Clever, Clever Girl

Media, Economics, Culture, BarCamp!

BarCampLA-5 Wrap Up

March 7th, 2008, 8:12 pm 1 comment

You know, we keep thinking that at some point, people are going to get tired of this whole “BarCampLA” thing. Apparently that point hasn’t come yet. *phew!*

This past weekend, about 220 of you joined us at the AOL offices in Beverly Hills for the fifth BarCamp in Los Angeles. We talked about Wordpress, hacking, the Internet Backbone, Computers that may/will take over the world, Ninjas, Zombies, and sandwiches. We played fake guitars (and real ones). We danced with inflatable robots. We rickrolled each other. We ate, we laughed, we talked, and hopefully, we learned some cool stuff in the process.

One of the best feelings I get at these events is when I’ve poked my head into the room to give a 5 minute time warning, and I get a dozen people shooing me away. That happened more than a few times this past weekend, and I can think of no better validation that we’re doing something right here. So thanks, everyone, for showing up, sharing what you know, and soaking up the knowledge and ideas of your peers. It’s always amazing to see what people bring to this.

Ok, enough with the sap, let’s start thanking people.

Travis Savo and Marie Maxey, our in-house hosts from AOL went above and beyond the call of HALP!. When we decided to abandon our potential downtown LA venue because of complications from the LA Marathon (it would have been ugly, folks), Mike Macadaan from AOL answered the call and got this space arranged in under a week. Since Mike couldn’t join us for the weekend, Travis and Marie, veteran BarCampers, volunteered to be our hosts. We couldn’t ask for two nicer people in the world, and much of the credit for the event running as smoothly as it did goes to these guys. Thanks again!

Geoff Emery (Dude, what’s your url?) also jumped into the fray of organizing this time by handling all of our food arrangements, catering orders, etc. If you enjoyed eating, you should thank this man. We did! (Thanks!)

James Cooper was there before I was on Saturday and already had half the chairs moved into rooms. Much, much thanks. We’ll work on that hat, ok? :-)

Jane Lee once again swooped in and picked up the monster load of Saturday’s lunch and the lion’s share of the sodas. The necessary Saturday morning Costco run is one of the biggest logistics “can’t be in two places at once” problems, and twice in a row now, Jane has made that a non-issue. Thank you!

Chris Darbro ensured we all had coffee. Both days. Deserves a medal in some cultures, but isn’t coffee its own reward? (thanks, good sir!)

Eric Hammond - Somewhere a few weeks back, I just started getting a flood of people interested in giving us money to do this. It turns out, Eric sent them our way. Funding these things is always one of the hardest parts. (It’s a what-camp? Bar-what?) I don’t know what you did, man, but thanks! It worked!

Chef JoAnna continues to guide our fooding, even when the catering orders come in looking a little too small to feed the mob outside the kitchen. That woman can wield a knife better than I hope to in a hundred years. Thank you!

A shout-out to the incomparable C.Nelson for bringing you the SMS and flickr projection walls (written on-site!) and the DJ/sound gear. Mucho entertainment. Props to Substandard!

Big thanks to Woody Pewitt, Andy Sternberg, and Mr. Michael Lambie for the kegs, without which, Rock Band would have been better performed and far less popular.

And to Vaughn Hannon, Michael Dorausch, Bronwyn Lewis, and Chris Gagne for just being darn helpful with a bunch of various things. If I’ve forgotten you, please ping me. No slights intended, all help greatly appreciated, and no notes taken (by me). :-)

And finally, there’s this “Jason” character I keep hearing about. Dude… It doesn’t feel right to thank you here, because this is equal sweat, blood, and lolcats. (ok, the LOLcats are *all* Cosper. Actually, if it was spontaneous and glinting of awesome, it was almost surely Cosper) But holyFSM, we did it. Again! BarCampLA-5 was sustained awesome, and I’m so glad we’re on the same team. (psst, folks, the Scoops Ice Cream on Sunday? That was ALL Jason - go mob him with your thanks).

But wait, there’s more!

Sponsors!

