Gels Saby Demoing at DemoCamp Victoria

While at An Event Apart SF, I went to look up something on the Victoria Better Web Posse’s site, and was saddened to find that it’s offline, “Address Not Found”. I’ve emailed Gels Saby hoping to find out the status, but haven’t heard back from her yet.

Joan McIlmoyl Cleghorn on the Victoria Linux User Group (VLUG) wrote

As I understand it from someone who was a member of Web Posse, it has folded. OTOH, WEAV amalgamated with Big Blue & Cousins about a year and a half ago. Currently, a former WEAV member is running a Web Tools Special Interest Group monthly.

If this is the case, this is a big bummer. I found the Better Web Posse to have a refreshing design focus lacking from WEAV before it and Big Blue & Cousins still today. The Better Web Posse brought together many talented designers, developers and other workers of the web.

It seemed like Gels and a few other people did a lot of work to bring the posse together. Thank you!

“Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused…”

The article has the tantalizing title of “Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft software“, but the heart of the matter is that Quebec is being sued for not accepting other bids. This policy is an anti-competitive business practice, and by effect anti- open source.

Quite a few of the comments in the article try to scapegoat the issue saying the government also relies on other vendors that have Microsoft Windows only solutions, but no one is arguing flip the switch and suffer. A government’s needs aren’t short term, and the very job of these policy analysts and technology procurement specialists is to weigh the options and total cost of ownership over the long-term.

It’s frightening that not only do they think there are no other options, but they are standing behind a law that shuts down all conversations. Their own belief that they are locked in, should scream to work towards alternatives. For a public office, important measures are openness and public value.

Another argument used by commenters to defend the current policy is that open source has a different, often worse user interface and experience. This isn’t really the case. There are a large variety of open source solutions with some mimicking Microsoft products and others having focused task based experiences. With choice, with open source, they can best meet the needs of their customers.

The last favorite scapegoat is that open source is free, and that this means that it’s unsupported. Many companies have built or reshaped their business around providing world class support of open source including IBM, Sun, Novel, Oracle, RedHat, and Canonical (Ubuntu). This won’t be profitable if the software products themselves weren’t world class. Canonical’s Ubuntu Support is even headquartered in Montreal, Quebec.

This policy hints at Canadian goverment offices being behind the curve. They have a great opportunity to review and measure how many other countries are using open source, and demonstrate how open standards and open technologies is how industry and government are investing in themselves and their members.

It’s a free event, and if your work is any way related to the web, you will be missing out if you don’t attend. Register now before the event is full.

Besides, we need to support the grass roots Victoria tech scene — stop the Vancouver tech drain

Dave Olson points out that it’s “strategically scheduled for the same weekend as The Great Canadian Beer Festival”. So it seems safe to expect a good turnout from Drucouver. I know Boris Mann will be in attendance, and participating.

I hope to at least make an appearance. I’ll be looking for opportunies for WordPress collaboration. But me making it there is based on the whim of my baby son — and I won’t have it any other way.

Victoria is one of the stops on the book tour. Get your copy of the fresh minted book signed by Christian Lander at Chapters on August 10th, 2:00 p.m. He’ll be in Vancouver a couple of days later.

I was a little surprised that Christian was coming to Victoria until I thought about it. Victoria is the most homogeneous city of it’s size I’ve ever been to, so I’m sure it is a great stop to visit with fans and to do research. Whenever I travel and return to Victoria I think, “Dang Victoria is white!”

I’m really looking forward to meeting Christian. SWPL started as a blog on WordPress.com at the beginning of this year and over night became an internet phenomenon. We got in touch and he joined our WordPress.com VIP program. I’ve enjoyed helping host his blog.

I’ll be there getting my copy signed.

Bounty Up is a service to collect online donations for a project, like the wildly successful MyFreeImplants.com, but for the rest of us — I wish I was kiddin’ about that site’s success. The tagline on BountyUp is “Ask for what you want, let the crowd pay for it.” Like the tagline, I’m being tongue in cheek, BountyUp has actually been used for a lot of wonderful projects.

It’s awesome to see an article about BountyUp’s service in the Times Colonist. The TC is Vancouver Island’s only widely distributed paper and is owned by CanWest Global Communications.

There is at least a couple of egregious errors in Tom Mcmillan’s article. The first “crowd-surfing” being comical, the second “millions” being a reminder of BountyUp’s potential.

The article also shares some of the wonderful details of the BountyUp story so far including:

• “… donations to fund projects for Oak Bay science students, North Carolina choirs and Middle East social activists.”
• “Starting out, I really wanted to change the world,” McKenty said.

I think I was among the first Joshua shared the idea with, and the passion to change the world was an important part of the equation from the beginning. He has done a great job applying his Web 2.0 expertise on this service, while continuing to work on other projects.

Hopefully, this article reflects momentum for the service, and BountyUp will have much deserved success!

Based on the BarCamp and Open Spaces concepts, the first DemoCamp was held in Toronto and inspires events of the same name in many Canadian cities and other locations around the world. Victoria organizer Mark Lise was inspired by attending DemoCamp Vancouver.

The following demos are currently proposed:

• Why DemoCampVictoria was created (Mark Lise)
• Fortuno (Jesse and Jason)
• Genetify (Andrew)
• BountyUp – Social Commerce (Joshua McKenty and Todd Khozein)
• DailySplice (Rian)
• Flock – the social web browser (Clayton Stark and other Flockers)
• Songbird (Steven Bengtson and Peter Van Hardenberg)

The format usually has the audience (participants) vote on what demos they want to see. What doesn’t get voted in at one event, often gets voted in at the next.

As BabyCamp could start any day within the next month, I hope to make it for the first hour tomorrow night.

Hat’s off to Mark and crew for putting this together. I’m sure it will be an awesome event.

Update: I did make it to the first half of the event, and took some photos. It was an awesome event! Dave Chard and team were incredible hosts! Dave is the founder of the real estate development company Chard Development and behind the Juliet condominiums being developed in downtown Victoria. Urbanist Yule Heibel made the introductions that resulted in this venue, and it seems this relationship will continue to grew and be a great benefit for entrepreneurs and technologists in Victoria– Dave welcomes other opportunities to host similar events!

I had a very interesting conversation with Yule about urbanization of downtown Victoria, got to catch up a little with Boris Mann, and have a little face time with the incredible — and recently relocated to Victoria — Darren Barefoot. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while and met quite a few wonderful people. The demos were great!

Looking forward to the next one.