Omnibus BarcampBoston2 notes
I was able to make it to a good chunk of Barcamp Boston 2 this weekend, and learned some good stuff. Hats off to the organizers for putting everything together, especially considering the challenging weather conditions. Some of the things I picked up:
- OpenID is threatening to pick up enough adoption to be hard to ignore. Still looks like there are more producers than consumers, and I’m not comfortable yet that I understand the trade offs of delegating my ability to log into a wide swath of services (maybe YADIS could be helpful here?).
- Mapping has come a long way. In particular, OpenLayers is being used for some very interesting stuff, for example at the Open Guide to Boston. Advantages over the Google Maps API include openness and ability to do non-point features (like a bike path). Recommended tools also include Quantum GIS, described as something like photoshop on top of a mapping database. Massachusetts, it turns out, is a leader among states in terms of sharing mapping info (other good local resources include Harvard and the metropolitan planning council).
- New respect for the things that can be done with javascript. Including Alan Taylor’s encryption-in-your-browser project, John Resig’s jQuery presentation, the Open Layers stuff, and the guy in the CakePHP session who salvaged some laughs from Nate’s “starts with java” joke. jQuery seems like it’s worth a closer look - I like what I saw of the selector syntax, the
($document).ready(function)hook, and the fact that there’s a lively community and seemingly robust plugin system. Also some good pointers at the end of John’s session to the Selenium IDE, test.simple and Firebug Lite. - Seems like there’s good potential for some kind of coworking arrangement in Boston. In the meantime, I’ll have to check out Sweet Finnish again.
- The Stata center is a fine place for this kind of gathering. It didn’t even leak!