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Celso Pinto: Barcamp FCT cool down

Yesterday I managed to attend BarCamp at FCT in Lisbon (ok ok, not quite Lisbon but close enough). I say managed because I only attended after a (crazy enough) friend lent me his motorcycle. Quite nice, being able to drive a Triumph Sprint ST instead of my trusty old Honda CB 750. If you want to learn more about the beast, check this link. I had already had a nice taste of another Sprint when a good friend bought one last year and I had to drive it back to Lisbon, but this one was special because I always wanted to take it for a ride but always refused offers to do so. These Sport Touring motorcycles are bloody impressive because they pack a huge punch and yet are extremely comfortable. On my way to FCT and without noticing it (ie. with no effort whatsoever of the engine) I was driving at about 160km/h (100mph). Really great bike, although it was missing most of the plastics, because they’re being re-molded, and that got me into trouble going in (security guy didn’t like my overall looks, can’t really blame him) and coming out of FCT as I’ll later explain.

Anyway, back to the Barcamp. I missed the opening salvo by Carlos Rodrigues, which was a shame as I admit to be geeky enough to have a passing interest in FireHOL, iptables and whatnot, although I am not a sysadmin. Met with Alexandre Solleiro on my way in and we stayed outside chatting about his project and exchanging ideas on it while an incredibly lengthy presentation was on. Before walking back to the auditorium I spent some time with João Moreno who was organising the event. Really smart kid and a Python lover too. João, if you’re reading this, I’d be glad to have a talk with you after you get back from your MSc

Then VD went on stage to talk about platforms, services and products. Ok, I have to admit I was really slow yesterday as a result of serious sleep deprivation, barely getting some quality shuteye this past week, but I found the entire discussion, which was the only part I caught, mostly irrelevant and confusing. You cannot really compare the frustration between having a problem on a physical product, say a laptop, and a service, say like Flickr or Twitter. If my computer breaks down I’ll get extremely pissed off because I paid crap loads of money out of it with the expectancy of having it functioning 100% of the time for at least a couple of years. If Flickr loses some of my photos or Twitter goes down, yes I’ll bitch about it but life will go on as usual. On social network services, the experience they provide is completely determined by who’s in that social network. Twitter trounces Pownce because of the difference, in many orders of magnitude, between the amount of action that goes on Twitter and not on Pownce. Twitter keeps going down, Pownce is still irrelevant (sorry Leah, Pownce is not awesome). And users don’t just flock to other services exactly because of that. On the other hand, if you’re creating a developer platform you’d better go out of your way to have a pristine uptime record because your users really do care about whether your service is up and running or not. So I pitched in by trying to explain that there is a world of difference among the three types of users/consumers, what each of them expects and how much, in reality, they value your product/service/platform.

Lunch was served and it was kickass. Really. In no other conference (woops, sorry for throwing an unconference into the conference mix) was food as good as this one. After lunch, half backed dot-com went on but, although I agree with it having to be about nonsensical stuff I don’t like it when a particular person becomes the target of public mockery. So instead of ganging up on someone I barely know, I took my interest elsewhere and I’m glad I did because in the coffee break room, which I maintain should have been used for Ignite sessions, the usual suspects were brainstorming around interesting stuff. I seriously tried to keep up with the discussion, but failed due to struggling between an extremely reduced attention span and background noise. From then on I entered zombie mode, hanging around just because of the interesting side discussions that unfortunately never took place inside the main room. Also met with Andre Oliveira, from Sem Papel, with whom I let out some frustrations about how currently job sites are little more than glorified newspaper classified ads and do very little to explore a possibly good opportunity to differenciate themselves.

As the event got closer to the end, ignite sessions started to take place. I was prepared to go deliver two 5 minute pitches with no safety net, read no powerpoints just my trusty moleskine and the blackboard, so I let everyone who needed a computer go first. By the time I was ready to go on stage the other guy from the BarcampFCT team let Ignite go astray by having people from the audience step in. Now don’t get me wrong, I found the motivational speech somewhat interesting, although I havet to wholeheartedly disagree with recommending startups to mainly seek government sponsorship or see it as their best option. What I got really frustrated with was the sense of having someone just jump in right into the front of the queue, without even bothering to ask for permission. The guy I mentioned in the beginning of the post, who also owns a SprintST, had just arrived so, with frustration adding up to fatigue, I decided it was time to walk out, but not before extending my compliments to João who did a really good job.

I was getting ready to actually get out of the campus when the SprintST simply refused to turn on. You see, this is the kind of problems I wrote about. It’s way, wayyyy different to have a electronic malfunction on a motorcycle than to experience a Twitter failure (which was down at the time btw). You see, it rained during the day and because the bike didn’t have it’s plastic bodywork some of the water went into the electric circuitry. By that time all the water had already dried out so we got the bikes side by side, Private set us up with battery cables which we plugged in and hoped for the best. Fortunately, the bike started to work, although timidly but enough for me to take it for a spin and have it warm up a bit before leaving, noticing that the speedometer failed to function. All’s well when it ends well I guess.

To the people who made it happen a big thank you, you did a good job and it was indeed unfortunate only half of the people who said were attending actually made it to the event.