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Edinburgh rapidly departs behind me as I fly over the Atlantic, there’s one last little interview from BarCamp Scotland, about the official launch (on Friday 9th March) of Scotedupedia, the wikipedia for Scottish Education. Ewan McIntosh explains more in the first part of today’s show.

And as bonnie Scotland dissappears, over the horizon comes America and Austin. SXSW also starts on Friday 9th, but to9 get you all ready, I caught up with Hugh Forrest, who helps run SXSW Interactive, to find out a bit more about the history of SXSW, the roots of the Interactive show, and some of the fun and high jinks attendees can expect over the next 10 days…

BarCamp Scotland and SXSW (Interactive):

Ewan McIntosh, ScotEduPedia.
Hugh Forrest, SXSW Interactive.

Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Scotland, Ewan McIntosh, Hugh Forrest, SXSW, SXSW 2007, SXSW Interactive, Ewan Spence.

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More from BarCamp Scotland today. With such a short event (four hours in the venue, around three hours of eventually programmed material) there wasn’t a huge amount of time to grab people, find the stories, take part myself, do some mingling, and generally capture the atmosphere. But the two Tech Conference shows, hopefully, capture the essence of the event. And act as a warm-up for the rest of the month.

So here we have the core BarCamp ideas - first of all was Ed Molyneux, who just had “something nice to show people” and gatherred everyone to a table. I dropped teh microphone in the middle to capture his impromptu demo. Secondly, some young podcast upstart called Ewan Spence (ahem… - Cameron) took to the main hall to present some ideas and thoughts on podcasting.

To wrap it all up, I talked to organiser Ewan McIntosh on the event, how it went, and what plans there are for BarCamp Scotland 2…

BarCamp Scotland:
Ed Molyneux, Free Agent Central.
Ewan Spence, Podcasting Overview.
Ewan McIntosh, Closing Remarks.

Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Scotland, Ewan McIntosh, Ed Molyneux, Free Agent Central, Ruby on Rails, Ewan Spence.

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right clicking on this link or press play and listen in your browser.

And so it begins! Welcome to the first show in what looks to be an absolute manic March for the Tech Conference Show. With coverage from BarCamp Scotland, BarCamp Austin, SXSW Interactive, SXSW Film, SXSW Music, BlogHer Business 07 and O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference 2007, we really will be taking the Tech Conference Show everywhere… so you don’t have to.

Thankfully it’s not going to be a one man show (although i am allegedly holding it all together). A number of bloggers and podcasters will be joingin me throughout the March run (including Eric Skiff and Julien Smith) to help cover some of the larger events (notably SXSW), but there’ll be other big names popping their voices into your heads as the month goes on. Feel free to drop me an email (ewanspence@gmail.com) if you’ll be at any of the events and want to be interviewed, have a story, or just buy me a beer.

So let’s get started. BarCamp Scotland happened this week, and I was there to see how Scotland’s first Unconference got on (quite well is the answer). So after a little intro from myself, today’s show comes from the BarCamp venue, Appleton Tower at Edinburgh University’s Department of Infomatics.

BarCamp Scotland:
Ewan McIntosh, Opening Remarks.
Tony Farndon, The Flock Web Browser.

Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Scotland, Ewan McIntosh, Tony Farndon, Flock

Anyway, BarCamp Scotland. As with all BarCamps, people have posted up on teh site Wiki what they could talk about, but quite frankly it’ll all be decided on teh day by a vote… or a big piece of paper… or just ignoring anyone from west of the Harthill Services. With the number of businesses and academics on the list, it’s gong to be a great day of contrasts and information exchange.

And, in a sense, it’s my warm up day. Held on the Saturday, the first few Tech Conference shows in March will of course feature BarCamp Scotland quite heavile, but a few days after that, I’ll be on the multi-leg aircraft flights to get to the USA to start on the behemoth of SXSW. So four hours of conferencing, recording, interviewing and mingling is going to be my equivalent of some stretching around Blackheath before starting the London Marathon.

It’s gonna be fun!