For those of you who missed the hackathon post, check it out and help to solve a real problem the Student Union have. Prizes from kapow.me for the winners.

Image - FF+

Perhaps a BarCamp first, certainly a BarCampBrighton first - Geek Yoga. We will be having yoga sessions on Sunday afternoon being run by Jenny.

Times of sessions are:

• 13:45 - 14:15
• 14:30 - 15:00
• 15:30 - 16:00

It will be quite gentle as she is aware most people will be in jeans and t-shirts.  It will focus on shoulders, wrists, stretching and breathing exercises - all the problem area for those who spend far too much time hunched over a keyboard.

Jenny will bring a few mats, but it would be good if you can bring their own - you might already be bringing one to sleep on anyway….

So, its nearly BarCamp and we’re running round getting all the equipment sorted. We’d like to thank SCIP for helping us out at short notice with some of the projectors and screens we’ve been looking for.

We’re still searching for two more projectors and another screen at the moment, so if you think you might be able to lend us one for the weekend, please get in touch (send an email to bcb2 [at] googlegroups [dot] com).

Photo by Aaron Gustafson

When you come to register we will have printed a badge for you, but we won’t have lanyards or badge wallets. Displaying your badge at all times is essential for security, so can we ask you bring along an old lanyard and badge wallet from another event. If you are going to dconstruct bring your lanyards and badge from there.

Just in case you have not heard the term before, a “lanyard” is the event industry name for the ribbon used to suspend your badge from.

Our Gold sponsors, MySpace developer platform, are going to be running a session at BarCamp on cool stuff you can do with their API. If you miss the session, they will be on hand all through the event to talk to you, run demos and help you play with the API.

In order to take advantage and join in the fun however, you must sign up to the MySpace Developer Platform by this coming Wednesday, as it can take up to 2 days to be approved.

Signing up is a 2 step process:

1. Create a MySpace account or, if you have one Sign in to MySpace
2. Go to http://developer.myspace.com/modules/apps/pages/ApplyDevSandbox.aspx and fill in the form (you have to fill in all the fields)

Then come along, meet MySpace and have a play!

Good news! There will be an arrival breakfast, kindly sponsored by The Guardian. Make sure you get to the event for 10AM and fill yourself up for a day of fun sessions.

Here’s a message from the Guardian:

“Guardian.co.uk one of the largest news sites, with 18M international users, has won the Webby award for the Best Newspaper Website for the last 3 years.

Recently guardian.co.uk has undergone a transformation that has seen a redesign and a change in information architecture to be more resource oriented. Behind the scenes, the technology platform has been completely replaced and updated using agile development methods.

We’re really pleased to be sponsoring and taking part in Brighton’s 3rd BarCamp, and look forward to meeting you all there!”

Yes, we are pleased to announce The Guardian will be in attendence at the event - so keep an eye out for their talks! Thanks again guys.

Photo by Jason Cartwright

We are running a Hackathon Challenge this year to keep you all busy over the weekend. The challenge is being set by our hosts at the Students Union. We thought we would detail the challenge here to give you a headstart - get your thinking caps on, prize and kudos for the winner!

John from the Students Union can explain the situation best:

“The Students’ Union is keen to improve its marketing of events & entertainments, general Union news/campaigns and Groups & Societies events across campus.

In both our bars we have 40” plasma screens that are rarely used. We could just connect a laptop direct to the screens and utilise Powerpoint or a similar presentation software to have scrolling/timed ‘adverts’ promoting any upcoming events and entertainments, but we feel that would just look a bit boring/old-hat & would ideally like to achieve a more modern/sexy solution that would be effective in marketing terms, whilst also helping to give a slight ‘lift’ to the bar environments.

There are commercial systems available (such as www.bigscreenonline.co.uk) , however they are very expensive (c.£4K per bar incl installation), and we simply can’t afford this, ☹

If possible, in an ideal situation we could really benefit from having a system whereby the screens could be connected to a laptop and have any combination of below possible (visible on-screen at the same time);

• Allow maybe a small window to show TV (maybe Sky News or similar)
• Have maybe a ‘portrait’ window that could show our latest posters advertising everything from Club-Nights, bands, comedy shows, Clubs & Societies events.
• Another window showing/promoting food menu items, daily specials etc?
• RSS feed?

If above is all too much for a small project, basically anything that could allow us to utilise the system to better promote all of above would be great!”

http://interesting.ly, the social RSS reader that learns from what you do elsewhere on the internet.