Author Archives: Christie Koehler

Announcing BarCamp Portland 6: March 30th & 31st!

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BarCamp Portland 5We’re happy to announce that Barcamp Portland 6 will be March 30th & 31st, 2012 at the Eliot Center in downtown Portland. That’s right, your favorite unconference in the same great unconference space as last year but with all new sessions and ideas: from knitting to nerdlings, plus the social web and its spiders, and beyond!

Please RSVP on Eventbrite if you plan to attend so that we can plan accordingly.

Want to know what Barcamp is? Read about it here.

Want to help create Barcamp? Join our planning group and/or attend our next planning meeting on January 23rd from 6:30pm to 8pm at Collective Agency (calagator link). As with every Barcamp, we need your help to make the event run smoothly. Plenty of volunteer positions are available before and during the conference.

Interested in sponsoring? Drop an email to sponsor@stumptownsyndicate.org.

So You’re Coming to BarCamp Portland 5

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We want you to have the best time possible at BarCamp, so we have a few suggestions and reminders for you. Read through our attending page to learn how to get the most out of BarCamp.

Where

BarCamp Portland will take place at the First Unitarian Church’s Eliot Center (1226 SW Salmon St)

When

The activities begin on Friday, May 20th, at 6:30pm. Come hang out and socialize with other participants at the Eliot Center until 9pm.

Saturday the doors will open at 9am which allows for plenty of time to grab a pastry with some coffee and chat before the unconference kicks off. At 10am there will be a short welcome and introduction. Then participants can propose their sessions and put them up on the schedule board. We’ll have until 9pm Saturday to give presentations, socialize, and brainstorm ideas for BarCamp 6.

Schedule

Friday, May 20th

6:30pm – 9pm – Socializing

Saturday, May 21st

9am:  Registration & Mingling
10am:  Kick-off & Scheduling
11am:  Session 1
12pm:  Session 2
1pm:  Lunch
2:30pm:  Session 3
3:30pm:  Session 4
4:30pm:  Break
5pm:  Session 5
6pm:  Wrap-up
7pm:  More Sessions & Mingling
9pm:  Clean-up

Sessions

There are seven rooms for unconference sessions. There will be two rooms with projectors available. If you would like to use one for your session, just be sure to post your session to one of those rooms.

Although sessions are usually 45-minutes, longer sessions may be proposed. If a session needs to be extended there is plenty of space available for a conversation or presentation to move to if another session needs to get started.

Lunch

Lunch on Saturday is being sponsored by BarCamp Tour and we’ll be serving delicious Lebanese food from Nicholas Restaurant. There will be plenty of vegetarian and vegan food to go around.

Haven’t RSVP’d yet?

There’s still time, go do it now.

Family-friendly Activities at BarCamp

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Hey, Portland techie parents!  Want to come to BarCamp but wondering how to include your kids? We have good news for you. We’ll be running a couple of family-oriented sessions during the unconference. The agenda will be pretty loose, but here are some of the activities you and your children might do, depending on equipment availability and repair:

  • Program an Arduino-based robot together using an easy graphical language.
  • Record a song together.
  • Build interactive cartoons with friendly programs like Scratch or Alice.
  • Play a silly physics-based game like Numpty Physics
  • Anything else you want to bring along and share

Bring your enthusiasm (and a laptop if you’ve got one).  We can’t wait to see you and your families at BarCamp! Don’t forget to RSVP if you haven’t already.

Barcamp Portland 5: May 20-21, 2011

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BarCamp Portland 4

We’re happy to announce that Barcamp Portland 5 will be May 20-21, 2011 at the Eliot Center in downtown Portland. That’s right, your favorite unconference in the same great unconference space as last year but with all new sessions and ideas: from knitting to nerdlings, plus the social web and its spiders, and beyond!

Want to know what Barcamp is? Read about it here.

Want to help create Barcamp? Join our planning group and/or attend our first volunteer meeting on March 21st at 6:30pm at the Lucky Lab Tap room (calagator link). As with every Barcamp, we need your help to make the event run smoothly. Volunteer positions are available before and during the conference–come to the meeting to see!

Interested in sponsoring? Drop an email to sponsor@legionoftech.org.

Childcare at BarCamp Portland 4: We need your feedback!

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Kate participates in play time for the Big Steps Childcare Campaign

Previous BarCamp participants have often requested childcare. For the first time, we’re seriously looking at what it would take to provide this during the event.

Were we to provide childcare, our hope would be to make it the best possible experience for parents and their kids who wish to attend BarCamp Portland 4, and we need your input.

So far, we’ve researched two options for childcare:

  1. On-site. Our prospective downtown venue has a room that we can use for child care. We would either need to hire a service (see below) or staff it (in shifts) ourselves.
  2. Off-site, using a licensed childcare provider. We already have a quote from WeVillage, located in the Pearl District (very close to our venue).

Hiring a service is completely dependent on having the sponsor funds to do so.

What we need to know from you is the following:

  1. That childcare is important to you.
  2. What kind of experience is desired from people staffing the child care?
    • Parents themselves only?
    • Child care professionals?
    • Is first-aid/cpr certification a requirement?
    • What would BarCamp need to supply, if anything? Kid-friendly food, toys, baby wipes, etc?
  3. Would you be willing to volunteer for a childcare shift?
  4. Do you know anyone who would like to sponsor childcare?

Please feel free to take on this discussion with your own input & ideas, in the comment section below, or by emailing christiekoehler at gmail dot com.

Update: We need to hear from you by Monday, Oct 4th in order to make the necessary child care arrangements, so be prompt with your feedback.

Update 10/4: As of today, no one has RSVP’d and indicated they would like childcare at Barcamp Portland 4. Given our limited planning and sponsorship resources, we’re going to discontinue our efforts to provide childcare for at year’s event. We’ll try again next year.

Also, if you’re planning on attending BarCamp Portland, don’t forget to RSVP and on the RSVP be sure let us know that you’d like childcare.

BarCamp Portland 4 Needs Sponsors!

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We’re deep in the planning stages of BarCamp Portland 4, scheduled for Oct 22nd and 23d and are actively seeking sponsors!

Are you interested in contributing to this year’s event? As in past years, BarCamp is free to all attendees, so your contributions are essential in allowing us provide venue space, wifi and food. We can’t put on BarCamp without your help.

As always, we’re very flexible about sponsorships. We don’t have formal sponsor levels; all Legion of Tech events have a  ”contribute what you can” sponsorship model. Suggested amounts are as follows: individuals / bloggers contribute $250, small startups around $500, and other companies are usually in the $1000+ range. In exchange for your sponsorship, we provide visibility for sponsor logos on our websites, prominent logo placement on signage at the event, and more. Sponsoring BarCamp is a great way to support Portland’s tech community.

Any help you can offer to help us make this event a success would be appreciated. Please see our Sponsor BarCamp Portland page and also contact sponsor@legionoftech.org if you’d like to contribute.

New Website

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We’ve launched a new website! Ok, chances are you’re on this site and you already know that.

It has the basics, but we can definitely use help adding content, including:

1. Simple definition of BarCamp.
2. Participant experiences: write a blog post about your previous experience attending a BarCamp.
3. Photos of previous BarCamps.
4. Previous schedules.

A BarCamp site we like a lot is BarCamp Tampa Bay’s: http://barcamptampabay.org/

If you want to help, contact Christie (christiekoehler at gmail dot com) and let me know which of the following you want to help with:

1. WordPress theming.
2. WordPress plugin configuration (e.g. adding flickr pool of BarCamp photos)
3. Writing / Editing.