Sperrobjekt Weblog

On Sunday, I led my first session at a BarCamp. At earlier BarCamps I was asked to show off some of Serendipity's features, so that's what I did. Looking back, at Carl’s request, from almost a week later I must say that it was a pretty solid session. However, most of the attendees already used Serendipity as their blog software, so it was preaching to the converted most of the time. BarCamp Berlin 2 was intended to be an international BarCamp, and many sessions were held in English, so I adopted that and tried my best. After some trouble with my Ubuntu (still Feisty) notebook that did not correctly recognize the beamer, all went pretty smoothly thanks to Tobias who let me use his notebook.

I did not prepare any slides, but set up a separate installation of S9y 1.2 for this session. I added only the Spartacus and the adduser plugins simply because I wanted to let the others play around with S9y after the session. Only two participants registered, but that's okay. After a short introduction of S9y's concepts, I demonstrated how to install plugins and templates using Spartacus, created some entries and showed how to add and manage media. Finally I touched on user management and explained the Bulletproof framework. Fortunately, the other participants chimed in quite frequently and we had a lively discussion and exchange of opinions. Some issues could be clarified pretty quickly. One user still has trouble with the popfetcher plugin now and then; I guess he will have to ask for help in the forum.

Two more aspects came up during the end of the session. First, it was news to most that the admin area can be themed, too, but the Bulletproof backend theme did not exactly raise a cheer; there is still work to do backend-wise (both HTML code [tables!] and design). There were a few Wordpress users around who asked why we thought they should make the switch to S9y. The answer was simple and straightforward: Security! There have been too many WP bugs around lately, I guess.

Too bad no one seems to have taken or published a photo of my session. If any of the participants wants to share his thoughts (or photos), you're welcome to leave a comment or drop me a mail. All in all, it was great to exchange ideas with other S9y users face to face. It would be really great if we could get the envisaged !WordCamp (=NotWordPressCamp) off the ground next year.