I have been to my first BarCamp and my first DemoCamp, all in one week.
Last weekend Chris and I drove to Ottawa for BarCampOttawa and I really enjoyed it. It was a great experience and I highly recommend it to all geeks. The Unconference experience was so much better than your typical sit-and-listen format.
Sessions I went to:

Jason Furlong-Aspect Oriented Programming

Aspects are a really interesting way of approaching typical code problems. Rather than using OO design patterns, you can use an aspect which modifies the generated code to intercepts calls. E.g. in Java it would modify the .class files. I see advantages of using for security and logging, but I am not sure if I would use aspects for other functionality. One concern I have is that if you write an aspect for your code and some newbie programmer has to maintain it, they might not be able to grasp the concepts of Aspects.

User Experience on the Enterprise

Interesting discussion in the kitchen on how to approach enterprise boardrooms with ideas gained from user experience. Some things we discussed:

It is important to get out of your comfort zone and try new areas/industries/technologies

build user feedback into the design phase

talk to business people in their own language

understand what business people's needs are

execs - don't want to hear about the problems, they want to hear about opportunities & solutions

gotta find a champion within a company

Helen Maskery - Usability for Web 2.0

The web2.0 part of this presentation was mostly review for me. But I picked up a few good points.

Same usability issues as before - "who are the users", "what are their goals", "what is the context for use", "what expectations and experience is the user bringing to the interaction"

We have finally gotten most users used to filling in forms and now we are changing that model

It is important to balance between standards and coolness factor (depends how business critical the application is)

user's don't know technology or user design principles

don't want to frustrate your users

35% of users actually navigate the site, the rest use searches or land in the middle of the site (I am surprised it is that high actually, I always jump to the search box)

need to bring the information to the users (tagging, etc....)

need to make customers aware of the result of an action (e.g. if I click this button does that mean I am finished, or do I get a preview)

Visual Search Demo

This is some very cool software from Idée Incthat can help companies with lots of images (i.e. photo stock companies) find images based on: colours, similar images, and/or similar layout.

Ajax

This session was a bit too entry-level for me, so I moved on and had a great discussion in the hallway with a bunch of people.

Patrick Cormier - Government 2.0 Think Tank: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies

Patrick is working on a really interesting gov2.0 initiative to try to get web2.0 concepts into government. And he means any government, any level, any country. They are starting with the issue of trying to reduce the amount of email, by allowing civil servants to subscribe to channels. They eventually want to focus on the external side of web2.0, but wanted to pick a battle they could win first. They face some unique challenges:

constraints due to compliance to laws

blogs must be bilingual if you are interested in volunteering, check them out.

Panel/Discussion: 'What does Web2.0 mean to you?' moderated by Chris Nolan.ca

This was a great panel with around 50 people on the panel talking about what web2.0 means to them. I think it was the best discussion of the day and really showed how different people focus on different concepts within web2.0. There was some disagreement, but it was all in good spirits. I was busy taking notes.

Last night I took my Mum out to see the CanStage presentation of Hair in Toronto. It was absolutely fabulous and we were both very impressed with the quality and energy of the production. I am still singing the songs in my head this morning. I looked at the program and it was the Debut for most of the cast at CanStage and many of them had just graduated, however you would never have guessed from watching the performances.
This is a "must-see" for all Toronto theater-goes! It has a powerful anti-war message which is very applicable in the current situation with Iraq. The lyrics are shocking now, so I can't imagine how this musical must have impacted audiences when it was originally released. My Mum remembers seeing the original in London when she lived there and said there wasn't full nudity in that production.

If you havn't seen the movie; here is the tag line:

It is the dawning of The Age of Aquarius. The tribe is rebelling. American youth are screaming out against The Establishment, Vietnam, segregation and sexual rigidity. Hair, the iconic 60s musical is part pop, part rock, part nostalgia and total visual delight. Recapture your spirit of hope in a strife-torn world.

    I rearranged my blog yesterday. I had gotten sick of the "tertiary triad" scheme I had selected. Cool, I just found something that does NOT have a definition on wikipedia. But, it is explained on this colour theory site. Let me know what you think? Is it easier to view now. There are fewer photos at the top of the main page and they are now Flickr-driven instead of static photos. The right menu is sorted to better reflect the content.

Jen

p.s. It looks better in Firefox than IE, so if you are using IE, please download FireFox now.

It is time to get healthier and I know I needed to lose a few pounds so I have been recording my weight every Wednesday morning on a piece of paper. Chris created a Charting application so I could track my weight against my goal. The numbers are relative, so none of you can tell what I actually weigh :) He hasn't launched it yet, but I got the inside scoop.
Goal: to lose 17 pounds between Feb 22 and May 31st
Plan:

• Exercise more
• Cut down on portions
• Avoid the foods I know I am not supposed to eat
• Splenda instead of sugar in my tea

    Yesterday I noticed my laptop clock was different from the wall clock, then I guessed it was the time change and a quick search confirmed that April 2nd is the day to change clocks.

What amazed me was that I didn't hear a single warning about it. Normally I hear it through several channels and I get sick of hearing about it. This time was the opposite. Good thing it was a Sunday and I didn't have to be anywhere in the morning.

So you are probably wondering how I missed all the notices, well I haven't been listening to the radio since I don't have to drive to work anymore (10 minute walk rules). We don't have cable or satellite for the TV. We do get the daily newspaper, but I hadn't looked at it in a couple days. I checked my blog feeds, but I don't have any Canadian-specific news feeds and none of them talked about the change.

Which means that I really need to subscribe to an RSS feed with more local news!

(also, why doesn't my computer warn me now when it changes. I liked that function)

I know I have not been blogging much recently; things have been really difficult. Some of you who also follow my husband's blog will have seen his memorial posting about my sister Katy who died after a brave battle with her Brian Tumour. I wasn't able to post anything myself at the time. Things are now getting back to normal; not that I will ever forget Katy. I try to focus on remembering her when she was well, but I will always remember how many people she touched when she was in palliative care for the last few weeks of her life. Even though she had trouble communicating near the end, her smiles and facial expressions were precious to us and amazed the staff who have seen so many people go through the last stage of their lives. I really admire all the nurses, doctors, and staff who work with people with terminal illnesses. It must be so difficult to say goodbye to so many people. However, they also have the opportunity to get to know wonderful people like my sister, and to see how their efforts can extend and improve the lives of their patients. Especially Dr. Mason and Maureen at the Pencer Brain Tumour Centre who helped Katy over the many years of her illness. Medical technology really has come a long way, and changed a lot even over the past 10 years. Katy recovered from her third surgery so much faster than her first surgery almost 10 years ago and there are a lot more treatment options available now compared to when this started. Which shows that the funding going to research is really having an impact; hopefully one day a cure will be found. If you consider that this world has four basic dimensions (time + space), then it means that Katy will always exist between 1970 and 2006. And she filled that time with so much, more than others do in a whole lifetime. I miss her, Jen