Always a good time. I will be there; talking, drinking, drinking and maybe some talking too.

Last night Orlando celebrated Independence Day in its usual fashion, with a huge fireworks display over downtown's Lake Eola. Apart from the time when a mortar tipped sideways, skipped across the lake and came with 25 yards of going into the crowd, and what looked like a misfire when the raft shooting the fireworks had a couple fireworks explode before they were launched, the show was pretty good, albeit interesting.

Check out the pics in my Flickr photostream.

Ignite Orlando is a local event that was held at Wall Street this past Wednesday that brings artists, geeks, academics, entrepreneurs, techies, and others to network with a twist. The event is organized by local volunteers and was a great success this past week. Its much in the same vein as BarCamp but not quite as large and fits quite nicely into a single evening. The thing that sets Ignite apart from other events is the rapid-fire style talks and a hands-on contest that acts as intermission during the night.

If you had five minutes to talk to Orlando on stage, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Combine this with an onsite contest where contestants are grouped together to make things and you have Ignite Orlando.

This being the second Ignite Orlando, the talks overall were better than the first with every one being high-quality and very informative. The standouts for me included Greg Rollett's "How Rock Stars Can Change the World", Jessica Mariko's "How to be a Creative who Actually Completes Projects", Ryan Price's "How to Kick Ass at your Job", and, of course, Cory Collier's "You Love Death Metal, Here's Why". The full list of speakers can be found on the Ignite Orlando website. Overall, a very wide range of very interesting topics were covered; enlightening stuff.

This is one event that definitely has a strong foothold in the Orlando community. I'll keep you posted on Ignite Orlando 3 which I will definitely be talking at.

photo by corycollier

April 18 started off like any other day − quiet, tranquil, peaceful − until the geeks started to gather on Wall St. Pandemonium and and mass anarchy soon followed. Just kidding! The day, as every other Barcamp, was filled with great topics and people. I meet a lot of great folks and even did my own little talk on user interface design, which, from what I was told, was a huge hit (I went into a dream-like trance that could not be broken).

The standouts for me would have to be Done21's Help Kill Internet Explorer 6 (ie6update.com − very good stuff) and Eric Marden's How to Keep Barcamp Going All Year. Also, a great addition was having tees printed on-demand by a screenprinter. And with 400+ people, we sure did need it. The after-party was a great addition too (best time for Bayou is after 11).

Check out all the photos of Barcamp on Flickr. And also, all the speaker's slides are on the main barcamporlando.org.

photo by ozone567

It all started in early September with Izeafest. Great speakers filled the Grand Bohemian in downtown O-town. Among them Christopher Schmitt, John Chow and Scott Allen. The great talks focused on blogging from all perspectives, from the casual blogger (like me) to professional I-pay-the-bills-with-my-blog bloggers.

A couple weeks later a few hundred techs and bloggers converged on the Rollins campus in Winter Park for BlogOrlando. This was a local event but it sure didn't seem like it. People came from a couple states away for the one day event that was jammed with social and new media talks. The big stand out sessions for me focused on Wordpress. Eric from xentek.net had a great talk about theming Wordpress with the K2 theme and Mark Jaquith's talk about advanced Wordpress. The parties that bookended the event were great for networking and and meeting the speakers. Overall, awesome event.

The last conference, Create Chaos was by far the biggest and the most relevant to me, being a designer and all... A total of five days filling with everything creative.

The creative industry event Create Chaos 2008 boasts 50+ expert speakers, a 40+ exhibitor Expo Hall centered around a Medici Garden Intersection with inspirational and educational stage presentations, a Job Fair specifically geared toward creative professionals and students, and unique networking parties/events throughout the week.

The real standout presentations were Bill Beachy's Designing for Apparel talk and Christopher Schmit's JQuery for People who Don't Code. This event was huge. The expo hall was packed with sponsors and booths. I easily brought back 30lbs of swag. Fun stat: the expo hall and main room were located in the largest no-column room in the world. Yeah, it was that big.

With so many events being so close together, I was lucky to make it out to as many as I did. Up next? FOWA Miami 2009.....

One of the little perks of working at NFi is the ability to work on projects like this. CoLab, if you haven't heard, is the home for those wanting to have an office in downtown Orlando while collaborating in an environment built for innovation. Creatives, developers, freelancers and independents will now have a cheap alternative to their own home office, but it's also more than that too. CoLab adds a way for like-minded people to connect, network and collaborate.

The open house will be this Wednesday the 27th. Swanky food and drink will be provided from FinnHenry's and a raffle for coworking space will happen too. The main focus of the open house is to show off the space but also get feedback from what the community wants CoLab to be.

The logo was designed by Danny Jones and the website is currently in the process of being designed - more to come on that later.

So stop by Wednesday starting at 6pm if you're interested, curious or just wanna meet some cool people. I'll see you there.

Well, this year's BarCamp was great, not that I had anything to compare to since this was the first year in Orlando. A good time was had by all. The presentations were great (besides "cow orking"...how lame...). But I really would have liked to see more front end/light coding presentations. SSome stuff was totally over my head.

The venue was great. The place was packed at the peak but no one was uncomfortable. There must have been 10 or more photographers there. Not just people with regular cameras, I'm talking about big dollar SLRs. All the pics can be found at Flickr and on the BarCamp site.

Big thanks to Gregg Pollack and everyone else who helped to make BarCamp Orlando possible. See you next year.

BarCamp is coming to Orlando, Sunday, September 23rd!

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

Since its first inception in Palo Alto, California 2 years ago, BarCamp events have sprung up all over the country and have even reached as far as England, Poland, Switzerland and Bulgaria.

Since this will be my first BarCamp, I am especially excited to be attending. At last count the registration was up to 170! It's gonna be a crazy sight to see that many nerds and geeks all in one place at the same time. I hope they have enough alcohol to keep us calm.

To learn more check out the official BarCamp Orlando blog.