BarnCamp 2013 ideas scratchpad

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A page to gather together ideas for the next BarnCamp in June 2013.

Overall themes

Overall ideas for theming the event, such as current trends, emerging technologies, etc.

Workshop ideas

These are workshops/talks of between one and two hours in length.

Domain names and email addresses: how do they work?

Proposer
adelayde
Duration
60 mins
Level of technical skill
Begginner to intermediate
Nerd factor
medium, but useful
Required
minimum laptop and project, though could do it with just a white board. Maximum, guess it would be fun to be able to use the BW suite so that people can play with whois, dig, etc.

In my day job as well as doing support stuff for social projects, I find that there is a lot of confusion out there about these two essential parts of the Internet. People seem to 'get' what a web site is and that you can have it designed by someone and hosted by someone, and you might have to pay for this. People also get that they can register domains, but domains and web sites don't mean email addresses, and what is a domain anyway?

DNS and email are interesting because they require openness and collaboration on the part of hundreds or thousands of sys admins throughout the world; it's very much a web of trust, with the exception of the TLDs being controlled by corporates and governments, but that's not the point here; this is about how it works and the fact that it works, not about corporate power over the TLDs, though it's worth mentioning.

  • Definition: separating out domain names, email addresses, web sites and web addresses.
    • Here I fear we're going to have to cover ports and protocols
  • Domain names and DNS
    • IP addresses and domain names: their relationship - This is the key thing without it the internet would suck!
    • How it was in the beginning (why the need?)
    • How it is now
    • Registrars and registering domains (choice, TLDs, anonymity, privacy)
  • Email
    • The format of email addresses
    • Email servers and how it works
    • Different ways to get your email (webmail, GUI-based clients, Elm and that kind of thing)
    • A look at the headers of a typical email message
    • SPAM
    • How to have your own email address on your own domain
    • Pros and cons of paying for it, verses free commercial, verses free hacktivist-provided
  • Web sites (cover for completeness)
    • What are they? (web servers are file servers / HTML)
    • Different types: static vs dynamic
    • CMS's
    • Hosting pros and cons: activist-run vs corporate free vs paid for
  • All the above in the context of "Cloud" hosting

Longer, half-day hack sessions

Sessions to be held on the Thursday or Friday that are 3-5 hours in length.

Events and entertainment ideas

Stuff to do in the evenings.

Am not sure the main stage thing has always worked. We need someone to manage it and it would be good to have a main band on the Saturday night if we were to (adelayde).

Campfire sing songs are always much easier as they just happen (adelayde).

Anything else

Anything else you can think of.

Areas for production aspects

(adelayde)

Areas that need sorting I can think are:

  • workshop spaces: tables, chairs, pens, flip charts, plug sockets, projectors, screens, laptops, structures
  • toilets: straw bales, tarps, structures, lighting, loo roll.
  • kitchen: food, tea and coffee, structure, cooking equipment, washing up facilities, crokery and cutlery
  • fire: fire pit, wood, fire extinguishers, etc.
  • site: flat land for camping, proximity to toilets, fire precautions, sign-posting, transport
  • welcome desk: table, chairs, pens, booking system, finance and payments, contact telephone numbers, volunteers
  • workshop/barncamp/hack session planning
  • ents: stage or no stage, sound system, DJs, campfire entertainment, etc.
  • bar: beer, cider, soft drinks, float, cashbox, physical bar space, staffing.
  • infrastructure: on-site internet and wifi, ethernet cabling, mains cabling
  • promotion: graphic design and concept, flyers and posters, web site, distribution of materials, mailing to lists, promotion at other events, getting the word out there generally.