DemoCampToronto11 – open to any?

I agree with Rohan: last night’s democamp failed to live up to expectations.
The demos

• The best demo was indeed Sunir’s demonstration of the Design Bibliography wiki, which had some pretty funky gadgets to support the application-specific workflow. Yet as I’ve said to Sunir before, there are plenty of wikis out there (40 new *wiki*.(com|org|net) sites are registered every day), and platforms such as QEDWiki, TWiki and JotSpot are better equipped to act as a platform for applications. Sunir’s code would have appeared as a Plugin for any of those.
• I arrived a bit late for AutoSSL, but the idea of securing web-based services emiting from the house is valid enough. Good luck to them.
• Firestoker – there were murmours from the tech community about the lack of substance in the demo. To an extent I think Thomas gave a more compelling explanation at our presentations at McMaster last week. I know Firestoker are part way between major technology reshifts, and I wondered whether they didn’t want to show everything they’d built as b5media were in the room. Without a significant demo I can’t tell what Firestoker have over Traction
• My Studio Assistant was interesting if only that it showed the need for targeted vertical application for underserved markets. Arnold Wytenburg didn’t give market potential figures but its clear that tailoring to such specific needs and user profile can provide an uncontested niche and healthy returns.
• Andrew Reynolds’ demo of the Selenium: thanks Andrew: I’ll take a look!
  

  Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just as real users do. And they run in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. No other test tool covers such a wide array of platforms.

  • Browser compatibility testing. Test your application to see if it works correctly on different browsers and operating systems. The same script can run on any Selenium platform.

  • System functional testing. Create regression tests to verify application functionality and user acceptance.

  As for what went wrong with DemoCamp – well, for a start, its an open forum. No revenues means no one is paid to ask the qualifying questions up front. Or take the money out of the equation: no one asks the qualifying questions up front. And maybe the questions are insufficient. Maybe they’d need to give a demo in private up front.

  It’s just a datapoint, not a trend. I’ll be at DemoCampToronto12 for sure. If for no other reason than I like meeting the people.

  The people

  Its to meet the people that I really go. I like knowing who I know, but to expand my network is really why I go. Contrasting the Mesh Meetup last week and last night’s democamp Rob Schaumer, Rohan and I sat at the same table at Pogue Mahones expressed frustration with the pub sit-down-format.

  At Mesh Meetup we could er, mesh and meetup. At Pogues we were sat down. Fixed to meet the same people for the duration of people sitting. Yes, we could have each moved, but there’s not the mixing you get when everyone is stood up.

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