Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp’s Web 2.0 blog

So… yeah! I forgot to tell you all.  This weekend I’m on my way to BarCampPortland in Portland, Oregon.  I’m currently sitting in airport in Philly.  I have a small lay over.

I’m excited.  For one, I heart BarCamps.  They’re always just a wild ride.  You never know completely who you’re going to meet and get to know but you know they’ll be crazy smart and crazy passionate about tech/web-related things, which is AWESOME!

Plus I’m really excited to make this initial foray into the Northwest.  It’s not a place i’ve been yet.  I hear there is a lot of really cool tech going on up there.

It will also be an opportunity to tell a new audience about all the awesome things that we’ve been doing at Clearspring Central Command.  Can’t wait for this!

So… Portland look out!  I’m coming your way.

Had a blast at PodCamp DC this weekend!  It was great to see old friends and meet some people that don’t typically come out to DC tech events. Kudos to the organizers Tammy and Joel.

Here are some of my photos from the weekend:

This weekend I’ll be at PodCamp DC. There is the opening party tonight and the talks all day tomorrow.  Clearspring is sponsoring and I’m giving a talk/leading a discussion tomorrow.  Should be a lot of fun.  Are you going?

This weekend I had the pleasure of hanging out with some awesome RIT students and alumni at BarCampRochester3.  I led a discussion on widgets and the social aggregator.  Clearspring was also one of the sponsors.

I had a fantastic time.  Kudos to the organizers.  Word is they’re going to try and do 2 BarCamps next year.  That’s awesome!!!!!!!!

Not to sound like the all knowing college graduate but if I could impart just one piece of wisdom to folks who are currently in college it’d be to start thinking earlier about your personal brand.

There is a “global neighborhood” out there that is discussing the same ideas that you’re into.  Get out there and join the conversation.

When you’re in college, it’s super easy to think that it is your world.  College can feel very insular.  Before too long you have to get out in the world and your voice competes with the rest of the world.

So… some practical tips:

Go to Vista Print or if you’re a hipster MooCards and get some business cards. Everytime you meet someone, it’s the opportunity to start a new relationship and having sometype of way to connect with eachother at a later date is SUPER important.

Start a blog.  I think it’s the best way to join in the on going conversation that’s happening.  Personal Web sites are becoming part of your personal identity.  They represent you just as much as how you dress for an interview.

Seek out people outside of your university who’re in your industry. Go to something like a Meetup.com or go find a business leader that you respect and talk to them.  The more you make the connections and the relationships outside of your university early the better off you’ll be after you graduate.

I had the pleasure of getting to know some of the awesome guys from Freshbooks at Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Miami.   We chatted over drinks and they told me about how they planned on taking South By Southwest (SXSW) by storm and they sure did.

Saul Colt, one of the guys on their marketing team, wrote up a great post on what Freshbooks did to get their name out at SXSW.   It’s fantastic and will serve as a guide for me for next year.

So… Tomorrow I’ll be giving a talk at AJAXWorld in NYC tomorrow entitled “The Social Aggregator - Widgets Reshape the Social Web.” It should be good.

Attending the conference? Live in NYC? I’d love to meetup. Drop me a line at justin@clearspring.com.

I’m totally pumped.  I’m headed to Miami on Wednesday.  It’s so frickin’ cold in Washington DC.  It’s 82 degrees F in Miami right now.

I’ll be at BarCampMiami and Future of Web Apps (FOWA).  At FOWA, they have a killer speaker lineup like Kathy Sierra, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, and others.

If you’re going to either of those events or live in the Miami area, drop me a line.  I’d love to meetup.

So this will be my first year attending the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas and it’s already promising to be a really special event.

The Library of Congress blog, which I helped get going, is a finalist for the blog category of the SXSW Web Awards.  AWESOME!!!!!

The fun doesn’t stop there.  My friend and renowned designer Samantha Warren is also a finalist in the blog category of the SXSW Web Awards for her blog Bad Ass Ideas.

But wait, there’s more. Ficlets, the collaborative story telling Web app written by my friends Kevin, Jason and Cindy, is a finalist for SXSW Web awards in the CSS and Community categories.

The winners will be announced the evening of Sunday March 9th.  Whomever wins, the first celebratory pitcher of beer will be on me.

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you’ll remember that this fall I announced the concept of WidgetDevCamp.  Well today I’m pleased to announce that WidgetDevCamp will be in Washington, DC on January 25 (evening) & 26th (all day) at Blattner Brunner (1250 Eye Street, NW, 12th Floor).

At the event, we’ll be talking about, discussing,  and learning about modular/social/widget application development.  There will also be a time for developing and designing.  If you had fun at BarCamp DC… if you like chatting about Facbook and all things social web, you need to be at this event.

Of course… the event is free but due to limited space at our venue we only have room for 60 people so sign up now.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, it’d be  HUGE help. There is an option for sponsorship on the registration page.  Maximum sponsorship is $250.

If there is a topic around widgets that you wanna hear or a topic that you wanna speak about, make sure that you make a note on the session ideas wiki page. Note: This page is just for preliminary planning purposes.  The agenda for the event will be made the day of the event… on site.

If you have an idea for an awesome widget, add that the widget ideas page.  Maybe we’ll make it.

This is a community-centric event.  I hope we’ll see you there and I hope you’ll participate.

I was really pleased to see on John Battelle’s blog that the video from O’Reilly Media and CMP’s recent Web 2.0 Summit was now available online. I wasn’t able to make it.  I think the tickets are $2k+ each.  That’s just too much, even if someone else was paying.
So… I can now watch John Battelle’s interviews with technology pioneers like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Ballmer.  This is cool.

But what if I did go to the conference? With the speaker videos available online, it’d have to be for the people i’d meet and for the conversations that I’d have.  But seriously… how much are those worth?$2k?

You can go to a BarCamp event, they’re free, and you’ll meet folks who are just as innovative and imaginative