I’m totally over-excited about this, in part because it is long overdue but mainly because the absolute legend that is Laura Kalbag has done such a beautiful job. Thanks Laura, you are a total star!

So here it is, the new BathCamp. Hope you enjoy it. If you spot anything untoward, please shout.

But. This also means we’ve got a whole new year incoming, and what better way to cheer up the dark days than knowing a friendly Bathcamp is never more than a month around the corner?

We’ve already started brainstorming what we’d like to hear about in 2011. Topics thrown around so far include:

• AI
• Arduino
• Cloud computing
• Day trip to Science Museum Wroughton
• Animation
• Writing for the web
• Next generation web technologies
• Web apps Dragon’s Den
• Coding face-off

There’s a whole bunch more, but I’ve [cough] temporarily mislaid my notebook. Damn that paper-based media lark

Anyway. If you are an expert or an enthusiast or a curator type or just have an opinion, punt your stuff into the comments below. This is – sorry, cheesy I know – your Bathcamp.

Do we want a Bathcampey place where we can discuss (technical) stuff? I’m thinking along the lines of _underscore_ but, you know, hopefully without the…um, “issues” which we all see every time we log in there..

This thingy could be a mailing list or a a forum, or a something else.

It could be that we’re all Twittered up when it comes to asking questions and getting intelligent suggestions and ideas, and such approaches are just me showing my age, but I suspect there is also a place for a threaded, longer discussion.

What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? Suggestions for implementation?

Hi all.

As you probably know, Ning – where we have previously held all Bathcamp event dates and so on – have decided to turn off their free account option from tomorrow, 20th July 2010.

I did briefly consider paying for Ning, but decided against it as a cost too far (=I’m a tight arse..). I also played around with the idea of a Buddy Press install to try and mirror some of the social functionality that Ning provided.

In the end though, I’m using this change as a reason to simplify as much as possible. You could probably do without another social network: I figure what everyone actually wants to know is what we’ve got coming up and…well, that’s it really.

With this in mind, the “new” Bathcamp is just a re-working and simplification of what went before: an event calendar, a blog, a mailing list. You can find it at http://bathcamp.org.gridhosted.co.uk. I’ve brought in the old blog, gone nuts copying and pasting in all the evening events, and have taken the huge liberty of importing all your email addresses into the new mailing list. You, of course, can leave anytime by clicking the unsubscribe link.

Please ditch any bookmarks you may have pointing to blog.bathcamp.org or bathcamp.ning.com – these won’t work any more.

It goes without saying that I need feedback. Please spend some time on the new site, poke things, break things, and let me know in the comments or via the contact form when stuff doesn’t do what you think it should.

Thanks muchly

Mike

Either way, things are hotting up, bigtime. Since the last blog post, we’ve re-launched the BathCamp website with a lovely new look and feel courtesy of the fabulous Laura Kalbag. If you need great web work done by a lovely person, ask Laura..!

We’re also delighted to announce two new sponsors: the awesome Headscape (remember Paul Boag’s talk back at the first BathCamp evening event?) and BluBolt, a Bath-based e-commerce specialist. Thank loads to them. I can’t stress enough how important sponsors are to an event like this. It simply wouldn’t happen without them..

We’ve now nailed the marquee hire, and for any of you who might still be harbouring a residual fear of camping, take a look at the picture above to see the kind of thing you can expect. No messing about here – ours will be a 9m x 9m beauty capable of seating 75 people and will be kitted out with heating, lights, furniture and a carpet. I can hear the hard-core campers already: “Camping? That isn’t Camping! Kids these days….”

The marquee will be the main gathering point for food, movie and band as well as one of the locations for talks. A kind of BathCamp basecamp…

Tickets have been shifting at a rate of knots – numbers are looking pretty impressive already, but the more the merrier. If you haven’t got your ticket already, head over to http://bathcamp09.eventbrite.com/ and get yours now!

So. A quickie while I get my todo lists sorted. If you haven’t noticed already, BathCamp 2009 (the barcamp) is happening on the weekend of 26th/27th September, and tickets are now available. These are swinging out the door pretty rapidly so get yours while you can.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our wonderful sponsors for coming on board. These guys are absolute stars, and will be providing (among other things) the marquee roof over our heads, the coffees and teas, the band, the bbq. We’ll be doing some more in-depth profiles in a little while but for now, here’s who to thank/buy beers for:

• Gradwell, a leading provider of Internet Telephony & Internet Services to UK Small Business.
  Peter Gradwell was hugely generous in supporting BathCamp 2008 and is coming on board again this year. Gradwell are based in the centre of Bath and currently recruiting if you’re looking for work
• Eduserv are the company I work for, a not for profit IT company. We work with HE and researchers throughout the UK and employ just over 100 people, again based here in Bath
• Microsoft needs no further introduction – they helped out last year with those enormous beanbags and this year will be putting a tab behind the bar at the Bell. Woohoo!
• Carsonified have been supporters of BathCamp since the start – both the 2008 barcamp and the regular evening events we’ve been running since then
• DCKTN promote knowledge transfer and collaboration between people who use digital communications, and have helped fund events like the excellent OpenMic

So – big hands for these people. If you’d like to get involved by sponsoring BathCamp 2009 it is never too late – just drop me an email — mike dot ellis [at] geemail dot com or comment on this post.

BathCamp 2009 will be held on the weekend of 26th/27th September 2009. Pencil the Friday night in, too, just in case we need to drink beer

This year we’re doing it slightly differently. BathCamp 2009 will be:

- held at The Bell Inn, Buckland Dinham, a truly lovely country pub with media barn, wifi and camping space
- al fresco. That’s outdoors for you people that don’t talk the lingo. So we’re talking tents, marquees, that kind of thing.
- an extended weekend, with the main talks all day Saturday and other fun stuff (think band, cider, fires, bbq, etc) around the edges

As usual, the organisation is heading along just a smidgen behind the actual idea/date itself. So yes, there will be a booking page; yes there might be a (small) cost, yes it will be first-come, first-served (hence why I’ve turned off RSVP on here..); and yes (you know who you are), we’ll be looking for sponsorship, help, free stuff, etc…but for now just get it in your diary.

It’ll be a fast-paced, geeky run through a bunch of acronyms, web2 logos and deeply arcane computer languages…

Prizes are being provided by Carsonified. Yay.

Giles Turnbull is “a freelance journalist who has spent far too much time writing about Macs and iPhones in recent years.” He’ll do a talk on “10 (or so) iPhone apps you ABSOLUTELY MUST OWN. Maybe.”

Dan Zambonini is the Technical Director of Box UK. He is the architect of the Amaxus Content Management System, conceived clickdensity, has participated in industry-shaping think tanks, and has had articles featured in international websites and magazines. His talk is “Designing for the mobile web: A case study”

[Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/ndrwfgg/437667718/ for the "big phone" pic...]

For the second BathCamp evening session, we’re going circuit-bending tastic…

Ben Tomlinson, Creative Director of London agency Ico Design is our guest speaker for the evening. He’ll be demonstrating some of the stuff you can do with the amazing Arduino platform. This’ll be an interactive session where you’ll get a chance to see and fiddle with some electronics as well as pick Ben’s brains on how to get started.

Ico produce lovely installations, websites and other digital media pieces (not to mention a fair bit of print, too). Ben hacks his way through anything he can get his hands on (I’ve seen his house..) and will be helping to run a toy hacking workshop for Tinker.it at the end of January.

** Update – 24th Feb – We’re delighted to announce that Dale Lane will also be speaking about the cool stuff he’s done hacking around with the Current Cost home energy monitor… **