Our Friend Andy Mitchell, whose application Meecard won Sheffield Barcamp 2007, has launched an update to his popular GTDInbox tool.

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So, a lot of my colleagues at PlusNet know that I like a jolly good knees-up, the occasional beer (ahem) and talking about technology, especially where it can enhance my life and work. The chance to combine all three is usually an opportunity not to be missed, and one such opportunity came up last Wednesday at Leeds GeekUp. More…

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BarCamp Leeds was held on Saturday 17th of November at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds. A BarCamp is an open, participatory workshop, whose content is provided by participants, often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. Wikipedia has a good description of what a BarCamp actually is, here

The Leeds event was a resounding success and was expertly organised.

The venue was divided into 4 presentation rooms of various sizes and the attendees were given the chance to step forward and do a presentation on the topic of their choice. We had approximately 30 presentations throughout the day on various topics.

PlusNet were sponsors of the event. We gave a couple of new iPhones to the best presenters; which seemed to go down well.

One of the key reasons I went along was to look at recruiting some talented software developers into our team in Sheffield. Over the course of the day I met a bunch of really good people who’ll be coming along to see us in the next few weeks and will hopefully be joining our team.

I’ll not go into huge detail about everything that went on during the day, you can see all the other blogs on BarCamp Leeds on the Technorati website, here .

There are also a bunch of Leeds BarCamp photos on Flickr, here.

PlusNet is committed to being involved with the local and national Community events such as this. We are regular attendees of the monthly OpenCoffee events in Sheffield and also the GeekUp events in Leeds. We consider it extremely valuable to be in touch with what’s going on out there in the community and are always happy to give others the benefit of our experience.

If you want to know what’s going on in your area, the best thing to do is subscribe to the Yahoo Upcoming service. This gives details of all the events in your area that you’d otherwise be unaware of. You can sign up for this service, here.

Matt Grest
Head of Future Development
PlusNet

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I have now organised the 2nd OpenCoffee Sheffield event for the 14th August at the Starbucks on Tudor Square in Sheffield.

More information available at:- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/222862

OpenCoffee Clubs are a forum in which people interested in all things Internet can come together and talk shop, share ideas, exchange best practice and generally talk to like-minded people. Any developers in the Sheffield area that would like to meet developers from PlusNet to get an idea of what we do, how we do it and the environment in which we work are more than welcome.

Also, BarCamp Sheffield II will be formally announced within the next two weeks and anyone interested in getting involved in what promises to be a very insightful event is welcome.

Regards

Dean

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So, we’ve cleaned up, shut down the wireless routers and projectors, stacked the plastic chairs, recycled the pizza boxes and beer bottles, paid the hotel bills, sent the cheque out and gone home to reflect on a fun and successful weekend.

BarCampSheffield really did exceed my expectations. How can an event with so little organisation and promotion succeed? I guess it’s just all down to the people participating in it. Just look at the great pile of photos (over 400 now!) that were being uploading during the day, or the positive blog responses that have sprung up over the past couple of days. You lot made it work, not us. All we really did was provide you a with a great big room to fill with your enthusiasm.

What has disappointed me about it though, was the turn out of people from larger Sheffield companies. Don’t get me wrong, we had the right number of people, (any more and we wouldn’t have had enough pizza!) but where was Technophobia, Insight UK, Magic Number or even HSBC, whose European IT headquarters are over the road?! What about students from The Sheffield University or the Sheffield Hallam University? We had more students from the Leeds Met than locally! (Admittedly, Dean did go up and blackmail them into coming!). I don’t get it.

PlusNet has spent a long time with it’s doors closed, looking inwards, presuming we are the experts, and not embracing the real internet/web community that lies outside of our walls. This year we’ve gone to FOWA, FOWD, Internet World, Usability in Practice and even SXSW and would advise any developer out there to stand up and go hassle their boss to get them tickets to one of these things. It’s amazing the amount of stuff you can learn by getting out of your environment and spending a few hours seeing how other people do it. Hell, I’m talking to Meecard and Thinkfold after their application demonstrations on Sunday about the possibilities of using their applications to help us internally!

Get it? You might even get customers!

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