A Giant thanks to all of you. You make this event happen!

Venue

AOL - Again, thank you! You guys really came through for us last minute, and it was fantastic.

Party Sponsor

Thursday Lunch

Media Circus

I am totally going to cheat right now and just post in the slideshow of all photos from the camp here:

photos tagged barcampla5 in flickr
I’ll put up some personal faves soon. Go check out the main page of BarCampLA-5 for links to talk notes, PPTs, audio, video, etc. And add your’s if you’ve got ‘em!

Looking Forward

Yes, we’ll be doing another one of these. Yes, we’re open to new faces getting involved (and old ones taking on bigger roles. We’ve already started some great discussions on the google group about that and also started a Suggestions Page while the ideas are fresh. Lots of good points there already.

Ok, As the pig says, That’s All, Folks. This community continues to impress me as it grows. Tag your photos, keep up the conversation, go out and learn more cool stuff to share, and we’ll see you for the next time.

Downtown LA, I still love you

February 15th, 2008, 10:12 pm 2 comments

Ok, so I’m moving up to North Hollywood tomorrow (which means I really should be, uh, packing now), but Downtown Los Angeles still owns my LA-loving heart. If nothing else, the sheer capacity for strange is just stronger there, and I dig it.

So we were down there last night to participate in the monthly Downtown LA Art Walk (second Thursday of every month, folks). We started out at one of my favorite Vietnamese joints in LA, Blossom before proceeding to check out Dave Bullock’s show at Niche Gallery and then on to others.

As if Weenez, a hot dog (and..cupcakes?) place attached to Red Dot Gallery wasn’t strange enough on it’s own, while we were there, a makeshift parade of clarinets, saxophones, drums, and accordians marched past us, accompanied by a guy wearing nothing but a diaper and shooting toy arrows at people (Cupid, Valentines day… I get it, still odd). The group turned out to be LA Experimental Jazz Troup KillSonic (Warning, sound.. and it’s experimental jazz at that).

It was too fun to pass up, so we joined their parade around downtown LA, basically circling the gallery district, invading the Hive Gallery, missing the shuttle, walking some more, and then finally boarding the bus with the entire band, all of us followers, and a very amused (no, really) bus driver. The band jammed on, we picked up more people at every stop, and it was a damn fine time of “wait, is this really happening?”And yes, that’s when I love this town the most.

Some pics from the evening:

More photos here

Redesigning

February 11th, 2008, 9:01 pm 2 comments

While I was upgrading to WP 2.3.3 this weekend, I decided to ditch my tired old theme while I was at it. A redesign was more than overdue, since I hadn’t really changed things up since October 2006. *cringe*

So consider this a work in progress, I do intend to add some minor graphics to this, but at the moment that is falling in the priority list somewhere behind beginning new job, moving to and decorating new apartment, planning BarCampLA-5, starting a new diet, and this little thing called “sleep” that I’ve been meaning to try. :-)

Comments still welcome and please tell me if something is horrifically broken (and not just ‘plain’).

Hello WBR - Big Changes for 2008

January 31st, 2008, 8:00 am 12 comments

2007 was one hell of a ride, 2008 might even surpass. I don’t even know where to begin with this, so out with it…

February 8th will be my last day at Sisu.
February 12th will be my first day as Director of Technology Projects for Warner Bros. Records..

This past year with Sisu has been fantastic. I’ve had the chance to work on some amazing projects for The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Myspace, Wasserman Media Group (creating sites for professional athletes such as Tracy McGrady, JJ Redick, and Freddy Adu), the Hallmark Channel, Fonality, Hearst Magazine Mobile sites, Sony, Veoh, Zannel, and Nonesuch Records. And I’ve had the opportunity to do it with 5 of the best coworkers imaginable. Guild, Coleen, Dave, Kevin, and Matt - thank you all. Seriously. I’m going to miss seeing all of you every day, there is no replacement for friday status meetings, and I’d better be invited to the 6th year Sisuversary party, punks.

