And did we all huddle around a tiny little laptop monitor? Squinting? Jostling for the merest glimpse of fresh new software? No, we only had to gaze upwards, upon the fancy new video projection screen paid for by Microsoft (via John Bristowe, who was MIA and therefore unable to appreciate it’s beauty). Hey, say what you want about Microsoft, at least they don’t sell you a game console featuring Linux compatibility, then retroactively drop the feature a year later with a machine crippling firmware update. Can I sell stuff, then take it back too? No? …shoot.

David Gluzman was on-hand, snapping photos which he then tagged democampcalgary17 and uploaded to Flickr. See, there’s a right way to do something, and there’s a wrong way. Properly tagging photos and uploading at high resolution is the right way. Making a customer choose between online gamplay and running Ubuntu on their PS3 after bragging about the feature as a selling point over the X-Box 360 is the wrong way.

Looking back, DemoCampCalgary has come quite a ways… out first DemoCamp was held back in April of 2007 at University of Calgary. That was only 2 years after SONY shipped CDs infected with rootkits to their paying customers in 2005! Ah, the memories. I’d almost forgotten!

Here’s hoping we’ll see you at DCC18, in approximately 2 months time.

UPDATE:
If anyone wants to use DemoCamp footage to promote their product, I’d suggest either grabbing the high quality render from Internet Archive, or checking out YouTube’s “start” parameter for embeds, or “t” parameter for hyperlinks.

There’s nothing sadder then a losing video quality for no good reason. Except maybe a puppy with 3 legs. Or a PS3 without Linux.

[Update 2009-01-02: It took a 22 hours after upload completed, but the HD YouTube transcode has completed. If you have crazy bandwidth and CPU power, once video has started playing click HD then fullscreen. Sure didn't take Google long to catch up with the HDTV experience. -g]

You need Flash player 8+ and JavaScript enabled to view this video. DemoCamp Calgary 14.

By clicking on a timecode, you can immediately start watching any event I’ve listed in this summary…

• 00:31 Mark Rosenberger shows off Tagle (called Side Finder back in 2007). This “information connector” tracks your tagged or taggable data, and also automatically propagates desired tags to sites such as Flickr.
• 09:45 Bruno Stepphun demonstrates TheFabler.com which he describes as “YouTube meets Threadless for comics”.
• 14:29 Shawn Abbott speaks on behalf of iNovia Capital a seed and early stage venture fund sponsoring DemoCampCalgary.
• 16:26 Shawn then demonstrates Tynt, a user engagement monitoring tool which is currently in beta.
• 24:43 Michael Sikorsky announces iPhone Dev School, a 2 day course at University of Calgary at the end of May. MJ (Sikorsky) also runs a Startup School at the end of September.
• 27:00 Tys von Gaza and Sean Healy conduct a survey in which iPhone equipped DemoCampers use Surveyor, their iTouch/iPhone feedback tool.
• 32:54 Reg Cheramy and Sean Healy then illustrate what happens when you combine computer geeks, a 3 hour drive, 3G data connectivity and a WiFi/3G tethering iPhone: software development on the go! The result, TwitClipper, was built without a single auto accident.
• 34:58 Some of Reg’s software took more than 3 hours to create. For example, EdiStorm is a “one year in development” application which helps people brainstorm online. Built to be more accessible to the general public than a mind map, it employs “info-bots” to automatically conduct research on whatever items you are brainstorming. For example, if you are brainstorming a name for your baby, EdiStorm will show you search engine matches, and perform a whois on similar domains. This also is useful for brainstorming product names.
• 41:08 Tys von Gaza invites Calgarians down to BarCampEdmonton on May 13th.
• 41:43 Duncan Kinney asks all Calgary bloggers to submit their blog URLs to him for a Calgary blogs project he is working on.
• 42:00 David Gluzman updates us about Wine Camp. The date has been pushed out until late May / early June. This concludes the Wine Camp update.
• 42:26 And finally Andrew Hanna’s GuestReel was employed by DemoCampers to share their thoughts about DemoCampCalgary.

David Gluzman let me use his photos of DemoCampCalgary14 in the video, which is released under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

Using a simple YouTube embed with a &start=123 parameter, you can share a specific presentation on your own web page.

Hey… next time… lets use screen capture software, m’kay? Pointing a video camera at a projection screen is great. It has the same rustic charm as rubbing two sticks together to light a campfire. Which is fun once. Then you reach for the lighter fluid and matches.