I think this is the reason I’m not getting an iPhone, at least not this week: I type quick notes on my Nokia E61.

Here’s the raw unedited dump of my note file from DemoCamp18.It’s mostly for my own backup purposes, but maybe you’ll find something useful in there. The message for this post is that I can’t picture myself typing quickly on a glass screen, especially while holding a beer in one hand.

(Oh, and if anyone knows how to get the notes off of an E61 via Bluetooth, please let me know – I ended up emailing it to myself)

Update: Dave notes that it’s spreednews.com, not .net.  Ha, just noted that I caught that in the stream.  Still, it’s a neat product, click the link and check it out.

Askitonline.com is in beta

refresh brands are interested in influencers - how do we get those people talking
rp has analytics for influencers
niches are pulling up to 15 cpm
has been running in house for 9 months

blueprintcan attach screens to process
simulation view turns process requirements into choose your own adventure
eclipse thing
can generate docs
3 years old, major banks, some us presence
ten grand
allows collab, commenting

democamp18 is the barely legal edition says joey

well.ca jabber chat
live chat with xfer
agents can use any jabber client?
Labs.well.ca

drproject couldn't hear

jesse brown bitstrips
cartoon cannon
75k strips since sxsw
copyright is interesting, they made the art so if the users own it they can say no. Joint ownership, users and bitstrips can do what they want


ignite

spreed news
few phrases at a time instead of words, iphone app, hooks into news feeds
spreednews.com
oh wait the website is .net
>hey that was a demo.
ignite now.

jevon vc in canada
used an alex ross superman on slide 1 now ange will come to democamp19
"startups aren't getting started and whe they do its like bedroomups it's like bathroomups"

I managed to catch Democamp18 last night (or as Joey called it, Democamp “barely legal”) – the place was packed, so I spent the first half just outside the main speaking area with the rest of the crowd behind me steadily escalating the volume of chatter.  The net result was Democamp – audio edition (since I couldn’t see the screen) which devolved into Democamp – Charlie Brown’s teachers edition by the end (since I could hear less and less over the noise – apologies to Kosta Zabashta, whose demo of IRC integration in DrProject was probably interesting, but I saw and heard nothing (looks like there’s a screencast though, I’ll check it out)…

One bit did catch my eyes and ears, which was the Blueprint Requirements Centre.  It’s some kind of Eclipse specification generating tool that gathers requirements and links visuals together so you can end up with some kind of Choose Your Own Adventure demo for the client that links screens to branching possibilities.  I’m totally oversimplifying, and I’m sure it does a lot more than that, but I couldn’t see everything.  People at the front seemed really impressed, enough so that they were saddened by the price, anyway.

It costs $10,000.  Possibly per seat, I couldn’t hear.

From a crowd that skews towards open source, that got a few chuckles.  I heard one person saying something to the effect that they were wasting their time, because nobody in the crowd was likely to be in the market for a $10K product.   That person probably thought that the only thing being demoed was the technology.

Pricing models need more exposure – there’s more to life than freemiums, ad supported, and “we’ll make money on the consulting side.”  These guys found a market that’s used to paying good money for tools (Visual Studio Team System isn’t cheap either) and made something they’d want to buy.  That’s the demo, folks.

Installable software has an edge in market perception – there’s a lot less “how long did it take you to make that” being asked by customers compared to shops that make custom web solutions, where the “how much would it cost me to hire someone to make that” question usually outweighs the “how much value would this give me right now” one they really should be asking.  It can be crushing for smaller companies to have to spend 95% of their time trying to grind out enough billable work to cover overhead and then, you know, when they get to it, find ways to innovate and be really valuable partners with their clients.

Here’s a basic concept to get started: you own what you write.  Let’s face it, you’re probably going to borrow code from past projects when you work on new ones (why write an email address validator every month?), so be up front about it and start positioning yourself as a solution provider instead of outsourced IT.  If the client’s billing department makes you sign a contract that says they own everything you produce, just cross that part out and initial it before you sign it back.  It might be an issue, it might not, but if you don’t at least put the concept out there, you’re letting yourself get robbed of any residual value of the work and anything you’ve done might as well have been in COBOL as far as your next project is considered.

At last, my DemoCamp16 report (the event was Monday night; it’s now Thursday morning.  Let’s pretend that I’ve been spending the time thinking deeply about the presentations, shall we?)

The demos were really interesting this time, but what was really cool was the intermission between demos and ignite, where I ended up getting demos and talks about Android and hacking the Nintendo DS from Kristan.  I also sat at a table filled with people I didn’t know, and my only regret was that I didn’t get any contact info from the Rails guys from Hamilton or their partner who worked on PinPoint years ago.

Also, while they couldn’t make it, I later pitched the camp concept to the non-profit I’m involved with, and it looks like we’re going to give it a try next year to help connect with some other groups and individuals in the GTA.

So, a selection of notes from the presentations, as re-translated from my hasty keyword entry on my E61:

SlashID makes an alternative to OpenID.  I’m waiting for the response from the OpenID crowd on this one (James Walker says he’s got something in the works.)  I use OpenID for a few things, but to address one of the primary selling points of SlashID, it’s largely for stuff where I don’t particularly care if AOL can go and log in as me if they want to (I use RoboForm To Go for the rest and hope I don’t forget my USB key when I leave the house.)

UTest gets points for their site copy (“please choochoochoose an assignment”) and use of “Dr. Evil” for the test professor’s name – little quirks like that definitely help liven up a demo.  The system is a unit test runner for programming classes – students can submit their test suites to run against their professor’s solution to evaluate how close their solution might be.  Somehow this got me thinking about CRobots, and maybe there’s a service like this already, but it would be interesting (to about 5 people) to have some kind of unit test “battleground” online.

ShapeShop3D fit the pattern that anything demo’d in 3D should be fun and lively.  I haven’t sat through a demo with a child-like smile like I did here since BumpTop was presented.  It’s not something I’ll use anytime soon, but I like the way it’s going, and if I ever got a tablet I’d install it as the demo app of choice, just like Google Maps for Mobile’s My Location is my sample for the E61 (when wifi is available, anyway.)

The Ignite presentations were all good, with a few breaks in the flow as people paused to wait for the slides to catch up – a bit of a change from the “gotta talk faster to keep up with the slides” in the earlier days.  The thing I’m finding about Ignite is that the talks are becoming like TV shows, or possibly YouTube clips – they put my brain in certain patterns, and I get ideas from them, but the substance of the talks themselves usually doesn’t give me an immediate call to action.  It’s a refreshing format though, and I want to see more of them (aside: I just accidentally subscribed to several Christian podcasts after searching the iTunes Music Store for “Ignite.”  Minor brand collision, guess I’ll stick to the direct links for now and avoid the “do I buy an iPod Touch or iPhone” debate for another day.)