Zap your PRAM 2008 October 20th, 2008
I was fortunate to spend this weekend with some talented and cool people at Dalvay by the Sea in Prince Edward Island. Zap your PRAM is a kind of “unconference” inspired by SHIFT and the like where a bunch of tech people get together and hang out for a few days and talk about stuff.
The setting was pretty spectacular, augmented by the cold weather and wind. It encouraged a lot of sitting around the fire inside which was good for the conversation. The schedule was pretty loose but the organizers managed to pack in a lot of content without feeling like it was rushed or hurried. Topics ranged from social networking tools and their impact (Peter Rukivina on plazes), design for service (Hannah Donovan from last.fm), a how-to on song construction (Brad Turcotte of bradsucks) to a discussion on what’s happening in the economy (Robert Paterson) and working writers in Los Angeles (Tessa Blake and Ian Williams). Audience participation was good and the discussions lively. At the end of the day on Friday and Saturday, we had discussion panels on design and work. On Sunday, SilverOrange showed us a demo of ClusterShot and we got to see what the people at Idée Inc. have been working on. I think their image recognition demo blew everyone in the room away.
And there was food. Oh the food. How I miss the food.
I did my best to get the word out about Firebug and spoke to a few people about some of the neat things we’re working on, but honestly, almost everybody had heard of it and used it daily. I think Steven and Dan of SilverOrange both told their Employee of The Year story which, I guess is more-correctly an Object of the Year story since they usually give the award to something non-human. This year, the two entities in the running were Firebug and the Drink Fridge. Naturally, Drink Fridge won for all its hard work and life-saving beverages, but really, it’s an honor just to be in the same category as Drink Fridge. A huge, humbling honor.
Seriously though, it was great being able to represent the team and get the word out. The enthusiasm and appreciation for all the hard work that’s gone into Firebug (and Firefox, for that matter) was really amazing. I took home a few good ideas and hopefully will be able to stay in touch with some of the people I met and maybe get a few extra beta-testers. *hint*hint* (Firebug 1.3 beta 1 is out now on getfirebug.com/releases)
The whole thing was inspiring. There were many photographers there in force (Rannie, Cal, Stephen, …), so I barely took my camera out of the bag, preferring to talk to people instead. So many people doing cool things from all over the world, including this little part of it in Atlantic Canada. Thanks to the good people at SilverOrange and Reinvented for putting the whole thing together and making it happen. To everybody else there, thanks for being awesome.
Posted in General, Mozilla | Comments (4)
October 20th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Firebug was robbed for employee of the year. Firebug changed our lives and how we work, the drink fridge just made us lazy.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
A vote is a vote. It should be noted that we had to vote twice as it was a tie for #1 when we had 3 tickets. When we removed the third ticket from the ballot the fridge won by 1 vote.
Unfortunately this year there are some other tough contestants. There is a new upstairs couch which has won over our hearts. The strongest contestant though is the 52 inch LCD TV at the group work area….
October 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
that is indeed some tough competition. I look forward to the results of Couch vs. 52″ LCD TV!
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:33 am
[...] Dalvay-by-the-Sea Hotel. By now, the weekend has been summarized, memorialized and philosophized across the zaposphere, but here are a few of my early [...]