Looking forward to my new life in Burbank, I’m really drawn to this position for a number of reasons. I’ll be joining up with a crack team of solidly cool geeks who have some great ideas about how to save the music industry. We like music, we’d like to keep it around. The technology team at WBR is super progressive, relying on open-source technologies wherever possible, and pushing for some innovative ways to keep money coming in and going to artists. All artist sites are being built on Drupal, an open-source content management system that I have some experience with.

As a music, econ, and tech geek with an unnatural interest in social networks and a nearly two-year history with the Drupal Community, this is a really exciting opportunity to combine my passions and go out and build something. It’s a challenging place to be right now, but that’s the way I like it.

I’m probably going to need bigger sunglasses, though.

BarCampLA-4 Wrap Up

November 13th, 2007, 2:02 pm 2 comments

It always takes me about a week to come to closure with a camp. Besides the obvious sleep debt to be paid, I also enjoy watching the pics and videos roll in, checking out the session media that gets posted, and listening to the conversations that originated at camp as they get taken out into the world. Especially the last one: I believe that’s what motivates me to keep working on these. Those conversations and connections are priceless, and it’s a pretty amazing feeling to get to see those shockwaves from the epicenter. So, really, thank you all for making good on all the promises we made that this would be an amazing group of people with things to share. We can only set the stage, but you guys put on one hell of a play.

By the Numbers

So, the breakdown looked something like this:

About 200 Participants over two days (That’s almost double from March 2007)
Close to 40 unique presentations
15 Sponsors
$5400 Budget (Spent to the last $40 or so, so if anyone wants reimbursing for drinks or snacks, hit me up) Complete Expense details will be available on the wiki as soon as the last sponsor check gets processed.
Two Gongs (Opening intros were MUCH shorter this time!)
113 BarCamper Portraits
And the world’s first FooBar Mitzvah

I’m happy with that.

Thanks

There are more people to thank than I think I can fit into this space or possibly link to, so let me start off by saying thank you to every person who answered our call for help on Sunday morning and brought sodas, fruit, bread, yogurt, ice, etc. When you’re on a fixed budget for a free conference and then attendance doubles out of nowhere (as it did), you’re suddenly not sure whether to say “yay!” or “uh oh…” Those contributions, from cupcakes to sunflower seeds to sodas to fruit, kept us in the “yay!” category. So thank you all for stepping up and really being every bit the awesome community we love to brag about.

Special Thanks To:

Jason Cosper, my co-BarCamp Counselor (Lambie, did you coin that?). You know I can’t possibly name everything, but thanks for the moral support, the mad publicity and blog and twitter and sponsorship wrangling, Saturday and Sunday and all they entailed, and for that amazing yell of doom of yours that made it possible for my squawking to be heard. Beer doesn’t cut it, I owe you whiskey.
Dan Tentler, for running network ops and getting/keeping the wifi running. “What? There’s a muffin up here! How the hell?
JoAnna and her ninja-like reflexes where catering is involved made it possible to get food laid out for 150+ people in 10 mins or less not once, but THREE times. That plus the pre-ordering food consulting made a world of difference for us.
CJ Little, whose remarkably lifelike cardboard facsimile somehow managed to co-staff the registration booth for most of Saturday along with Woody Pewitt, ensuring that BarCampers were greeted, tagged, and signed in. Thanks!
Andy Sternberg, who wrangled us an awesome keg of Craftsman and the ice to cool it.
More thanks to Bino Gopal for the no-questions-asked instant office supply run.
Jane Lee, who volunteered herself and her vehicle to pick up EVERYTHING that wouldn’t fit in my car from Costco, plus Saturday’s lunch. (That was a lifesaver!)
Thanks to Chris Gagne for picking up Saturday morning’s coffee.
And lastly, a huge thanks to Darren Wong for not taking no for an answer and working in the middle of the night to give us a killer new BarCampLA logo. We love it!

Plus, a very special thanks to Richard M. Stallman (RMS) for joining us, hanging out, having fun, and for speaking. We don’t usually condone ‘keynotes’ for BarCamp, but if there were ever a case for an exception, this was most certainly the time.

