After all is done, BarCampLA was a good conference. Kareem Mayan, who I spoke to before I flew out to the USA, was one of the organisers. How did the Conference go?

Travis Kalanick demoed RedSwoosh to the BarCampLA crowd – a peer to peer file sharing system that can be implemnted byt he web browser/ But it’s not Bit Torrent (they launched before that P2P app). What makes it so different, and useful?

Amy Raymond is behind Cheapskatin LA, a site that helps people filter the thousands of shows that are onin LA by cost. If it’s free, or under five dollars, then it’ll be on her site.

Slide is a new type of RSS reader,t hat uses not only your feeds, but the recommendations of feeds from your friends and those in you social cirlce, as Michael Poweres explains.

Hosts of BarCampLA, Little Radio, have an amazing space for their internet radio station. President Jimmy Brayl talks about the station and its goals.

Marc Brown is the founder and President of Buzznet, a social software site that is very Web 2.0, and hooks into a number of other sites, such as MySpace

Ori Neidich, as well as working at one of the many LA SFX houses, is the co-founder and CTO of Hollywood Hill, an organisation that uses the talents of Hollywood to affect social change.

Matt Homan wished he had chosen the BarCamp name, as he organisies similar un-conferneces like BarCamp, but for lawyers and legal bloggers.

Henri Duong talks about LiveDigital.com, a social network site geared towards media users.

Chris Messina calls himself a “Director of Experience and Open Source Ambassador” and works foe the company Flock.

Nicole Simon talks with him about new features in Flock, microformats, Barcamp, the Renaissance and challenges in relationship 2.0.

The first conference in the March USA trip is going to be BarCamp Los Angeles. BarCamps are almsot the opposite of massive, hotel occupying, $1000 ticket conferences. It’s as simple as possible. A big empty space, enough sponosrs to get on board to cover costs and beer. There’s no program expect for a big white sheet of paper, and you sign up on the day to present on whatever you feel like – or talk about podcasting while recording a ‘live’ podcast from the podium (that’s Nicole and I’s plan!).

Kareem Mayan is one of the organisers of the Los Angeles BarCamp (LA’s first) so I caught up with during the half time of an Olympic Hockey game to find out more about Mayan, and how you go about organising and running an un-conference.
Links

• Kareem Mayans’ Blog
• BarCamp Los Angeles Homepage

Welcome to the first podcast in the March 2006 series. In this show, Nicole and I chat about what we’ve got planned for the upcoming shows. Nicole (www.crueltobekind.org) will be joining me at BarCampLA and O’Reilly’s Etech to help with the coverage. It’s her first Etech (and my third) so what differences in our expectations are there? What are we looking to do with the podcasts? And what, exactly, is the schedule?

Did you believe us when we said “we go so you don’t have to?” Well hold onto your MP3 player, because we’re about to prove it to you, with coverage from….

BarCampLA
March 4-5, Los Angeles, California.

O’Reilly Emerging Technology
March 6-9, San Diego, California.

SXSW Interactive.
March 10-14, Austin, Texas.

Mix06
20th Mar to 22 Mar, Las Vegas

If you’re not yet subscribed, the feed for your podcatching client is techconf.thepodcastnetwork.com/feed. Want to be part of the show from any of these conferences? Then give Ewan a mail… ewanspence@gmail.com.