I had a full day yesterday. I'm not sure how this happened, but for some reason both Montreal Wiki Wednesday and Yulblog First Wednesdays fall on (ta-da!) the same day of each month. So we get a whole lot of Internet social-software craziness all in one intense burst during the day.
Wiki Wednesday last night was a good time. We had it up at La bande passante, the informal meeting space that Robin Millette, Marco and roommates have up near Metro Crémazie. It's a really nice space for a meeting of <20 people in an informal setting. They have lots of space, equipment for presentations, WiFi, a big table and comfy chairs. Hugh McGuire, Anne Goldenberg and Antoine Beaupré, Marc LaPorte, Seb Paquet and Robin Millette were all there (with various bande-passistes passing in and out as needed).
I talked about experiences with RecentChangesCamp 2007, especially the "what we should have done" session at the end of the event. It really informs what we're going to do with RoCoCo in May of this year. In particular, we've made a commitment to try to get invitations and sponsorship requests out in February -- about 3 months before the event proper. We hope this is close enough to the event itself that people won't put it off or forget about it, but far enough away that people have time to make plans.
Hugh talked about his new project Visible Politics. It's kind of a Wikipedia-meets-They Work for You. It's a wiki project for sharing objective information about the voting records, positions, and affiliations of Canadian federal politicians. It's still in its infancy, but I think the project can lend a really great hand to making public information about civic activities possible.
On top of that, Robin demoed a really cool project for measuring activity on parts of a wiki site, Hot Off the Wiki. His demo versions use the BarCamp wiki, but I think the plan is to expand the tool to work for other wiki engines and sites. It's a good idea.
I also demoed the MediaWiki OpenID extension, which I think was pretty interesting. I didn't say it at the time, but I mostly did the demo for Marc, who I think could benefit from one of the US$5000 Open Source OpenID bounty. I believe that TikiWiki meets the popularity requirements and the OpenIDEnabled.com libraries should make it easy to implement.
Anyways, good Wiki Wednesday all around. I'm looking forward to the next one in March.
tags: wiki wiki wednesday recentchangescamp rcc07 visible politics montreal openid tikiwiki
YULblog when I tell you to blog
After WW, Hugh and I went down to the YULblog event at the Quincaillerie on rue Rachel. We actually stopped in and had a poutine at La Banquise really quickly, which definitely put me in a good mood.
When we got to the bar around 8:30 -- in my mind, fashionably late -- the place was already jam-packed. There were easily over 50 bloggers there, and maybe closer to 75. My friend Nicolas Ritoux was already there, sitting down at a table eating papadum with a lot of nice folks.
I got a chance to talk to Patrick Tanguay about his upcoming trip to San Francisco, and Niko and I chatted in French about how we never chat in French. I also managed to get a whole stack of Moo Cards from the likes of Hugh and Vanou.
All in all a good time, although I left a little early to get some baby quality time in. I really love YULblog; it's a great event that makes me feel connected to the local community.
Personal note
Thanks for the blogroll link from the anonymous author of The Love Shack. My guess is that it's Alex Malinovich, but I'm not sure.
Anyways, let me know who you are so I can add you to my roll.
tags: rcc07 recentchangescamp the love shack alex malinovich