Return on Intention

After some moving around of the dates, BarCamp Albuquerque 3 is now set for September 13th and 14th. BarCamp is an unconference, meaning that no one owns it, and no one profits from it. Without money, bringing in outside Keynote speakers is not possible. We can’t pay for them. This isn’t a problem at BarCamp because its all about leveraging the knowledge of the community. In other words, the attendees are the presenters.

BarCamps are happening all over the world, and they are all organized by people just like you. To get more information on BarCamp visit http://www.barcamp.org. See if there is one in your area and participate in it. If there isn’t one, why not be the one to get one going?

To learn more about BarCamp Albuquerque, check out http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampAlbuquerque, or check out some of the posts from this blog about past BarCamps here.

Albuquerque Barcamp 2 was held at the Media Arts Lab at the University of New Mexico on September 15th 2007. This year had a smaller turn out than last year did, but everyone who showed up presented something. I brought down all my podcasting gear and recording the entire event, but as it turns out almost every presentation required the visuals in order to make ay sense. This is always a danger when recording such events, but usually we get some pretty good stuff anyway. This year, however, really yielded only one presentation that could even remotely be understood without seeing what the presenter had on the projector.

The biggest reason for not being able to use most of the audio this year is because most of the presentation was based on the coding of website and web applications. Most of the attendees were guru’s in python (a web coding language) using zope or django. Soon I will get up the one presentation that could be (mostly) understood without the visuals up in the podcast feed (there are some charts that would be helpful, but the premise is understandable). By the way, that presentation is from Kevin Silver.

My overall take of Barcamp is not that is was bad, but that last years was better for a few reasons. The first is just due to the fact that there were a few more people there. This point is dwarfed by the next, which is that the diversity of topics last year was far greater. We had designers, front end coders, back end coders, and some that don’t fit into those categories at all, but gave really presentations on web related topics (i.e. taxonomy, usability and disability accessibility). I hope that next time the community in Albuquerque will come through and offer a greater scope of topics from a larger pool of talent.

After the Method Arts Sprint, the local news got wind of it and interviewed Andrew Hedges.

Albuquerque has won another “best place for business” type award. Go Albuquerque!!!

Expansion Management – pdf list of winning cities.

With all these awards, we wonder why Brian Warren still lives in Colorado.

The University of New Mexico is posting videos interviews of president hopefuls on its website. Posting videos, asking for feedback….isn’t that this “Web 2.0″ thing………

 Method Arts Sprint - Brian Warren [9:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Brian Warren wasn’t able to be present at the first sprint podcast, so here are his thoughts on the sprint.

Check out Method Arts for more details.

On Sunday January 28th, 2007 ten independent web developers, designers, marketers and coders got together for twelve hours to see how far they could get trying to build a web site for the New Mexico unemployed. The New Mexico Department of Labor has had some trouble getting a web solution that allows the unemployed to file their weekly unemployment claims. The NMDOL paid for and took delivery of a system that is supposed to accomplish this task, but it doesn’t work. It has been a very expensive and time-consuming journey for the Department of Labor. This story has also sparked a lot of heat with the taxpayers and the media. The Albuquerque Journal has printed many stories about it, one on the front page on January 7th, 2007.

If it has taken so many years (6) and cost the state an estimated $14 million to try and complete a working system, it must be very difficult to do. Or is it? To find out our crew of 10 independent professionals got together to find out in 12 hours.

We call the group Method Arts. Method Arts is not a company. It’s a consortium of independent or freelance web, design and marketing professionals that utilize the talent pool to accomplish large projects. The system has worked out very well for the members of Method Arts and their clients. The lack of overhead associated with keeping people on staff at a formal company has created better value to the clients and a strong product delivered from entrepreneurial specialists. The ability to form very talent specific teams has allowed Method Arts to overcome many complex problems. To take on the unemployment website problem, a strong swat team of professionals was assembled.

I (Reid Givens) was fortunate enough to be one of the team members for this project. While my main role was to help document the project through audio and video, I also got to participate in the strategy and planning sessions, a little design, a lot of research, and some content gathering. It was quite an experiment.

The rules for the day were that nothing could be started before 8:00am on Sunday the 28th. No planning, scripting, designing or anything that resembled work was allowed. All work had to be completed between 8:00am and 8:00 pm.

What did we accomplish in 12 hours? A lot. We had planned and designed a system that will allow the unemployed to login and fill out their weekly filings. We have a complete site concept, site structure, templates designed and code for almost every page, a mostly complete content management system, and the forms and database to accommodate the user accounts and registration and weekly filings. Is it done? No. Is it pretty? Not particularly, although much better than what they have now.

Why did we do it? The intent wasn’t to finish the project; it was to see how far we could get in 12 hours. It was a way to try and show that 6 years and over $10 million was more than adequate to get the job done. We also did it just to work together and gain some insights from the day. Everyone got something different out of the day, and it was great for all. What I got out this whole thing was the experience of working with highly motivated people that are really good at what they do. I learned some lessons and was exposed to many new ideas. I had the opportunity to contribute to a winning team. Given the choice, I would do it again.

To find out more about this project, a video documentary will be posted on the Internet when it’s complete. In addition a podcast will be posted here (on this blog). You can also get more information from the other Method Arts members’ websites and blogs. Visit the Method Arts website and follow the links to each members site.