else you could need on the site.

This one time, at Barcamp..

In case you’re confused by the whole Barcamp concept (I know was before I went to one), it’s basically a tech conference with no set agenda or schedule. People come along and sign up to give talks on the day, so anyone can get involved. Ad hoc sessions are usually thrown together as the event goes on and it’s all driven by the attendees. If there’s something you want to see or hear about, you can make it happen. If nothing else it will give you the perfect excuse to start stories with the line “and then this one time, at Barcamp…”. You can find more detailed information about the Barcamp idea on Wikipedia.

Hope you can make it along if you’re withing traveling distance, I’ll see some of you there

Dan

Wow, what a week it’s been. I’m so late with my usual Sunday blog post this time because we were in Wolverhampton doing Oggcamp. I’ll get into that more later of course, but I’m just trying to recover and get some energy back at the moment after 3 days of non stop work and partying. It was epic. Let’s get into it…

We skipped doing a live Linux Outlaws on Monday night but instead released our interview with Randal Schwartz. The downloads for that took off quickly, mainly due to Randal’s celebrity status I assume. Then he mentioned us a few times on FLOSS Weekly and it took off even more. I just hope our server can cope! On Wednesday Fab arrived from Germany and I collected him from the airport. We then went to pick up the PA for the weekend from my mate Keith. With all that lot loaded into my tiny Nissan Micra and looking pretty comical, we headed back home. In the evening we went for a few beers with my oldest and best friend Will (AKA Chemist), I’ve known him 26 years now (what a scary thought), we met in nursery school at the age of 3. It turned into a later night than I’d expected, but was great fun nevertheless.

A competing event - photo by Darren & Amy

On Thursday we did a live show from here. We had a lot of people joining in and I came up with the mad idea that we should try to release it almost straight after. To achieve this we bypassed our usual hours of editing and did the show all in one go, with music mixed in on the fly by me. At the end I just compressed the audio a bit and cut it to length. Fab did a great job of encoding and releasing. All in all, we got the show out in under 2 hours from saying “goodbye” on the broadcast to hitting the RSS feeds. I’m amazed by that, and I think it came out sounding pretty good in light of it. The reason for all this rushing was because I had to pick up the hire car for Oggcamp the next morning, load it up and hit the road to Wolverhampton pretty handy. We managed that, and despite my inability to get to grips with the “automatic handbrake” on the executive car I’d hired, the trip was great. We swung past Liverpool Airport and collected our friend Kevan on the way. We met up with many more friends in Wolverhampton: Anna, Alistair and more, for the Lugradio Pre Party. It was a very late night, involved lots of drinking and talking, great fun. The Next day we hit Lugradio Live 2009 a bit late after sleeping in. So late in fact that the hotel restaurant had finished serving food, they wouldn’t do room service or even bar food, but I managed to sweet talk the receptionist into getting the chef to make us 4 BLTs. I’m still not entirely sure how, but I’ll have to try and recapture that persuasive skill in other areas of my life. Fab gave his talk on Linux in schools at LRL and it went down a storm. I thought he did brilliantly and the room was packed out. I was really happy for him. You may notice I’m glossing over some stuff here because of there’s just so much of it. We stuck around to see Andy “Blackadder” Robinson and Bruno Bord talk in the main room, they were both excellent. It was then time for the last ever (they swear this time) Lugradio Live & Unleashed. Jono was wearing the Chinny Racoon suit from last year, and he must have been sweating his nuts off under those lights. Adam kept telling me how ill he felt all day from the pre party antics. Despite this you would never have guessed from the show, it was great. Hilarious as ever, with plenty of audience interaction. Later, I took Fab and a large party of other folks to the curry house right by the hotel. He experienced his first Vindaloo, which I think he’ll remember for a while. I’m much more of a wimp and stuck to a mild curry. There was some German swearing and sweating but he ate the whole thing and enjoyed it. A hell of an introduction to Indian cuisine I must say, not sure I could have handled it. The after party at the hotel was sponsored by Microsoft apparently, but there were no free drinks or food and we got kicked out at 11:30pm. So what they actually paid for I have no idea. The karaoke perhaps? Either way, they clearly don’t know how to throw a party, and I can’t say I’m surprised. The Fedora party in Berlin was 10 times better, another victory for Free Software! We carried on drinking in the hotel bar till about 3 or 4am, mainly thanks to the legendary Phillip Newborough (of Crunchbang fame) and his rucksack full of beer. Probably not the wisest move ever when I was head of the Oggcamp crew, and I’d set the call time for 9am, arrgh!!!

