Patrick and I arrived on the spot about 10 minutes early just in case we got lost. And get lost we did, as we couldn’t really find a way to go upstairs initially.
A screen was all ready to be used and there was some music playing. John Kopanas, who had posted about DemoCampCUSEC1 on the MLUG mailing list was there, MCing through the presentations. John is also one of the co-founders of C.U.S.E.C., an international software engineering conference which had Dave Thomas of the Pragmatic Programmers fame as a keynote speaker this year.
First up were the Frysk guys, Mike Cvet and Nurdin Premji.
Frysk is a system monitoring and debugging tool which runs on Linux. It looks quite advanced and was mostly coded with Java.
John asked them what they wanted out of this presentation, to which they replied “Applause”.
John asked which university they came from.
- the University of Toronto (Applause from the crowd).
They are interning at RedHat (More applause from the crowd). Good for you, guys.
Alex Ionescu and somebody else asked quite a few questions about the nitty-gritty.
They offered some Fedora 6 DVDs, mostly on the table, and threw one Frisbee-style in the audience. One audience member valiantly caught it with his forehead.
Alex was next and presented ReactOS, an operating system designed from scratch, destined to be compatible with Windows. The demo went quite well. Alex installed ReactOS within a virtual machine and the installation was blazing fast.
ReactOS in a more advanced form could be potentially very interesting for developers, graphic artists and musicians who wish a very stable and compact environment without all the unnecessary fluff.
Initially, I was thinking that they should have started off with a small Linux distribution with WINE or a virtualizer software and work from there, but they could be on to something. Time will tell.
There are currently approximately 20 developers worldwide working on ReactOS.
I would love to see a version of ReactOS specifically optimized for Music Production, for instance.
In fact, wouldn’t it be great to have a computer with Linux’s stability, compatible, with the sheer number of varied apps available for Windows, and the GUI of Mac OS X? Sounds terribly like an Intel-Mac running Parallels Desktop virtualization software in coherence mode with Windows XP, doesn’t it?
Next up was Pascal Charest. Pascal talked about the HAL project, which is linked to île-sans-fil. HAL is meant for people who want to distribute their creations through île-sans-fil.
Pascal managed to take up the 15 minutes allotted after presenting and answering questions.
Worried looks as the music is turned on higher and higher by Emily, signaling that the 15 minutes are over, Oscar Ceremony-like.
After this, Derek Mahar, who is on the Ruby Montreal User Group mailing list, showed how he solved a practical problem about blog migration using a simple and compact script he wrote with Ruby, my language of choice.
He described how he was stumped at one point because of unspecified date formats, but some kinds souls on the internet helped him out partly and he also had to delve into other files to find the solution.
In the demo, Derek showed how he succeeded in migrating contents from several blogs into a live WordPress one. Impressive.
Notice the ‘photographer’ here.
Subsequently, Gili Tzabari, a friend of John, talked about Desktop Beautifier, a software which automatically changes your desktop background, while showcasing works from artists on DeviantArt.
While the idea may sound simple, it is so only because Gili cleverly made it so. In fact, a lot of background image processing is done to the images to fit different resolutions, and to keep your icons and overlay text messages readable.
A small community is building around Desktop Beautifier, and it actually helps artists demonstrate their works. What’s not to like ?
The presentation which followed was about Sugar, a language which helps code JavaScript more easily than in JavaScript itself. The presenter was Sébastien Pierre.
Note how the ‘photographer’ also doubles up as a techie when connecting laptops to the projector. Actually, that’s the spirit of BarCamp. Everybody’s a participant. This does not detract from the fact that our photographer here is multi-talented as you will soon see.
Sébastien did a great job showing how Sugar could help the JavaScript programmer code in a clearer language. This is especially important when maintaining and refactoring code. Better software engineering ensues, most definitely.
I was hoping that Sugar would actually look like Ruby, but it turns out Sugar was written in Python. (Well, if you were coding Sugar in Ruby, you’d probably actually keep a very Ruby-like syntax or use a subset of Ruby itself). If it were only me, I would write everything in Ruby or a very high-level pseudo code language, and XML+XLST it into anything else.
I believe I read on Austin Hill’s blog that Sébastien was currently working with him on his ultra-secret Project Ojibwe, part of which is based on social networking.
Hmmm, I am also working on an ultra-secret Project Optima Society which is based partially on social networking. There are no coincidences.
I think it was also Austin in the audience who said that they are thinking to open-source Sugar in the future.
Sugar is a great idea.
An idea which one would do well to generalize (see my previous post).
It turns out that nobody wanted to go really. So, the techie-photographer revealed he had a presentation if we wanted it. With John spurring him on, Simon Law (for this is his name) proceeded to get some eggs out of his bag.
Then a few books, including a very large one about cooking. Then a portable gas-stove.
Don’t you just love synchronicity? A few page views into Digg today while updating this post revealed that the second book, “The Wealth of Networks” is available freely under a creative commons license in PDF format.
Er…. better get the fire-extinguisher ready!
Simon: Don’t worry. I swear I won’t set anything on fire.
Hugo: yeah, right.
“Guys, just in case, here’s the EXIT.”
About Simon’s presentation: I wouldn’t want to read any unintended clever metaphor about Software Engineering into it. It WAS about cooking omelettes, Simon, wasn’t it? Right? RIGHT? The jury is still out on this one.
But manage to engage the audience, he did.
And feed them too.
John tasting the omelette.
Fred had strategically waited for John to taste the omelette first.
Fred: How do you feel, John?
John: I feel alright
Fred: Ok, let me have a bite.
I briefly spoke with Derek, John, Hugo and Fred Ngo (who helped organize the first BarCamp Montreal) and left my contact details before I left with Patrick for a drink at Thursdays (it was Thursday after all – maybe these guys use some clever subliminal marketing technique. Like Second Cup.).
DemoCampCUSEC1 was a great success. A very informal and relaxed environment where technophiles and geeks were just happily sharing their joy of hacking things up into better things. Thanks John and all organizers and participants.
I am looking forward to the future BarCamp (as I promised Fred I’d try to come) and DemoCamp.
It was much fun to connect with the techie/geek/hacker/IT/SoftEng community here in Montreal.
More (better) photos are on Simon’s Flickr page