And lastly, the Media…

If you haven’t already, go check out Noodle Scar’s On Location at BarCampLA-4 video. You can find other videos here, on YouTube, and linked off of the BarCampLA-4 Main Wiki. If you have videos you want the world to see, put them there!

There are also Tons of great pictures, of course, so check them out, help with tagging, and make sure your own are up and tagged so we can all enjoy them. Here are some of my personal favorites.

I’m going to treasure this one for a long time.
Photo by Daniel Hengeveld.

PowerPoint Karaoke
Photo by Lisa Brewster

FooBarMitzvah
Photo by Lisa Brewster

“What’s in your Not-Coming-Back-Bag.” I walked in to call time on this session and just lost it laughing. Thanks, guys!
Photo by Dan Tentler

The bus. Seriously, the bus was awesome. Go check out The 1 Second Film.
Photo by Dan Tentler

Thanks everyone. It was nothing short of surreal. Post your pics and comments here and/or to the wiki and we’ll see you for the next one!

-Crystal

When Bad UI Goes Good

October 18th, 2007, 12:26 am 2 comments

So basically, if I have ever emailed with you at all, you’re in my gmail address book. And if you are in my gmail address book, all 600ish of you, around the first of September, you got a message that looked something like this:

“cleverclevergirl” would like you to join them on Zannel

Zannel is a mobile community where you can meet people, send messages and share photos and videos on your mobile phone. Share your life in real time.

Click here to join and accept the invitation.

And then if you also follow me on twitter, you shortly after received a few frantic, apologetic tweets from me explaining that some UI had malfunctioned and to please ignore the bother. I try to be exceedingly careful with my contacts and tend to never invite people to things unless I’m positive they want to be invited. I hate email, I assume you hate email too, and I try to avoid sending any unless it’s necessary or just purely pleasant.

So I was pretty devastated that this happened, especially since I generally consider myself savvier than that, but figured I’d done what I could and it was done with.

Until I got a message on the site from Zannel’s CTO the next day.

Hey there - I’m with Zannel, and I’ve heard some buzz about our friend invite feature - r u open to discussing?

Uh oh.

Chris Messina was amongst the unintentionally-invited. Chris, thankfully, has a pretty low tolerance for bad UI, so he made some screenshots

This was noted by Tantek Çelik, who asked Chris to submit screenshots to the wiki he’s been working on, documenting Social Network Anti-Patterns, something expecially useful in the wake of the Quechup disaster. (Incidentally, Chris has a whole collection of these screenshots here)

Zannel’s PR folks had picked up on the grumblings, traced it back to me, and now wanted to chat.

So we chatted. First off, they were genuinely apologetic. This was really an unintentional effect of the common mobile design strategy of reducing page length by having many small pages of information, and definitely not a ’strategy’ of any sort.

I explained that the problem had occurred while using their mobile interface. I had wanted to *check* if anyone I knew was already using this service, but only intended to invite one coworker. Unfortunately, the default state for “send invites to everyone” was set to TRUE, and that option was on a separate page than the main confirm screen. So by requesting and confirming to invite one friend, everyone else got dragged into it. They admitted that this was a problem and one that had been discussed internally.

They also agreed to fix it. Quickly.

And I’m very pleased to say that they did! The fix has been in place now for about a month and apparently now, users complain, if anything, that it is too difficult to add a bunch of friends at once. So far, though, everyone seems to agree that this is a better problem to have.

They were also kind enough to send me some screenshots of the new interface:

Congrats to Zannel for making this right, and a big thanks to Chris and Tantek for their zero-tolerance policies.

Go Check them out.They’re getting nods from the likes of TechCrunch, Mashable, and The LA Times.

DrupalCampLA Wrap Up

September 22nd, 2007, 12:34 am 7 comments

It’s been two weeks since DrupalCampLA and I think the dust has finally settled enough for me to write this.

As I said in my opening remarks, when I first started planning this event, I was really hoping for a small gathering of dedicated Drupal Developers, you know, just 40-60 people to kick things off…

Man, what the heck do I know?

