rinzai a site for raven zachary

Volunteer at BarCamp Portland 2008

BarCamp Portland 2008 is just a few days away, and we’re looking for more volunteers to make sure the event runs smoothly. I am responsible for event logistics this year and that includes volunteers. There are four volunteers teams - take a look below and let me know if you are interested in helping out. I’d like to get the volunteers finalized by Thursday afternoon. I have been out sick for the past few days which has resulted in some unexpected delays in getting volunteers finalized.

One important thing to mention - we really need volunteers to commit to all time slots listed per team - we’d rather not have to manage a little bit of this and a little bit of that with individual volunteers, this makes for a lot of complexity with 12-20 volunteers over the course of the weekend. We really hope you’ll have the availability to serve the full team schedule.

Take a look at the information below and then send me an email (raven@rinzai.com) with your name, team preference, and mobile phone number if you’re interested in joining a volunteer team.

NOTE: The volunteer teams shouldn’t have to worry about missing out on BarCamp sessions as the time slots rarely overlap with session time slots (the Food Team has a small amount of overlap).

Setup Team
4-6 volunteers total
Friday: 4-7pm & Saturday: 8-10am & Sunday: 8-10am

The Setup Team is responsible for preparing the venue for the day, setting up and working the registration and badge station before the sessions begin, setting out the breakfast, and managing the t-shirt sales (only during pre-sessions). One volunteer from this group will need to pick up the breakfast order at Kettleman Bagels on the way to the venue on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The Setup Team gets to show up at the event before the public arrives and eat breakfast first. Beat the rush!

Cleanup Team
4-6 volunteers total
Friday: 10-11pm & Saturday: 11pm-12midnight & Sunday: 3-4pm

The Cleanup Team is responsible for de-cluttering the venue after each day, putting tables and chairs back into place and working with the CubeSpace staff on daily shutdown tasks. This is not deep cleaning, but straightening. The Cleanup Team gets to stay until the very end after everyone else is kicked out.

Food Team (Food Setup & Cleanup)
4-6 volunteers total
Friday: 5-7pm & Saturday: 12:30pm-2:30pm & Saturday 5:30pm-7:30pm & Sunday: 12noon-1pm

The Food Team is responsible for setup and cleanup of non-breakfast meals/snacks, restocking food items, storage of leftovers, and loading and unloading the dishwasher. The Food Team gets to eat first. The food team lead is Eva Schweber from CubeSpace.

Agenda Team
1 volunteer total
Friday: 8-10pm & Saturday: 9-10am & Sunday: 9-10am (plus occasional agenda reviews)
The Agenda Team…err person will be responsible for entering the session calendar on the wall at BarCamp into the online calendar for easy access by attendees online. The Agenda Team lead is Selena Deckelmann.

Thank you!

Travel Varlet

Tomorrow morning, I wake up at 5 AM and begin the most complicated travel week of my life. Here we go…

Monday, March 24th

Portland to San Jose

Various meetings in Silicon Valley and San Francisco

Tuesday, March 25th

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco
Moderate a panel - The Future of the Operating System

Various meetings in San Francisco with clients

Wednesday, March 26th

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco
Moderate a panel - Converting the Open Source Lead Funnel

Various meetings in San Francisco with clients

Red-eye flight from San Francisco to Philadelphia

Thursday, March 27th

Sleep for a few hours in the hotel

Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise in Philadelpia
Give a talk - The State of the Open Source Industry

In Philadelphia for less than 12 hours

Flight from Philadelphia to Seattle

Friday, March 28th

Sleep for a few hours in the hotel

Microsoft Open Source Day at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington
Give a talk - The Current State of Open Source

Various meetings in Seattle with clients

Flight from Seattle to Portland

(and then I’m off to NYC two days later…*sigh*)

Panic Park

Last night, a group of folks from the Portland tech scene had dinner together at Kinta, an excellent Malaysian restaurant on SE Belmont. Everytime I eat at Kinta, I am hypnotized by the lights across the street at the Avalon Theater. The outside of the building advertises the best 5 cent video games anywhere. As it was a Friday night with no responsibilities, I couldn’t resist going over to the Avalon after dinner to explore. My wife had already taken the two younger kids home, and so I went to the Avalon with Aodan and Xander, and with Dawn Foster and Todd Kenefsky, who were equally curious.

Basically, you pay a small entrance fee, and then use nickels on a variety of games, most of which dispense tickets for prizes similar to Chuck E. Cheese. After using up a bunch of nickels (bags of nickels are sold inside), we discovered another room in the complex, mostly stocked with non-ticket dispensing video games. The highlight of the night was definitely Panic Park, an unusual Japanese video game that pits two players against each other. The controls of the two-player game are levers, which allow you to bump the other player. Unfortunately, the only video I could find of this game on YouTube (see below) does not include the controls, only the screen. However, you can make out the red and blue levers from the Coin Express sales page.

If you’re in Portland and you’re looking for some entertainment, I highly recommend a visit to the Avalon to play Panic Park. Just make sure that whoever you are playing with is about the same physical strength as you are, or you’ll find the game play horribly unbalanced.

Update (03/22/08): I found a photo on Flickr that shows two players competing in the game.

Back to WordPress

Ok - I finished up most of the migration last night from Chyrp back to WordPress. Before I can switch to a new theme, I need to remove all of the hard-coded header and footer modifications (e.g. Favicon, Meta Tags, Google Analytics, etc.) and move the data into Plugins and Widget text boxes so that the code is portable across Themes.

That’s my project for tonight.

To borrow an analogy…

WordPress has the momentum. Chyrp is going through an upheaval in its short history - the developer is moving away from PHP, a scripting language I actually can hack around in with comfort. As soon as I can find a few hours, I am moving back to WordPress. I’ll probably choose a WordPress theme resembling Tumblr (which attracted me to Chyrp in the first place). Thankfully, the number of posts I’ve added into Chyrp has been limited. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. I still think Chyrp has a huge potential. Keep an eye on the project - chyrp.net.

iPhone SDK Media Coverage

Thursday was the public launch of Apple’s iPhone SDK and I spent several hours on the phone with the media after the launch event. Here are links to my published comments…

Los Angeles Times, “Apple to give outsiders access to its iPhone“

San Francisco Chronicle, “iPhone announcement Thursday“

Technology Review, “What to Expect from the Open iPhone“

PC World, “Apple’s iPhone SDK Strategy Both Promotes and Stifles Innovation“

ZDNet, “iPhone DevCamp’s Raven on iPhone SDK and what it means“

Telecoms.com, “Apple opens iPhone but keeps keys to kingdom“

Mac OS Ken Podcast, “Day 6 Interview” (Day 6 subscribers only)

iPhone SDK

Thank you, Apple!

Apple iPhone Developer Program

The Pulse of Open Source

I launched a new website last week entitled The Pulse of Open Source. You can read more about this project by reading my post on the 451 CAOS Theory blog.

Star Wars summarized

The plot of Star Wars, as summarized by a three year old.

Voting is mystical

“Voting is mystical, it’s a mystical act.”

Carl Bernstein, CNN, 02/19/08, in regards to primary elections and why polls are not authoritative.