BCSD3 was flat out the biggest best BarCamp in San Diego ever.

I’d like to point out that I outgrew a subnet. That in of itself sort of makes me have to sit down. I heard word that we broke 200 attendees - we only had 150 badges and we ran out of them, and we went through 1.75 kegs of beer, and over the food budget by more than 500 dollars.

Holy shit, I’ll say that again for all the networking people out there: WE OUTGREW A SUBNET. Wow.

If we didn’t hit critical mass this time, then we’re certainly going to next time - but I’m fairly certain we hit critical mass this time around.

We had Chris Messina, one of the founders of BarCamp come visit as well! That was most excellent!

Defcamp went off AWESOME this time as well. The challenge boxes took a pretty fair amount of time, and so did the other challenges.

heres a quick rundown of the challenges:

1) 9 ‘trees’ of 2 challenges, each challenge being multi-staged. When contestants got to the end of a challenge tree they were given a letter, and when all the letters were combined they formed the word ‘izzard’. There were three dead ends.
2) Boxes - Just look at the pictures! They had magnetic ‘read’ switches in them so that we could ‘arm’ the boxes by removing a magnet, 37 nails (in a row :D) on top as ‘leads’, where 31 of them were not correct and 6 of them were. The contestants were supposed to take the aligator clip leads and connect them to the correct nails, and green lights would turn on, signaling them to cut the ‘breaker cable’ that was holding the box shut. Once inside, they had to pick a lock to remove the tray, then they were given a MiniPOV kit and a usb to serial converter.
3) Soldering - teams then were supposed to assemble a miniPOV kit and make it say something clever

It was glorious.

There was a twitter scavenger hunt put on by GirlGamer.com, a Wii Bowling contest and Boogah setup a four-square area and got a cherryball from the store across the street.

Best BarCamp Evar. Here are some pics!

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SO much new stuff.

Startupsd.net - The place for all things startup-related
lightbending.net - IT LIVES! Finally! Anybody need a photographer?
atensyndicate.com - New look, New feel, same awesome guys.
barcampsd.org - New look, new feel, new contest, May 3rd and 4th

Defcamp - new, improved, you’re going to hate us. Bring a soldering iron, a multimeter, some whiskey, and a lockpick set.

I’ve gone freelance, under the atensyndicate name and I’ve landed my first contract. I’ll post more as more develops.

I’m heading up to the Web2.0 expo next week, so expect the usual writeup and pictures from that.

be excellent to eachother
– Bill and Ted

It seems the first quarter of 08 holds in store for a lot of people many more things than I expected. I certainly can’t say that I foresaw a good half of whats going on in February and March. Heres a quick list - (everyone loves lists!):

• Anon vs Scientology: Chanology kicks it up a notch - Feb 10 protests, with March 15 underway
• BarCamp LA weekend of March 1st
• Etech 08 March 3-7
• SXSW (for some) March 7-9
• Lightbending Photography - Scored some awesome people: models, flash developers.. theres a new photoguy in town!
• Inner ear sugery (for me!)
• Senate allows telco immunity

Preparedness is key now - and it’s clear some parties are less efficient than others. I’ve been waiting for the Etech 08 crew to either approve or deny my ‘Hacking reality’ BoF talk for nearly 3 months. I haven’t made my presentation yet, but I fathom I should even if they deny me, since I’ll just give it at BarCamp LA 5.

After the last chanology op I had what looked like an unmarked police car follow me for 20 minutes while I drove away, so for the Ines of March I’ll have to be certain to park far away and/or take public transportation. March 15 is going to make the news again.

Foresight is a skill not many people have a good grasp on - I’ll be the first to admit, I’m nowhere near as skilled as I’d like to be there. Perhaps some more ‘quality time’ with the fine members of Lunch 2.0/BarcampSD/BarcampLA/Etech will cater to a sharpness of the wit I’ve been yearning for. Every bit of help is dearly appreciated in this regard. Looking ahead and being accurate in that context is a very very coveted skill.

It’s time to strap on helmets, gentlemen(women?) - the rest of 08 will likely follow suit to quater 1.

Be sharp
Be aware
.. but be relaxed and groovy.