The Live Show - Photo by Darren & Amy

I made it up in time for the 9am call, even had a shower and sneaked a bacon sandwich out of breakfast area (this was becoming a habit). I then took all the crew up to the main room and we got to work. Tony, Laura and most of the others were already there working hard. The fantastic volunteers we had got the breakout rooms sorted, set up projectors and generally made our lives so much easier. I’ve already thanked them a few times, but one more won’t hurt. You guys are amazing, you know who you are. Tony and I rigged the PA and miraculously it all worked. The whole day went off perfectly, a little too perfectly in fact and I kept expecting something to explode in our faces. But it didn’t. The live show went well, people cheered, and laughed, and hopefully had a lot of fun. I certainly did. I’m not going to go into massive detail about the event here because I’ll be writing a proper article for our Linux Outlaws blog soon. I’ll update this with links when I have them. As the show finished we packed everything up and headed to a local Chinese banquet place on mass. There were about 25 of us in the end and the food was amazing. I was a little worried when I was handed a bill for £275, but thankfully realised pretty quickly it was for all of us. After some more drinking and LOTS more chatting in the hotel bar we tried to get an earlier night this time, about 1am. I had to get the hire car back home for 11am the next day, a feat I didn’t manage in the end but I avoided extra charges. Maybe I had remembered those persuasion skills after all.

I’ve been home just over a day now and I still can’t quite take it all in. It was such an amazing experience and the constant flow of nice comments, photos and general feedback from people really makes me smile. We haven’t decided for sure yet if we’ll do another Oggcamp, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I’d put a few quid on it, if I were a betting man. We drove back yesterday and just flaked out after really, I wasn’t any use for much else. Although, having said that I just remembered I did edit a new episode of the Software Freedom Law Show in the afternoon. No rest for the wicked. That episode should be out now if you want to have a listen.

Upcoming:

This week I’ve got a lot of sorting out to do, running PA kit around and returning it to various friends. I’ve got some work to catch up on, audio editing to do, I need to write up my experience of Ubuntu Karmic, and plenty of other stuff. It’s the Ubuntu Release Party in Manchester this Friday, I should be there for that. I’ve also got tickets to see Eddie Izzard live at the Echo Arena on Saturday night. I have to take Fab back to the airport tomorrow too, he’s off back to Germany again. It was good to catch up and hang out in person for a while. There is also Chester LUG on Thursday night which I REALLY should attend that, seeing as I’ve missed a couple. It’s gonna be tough with so much else going on though. I might not be up to it. I don’t want them to feel neglected, it’s just that something always comes up around Chester LUG time for me lately. We’ll have to see. No doubt there will be plenty going on, so I’ll report back next weekend. Take care till then.

Dan

Good day all. You’ve probably heard me mention organising things for Oggcamp here often. It’s a first foray into the events field for Linux Outlaws and Ubuntu UK Podcast. I’ve been trying to sort out merchandise for people to take home on the day. It works well in 2 ways because people get something they want to keep (they’ve even told us this), and we can get some money back towards out towards costs. Booking the venue, getting refreshments, AV equipment and all kinds of other stuff isn’t cheap. There’s a lot to consider. I originally wanted to have t-shirts but sourcing those proved more problematic than I’d expected. At least in a price range I was happy with. We hit on the idea of mugs, and now thanks to the lovely people at Mugstore.co.uk we actually have them, woo hoo!!! They’re safely tucked away at Popey’s house ready to be delivered to Wolverhampton. The mugs will be available with donations of £5 or more, which is a reasonable amount I think. Not too much for the average person to pay, but still enough to give us some help towards costs.

Are you ready to see them? Drum roll please… come on tap the table or something don’t hang me out to dry here Read the rest of this entry »