DrupalCampLA saw a bit over 100 participants and about 25 unique session topics (not to mention 120 somewhat unique cupcakes) in two days at the AOL offices in Beverly Hills, and I really don’t think I could have asked for a better group of curious folks or a more supportive community.

From Project Management to Flex, Install Profiles to Podcast tools, we had some really fantastic presentations, and as always, hallway conversations that spark friendships, projects, and more than a few modules. While the attendance skewed heavily towards the developers (another surprise for me and others) we also had great participation from project managers, designers, admins, and the business development folks who are keeping these projects coming through the doors.

A big thanks to all who turned out and made this event such a success, and an even bigger thanks to our sponsors who made it possible to give an event like this to the community for free.

But wait, there’s more…

Not only were we lucky enough to have such great sponsors, but we also had the incredible support and participation of many of the top Drupal firms on the left coast. A huge thanks goes out to:

Achieve Internet not only brought a small, extremely Drupal-savvy army up from San Diego, they also sponsored Saturday night’s party at Islands. So if you’re looking for who to thank for that, look no further. They’re looking to hire great people, so if San Diego sounds like a good destination, give them a shout.
WorkHabit may indeed take the prize for largest number of Drupal devs schlepped the furthest distance, bringing their core team all the way down from Sacramento to see how so-cal kicks it drupal-style. WorkHabit provides Drupal development, integration, strategy, deployment solutions, and training.They’re also looking to hire, so if Northern Cali is more your speed, Drop them a line.
Another big thanks to Bryght for sending Chief Blogging Officer Roland Tanglao down for the weekend to speak on Install Profiles (definitely a hot topic lately).
Also, thanks to the folks at CivicActions who couldn’t be there, but send their love in the form of Some really nifty Drupal pins. Thanks, guys!
And lastly, thanks to Jen Simmons, who joined us all the way from Philadelphia, and Jacob Redding, organizer of DrupalCampNYC, who joined us on his victory lap around the U.S. before moving to China.

Other big thanks are due to Chris Charlton and everyone else who fetched ice, coffee, cupcakes, or napkins, or helped set-up, clean-up, or just generally keep the show running. It was all noticed and much appreciated.

And Now Time for the Media Frenzy…

Ok, not quite, but there was an amazing amount of recording done at this event. We’re still assembling it all, but stay tuned, we should have recordings of nearly every session available to the internet at large soon. For now, though, enjoy some glimpses of DrupalCampLA:

Video by Chris Charlton:

More video
A glimpse of the pre-opening craziness on Saturday from Mike Macadaan here That one opens with me saying “I can’t believe people are trying to email me to register this morning” (it was true), and later includes me answering “Hi Crystal” with “I need someone to go get the coffee.” This kind of sums up my morning there.

Pics

Drupal Deployment Solutions Session

By Roland Tanglao

Chris and Roland

By Me

Cupcakes from Sisu

By Me

Markus Sandy

By Roland Tanglao

Jonathan Lambert and Roland Tanglao

Photo from WorkHabit

Opening Session

Photo by Roland Tangalo

For all DrupalCampLA pics on Flickr, go here.

DrupalCampLA - It’s On!

August 22nd, 2007, 7:36 pm 1 comment

Details:
September 8-9
(Saturday - 10am - 6pm, Sunday - 10am - 2pm)
AOL Beverly Hills - 331 N. Maple Dr., 90210
Registration - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/221082

Organizer Notes:

a Drupal story

I originally got involved with Drupal about a year and a half ago when I moved up to Vancouver to work for Raincity Studios, a dedicated Drupal development shop. Since then, I’ve pretty much plunged head first into the world of open-source and content management systems, and it’s been a pretty major eye opener in how I think about web development.

When I moved back to LA last fall, I chose a technology agnostic design agency instead of a Drupal shop, but remained active in the Drupal community here in Southern California. When I started getting weekly, and then bi-weekly calls and emails looking for Drupal developers, I knew something was definitely afoot. When I ran out of non-swamped devs to refer people to, I knew it was time to do something.

