I eventually did my small presentation, with the effect that I realized a good title for it just while presenting it. Here you can find the slides, published on google docs:

Geeky note #1: presenting in google docs is ok… for a barcamp at least. But no nifty transition and no timer yet :(

Geeky note #2: the speech was meant to generate a discussion, no demo was presented, although some code already exists and I’m looking forward to push it to github soon.

Among the conversations I participated to today:
* Distributed social network primer, Ben Ward exploring XFN and microformats
* Guy Rintoul on the geography of technology – from a pretty abstract start this one developed in a quite rich discussion on scenarios of possible future perceptions of space and place.
* Pedro‘s Agile Low Cost Usability Testing – a few tools and guidelines to squeeze usability testing into “everyday life” of development projects
* Some eye tracking case studies (cool to see a Tobii output again after quite a long time :) )

Kudos to Ross Bruniges and the whole staff. This has been a great camp.
Oh, and thanks to the sponsor too: eBay’s rubik’s cube’s been keeping me busy since I jumped on the train (and will probably haunt me for the next few weeks).

Among the topics I’ve learned about today:
* Arduino rfid hacks (by Nigel Crawley with whom I attended the RFID workshop at the Dana Centre a couple of weeks ago – it’s been interesting, although a bit frustrating, to see where he went from there)
* Making a better system for government consults. With Harry Metcalfe from tellthemwhatyouthink, and also Rob McKinnon from theyworkforyou.co.nz.
* How to make a proper Italian espresso (no, really!) – with Carmen Boscolo and Julius Solaris, who then went on presenting his ideas on building a “proper”, all-in-one solution for event management. Thanks to a really interested audience, the follow-up conversation lead to the potential basis to start outlining and/or building something! Fingers crossed (and yes, good espresso is obviously essential to properly manage a conference, so everything fits).
* Usable Conference, a project by Jure Chalev on creating guidelines for a successful conference, something along the line of what we did in Italian on the Bzaar Wiki – note: I think a set of tangible deliverables would really help in this case, like a checklist that you can actually print and carry with you when you’re considering venues, or at the event itself.
* Usability testing for console games, with Andy Budd. A lot of interesting facts and ideas, first of all that, quite unexpectedly, most of the console games that hit the shelves don’t actually go through a proper usability testing process. Key idea: games, unlike for example office suites, cannot afford to be unusable.
* Comet web application architecture, with a cool demo chaos game session.

A great part of the day has been also, as usual, the presence of old friends with which to hang on,
and force you to talk through your thoughts.