I really do believe that Open Source projects and solid adherence to web standards are the way to a more secure, better designed, and more accessible web for everyone. And it’s fantastic that companies such as Yahoo! and Warner Bros. Records have recognized this as well and are deploying Drupal on a new scale. However, they are also flooding the market with more projects than we currently have people to handle, and we’ll all be in trouble if the party line becomes “Well, Drupal is great, but you can’t find developers for it…”

Los Angeles is also in a peculiar situation, having lots and lots of demand for Drupal, but being one of the only major US cities without a dedicated Drupal development shop here in town. Besides the obvious fact that LA based companies have to go elsewhere to find developers right now, this is also a problem because it means there has been no LA-based training initiative in LA. Yet.

So, here’s the idea. We’re bringing in some real Drupal rockstars from all over the US (and some from Canada) to teach two days of sessions, and in some instances, giving real world case studies in collaboration with their LA clients. Our goal is to jump start the Drupal community in Los Angeles, get people trained and interested, and see where we can push this from there. Sound good?

Read below for the official boilerplate and info on how you can get involved.

The LA Drupal Group presents DrupalCampLA, a free community learning conference focused on Drupal development, theming, deployment, and management. Experts and professionals in the field of Drupal development will be teaching two days of seminars on three tracks aimed at varying levels of technical knowledge, so whether you’re a seasoned developer, a frustrated newcomer, or just curious what all the hype is about, there will be sessions designed for you.

We’ll also have several sessions devoted to podcasting and media using Drupal, as well as several case studies featuring Drupal and Online Music promotion and distribution from Warner Bros. Records and Rhino Records.

We think Drupal is the best damn open source content management system period, and we’re not the only ones. Come learn how to develop, design, and create content for the the open source project that powers www.theonion.com, www.mtv.co.uk, and www.askaninja.com (and thousands more).

For more information, please visit http://barcamp.org/DrupalCampLA

Official sign-up is at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/221082. Even though this is a free event, please register so we can plan accordingly.

You can also find us at

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11701480390
Organizer Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/drupalcampLA

Details:
September 8-9
(Saturday - 10am - 6pm, Sunday - 10am - 2pm)
AOL Beverly Hills - 331 N. Maple Dr., 90210

My shirt in WIRED

August 21st, 2007, 11:44 am No comments

I was really sorry I couldn’t make it to BarCamp Block this weekend in the Bay area. For those who don’t know, this was the 2 year anniversary of BarCamp, an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Ironically, the reason I couldn’t attend is that I’ve been just too busy planning DrupalCampLA and BarCampLA-4 (more info on those coming shortly).

I was happy to see, however, that at least a little part of me got to be there for the event. My friend Tantek Çelik is shown here sporting my BarCamp Shanghai shirt.

See, back in January, Tantek and I had a little shirt swap:

Almost a year ago, now, I had the amazing opportunity to help bring BarCamp to China for the very first time by Co-Organizing BarCamp Shanghai. It was an amazing trip, a great adventure, and a rocking BarCamp. However, in all the mayhem, even though I designed and sourced ‘em, I didn’t manage to get one of the shirts in a size that didn’t absolutely swallow me. (I’m a bit wee, so I hear). Rather than see it get hidden away in my closet as a memento, I chose to give it to someone who could wear it proud. Since Tantek was a key factor in the very first BarCamp (two years ago now, wow!), I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have sporting it around Palo Alto.

Also, for the curious, BarCamp Shanghai 2 is in the works for September 8-9, 2007. I won’t be making the trek this year, but if you’re in China, check it out!

Photo Credit: Wired.com Click Here for Original

Productivity Tricks with gCal

July 26th, 2007, 1:13 pm 5 comments

Ok, so, I’m avoiding the seven or so very relevant and probably no longer timely posts I have drafts of in order to jot down these notes, because despite all the wonderful events I’ve been attending and all the ideas I currently have buzzing around in my little head, what I’m really obsessed with right now is calendars.

That’s right. Calendars.

See, somewhere in the past six months or so, I got incurably busy. I’ve known this state before, but it has always been temporary. And I’m just getting the hunch that it isn’t temporary this time.

So besides the sleep deprivation, the coffee dependency, and the general sense of twitchiness (apologies to those who’ve seen me recently), what’s been really driving me crazy and impeding further productivity is fear. That’s right, you know this fear. You find out about an event, a party, or a project you want to do and you really want to say yes and make firm plans, but you stop short because you’re not entirely sure if you can. It’s pretty easy to check the calendar to see if you’re supposed to BE somewhere at that particular point in the space time continuum, but what about mental bandwidth and deadlines? Can I schedule a trip to Texas to see my family if I can’t get a good idea of what projects I’m launching then? I’m constantly trying to not be out of town for a major site launch or milestone, but those move often, so how does one guess?

You can see the loop forming here and it generally results in a semi-catatonic state followed with “I need coffee. Let me get back to you.”

This is not really ok anymore.

So the key problem to be solved here is “How do I get an accurate, at a glance idea of how busy I am for any 2-3 day period?”

I have a job where I’m, at any point, responsible for 5-12 active creative projects. (Currently, it’s about 9). Timelines slip, usually not because of our team, but projects tend to evolve as they progress and sometimes small changes have big effects. Therefore, it’s crucial to have a system that ties into my current professional workflow, but can also integrate with my personal schedule since I’m also co-organizing two conferences in LA, working on contributing a Drupal theme, and attending a large number of fun/learning/networking events here, and in SF and SD. (Not to mention the occasional, purely social outing)

My tools:

My work laptop (PC)
my Stickerbooked Mac
Blackberry 8800
gmail
gcal (I have two - one hosted calendar that we use company wide where we are all subscribed to each other, and also my personal calendar, which is also subscribed to things like the barcamp global schedule, the Boston Red Sox season schedule, and my Upcoming.yahoo.com events, as well as my work calendar)
MS Project
Basecamp
upcoming.yahoo.com
twitter

The Process::

Work Projects are scoped and then scheduled dynamically in Project. Major milestones and deadlines are then manually entered and assigned to people in Basecamp by Client and Project. (Note: I know this is a main bottleneck) Milestones are title by “Initials of milestone owner” - “Project” - “Description of Milestone”. ICAL feeds are then generated by individual project (and also one master feed). These are then subscribed to through my work calendar and color coded by client. I only subscribe to the full-on, mother-load schedule from my personal calendar.
As I commit to public events and publicly promoted social events, I add myself to the Upcoming.yahoo.com page so it gets added to my personal calendar.
On the fly, small social things, such as dinner with a friend, get added to my personal gcal via twitter via gtalk IM on my blackberry if I’m out and about (or just through the browser if I’m at the computer). (How to do this)

The end result of this is a personal calendar I can look at (on screen or blackberry) and gauge, just by how many lines of stuff I see, whether or not that’s a good day for me or whether I’d best lay low. It also creates a master schedule that my office can selectively share with outside contractors and clients and gives everyone in the company a 5 second glance at how many deadlines each person has for a given day or week, which is necessary for committing resources to a project.

Just starting this system, so I’ll let you know how it goes. Any further integration ideas are much welcome.

« Previous Entries

Clever, Clever Girl

Media, Economics, Culture, BarCamp!

BarCampLA-5 Wrap Up

Sponsors!

Venue

Sponsors ++

Sponsors

Party Sponsor

Media Circus

Looking Forward

Downtown LA, I still love you

Redesigning

Hello WBR - Big Changes for 2008

BarCampLA-4 Wrap Up

By the Numbers

Thanks

Sponsors

Special Thanks To:

And lastly, the Media…

When Bad UI Goes Good

DrupalCampLA Wrap Up

Sponsors

But wait, there’s more…

And Now Time for the Media Frenzy…

Pics

DrupalCampLA - It’s On!

Organizer Notes:

My shirt in WIRED

Productivity Tricks with gCal

Pages

Articles

Blogroll

Quotes to Live By

Recent Posts

BarCampLA News

Meta

Elsewhere

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