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Geekcamp Baguio or The First Geekcamp In The Philippines
This is about the May 5 event which I co-organized with Andrei Navarro and Vincent Tabor.
Geekcamp Baguio is the first Geekcamp in the Philippines. For those who don’t know what Geekcamp is, it’s “an international network of technology-only unconferences.” There’s Geekcamp MY and Geekcamp SG too.
How and when did it start?
We had intentions of organizing an event last year but we didn’t know what it would be. I went to Manila for the first Philippine Ruby Users Group meetup I attended mid-March. I didn’t know what to say or what to call the event but suddenly said there will be a “mini-Geekcamp” in Baguio. That’s when it all started. We just had a few days to look for speakers and sponsors.
It is the first event I have co-organized. I am also not much of a speaker but I tried. My talk was about mobile application development or particularly my research and experience with test-driven development frameworks for mobile app development.
Here’s the overview and introduction to Geekcamp Baguio.
“Nosebleed” Talks
Maybe some talks were difficult to comprehend because of some are advanced topics that developers with experience in Ruby on Rails or software development in general could appreciate but I think speakers were very articulate in English. They were all very credible too because they are IT consultants. The important thing about development is practice. I am very sure all speakers are experienced developers and some are senior-level.
I like to thank the speakers:
Smart Devnet and The IdeaSpace Foundation
Jim Ayson’s talk presents several opportunities for mobile app developers in the Philippines. How many people in the country have credit cards and how many people have mobile phones? It’s quite obvious that only a few Filipinos have credit cards. Smart presents a solution and I am very much interested on taking part and joining their program. IdeaSpace Foundation provides capital for developers and technopreneurs. Smart Communications, Inc. is just one of the companies that founded IdeaSpace. There are more questions about it. Many attendees showed their interest on IdeaSpace.
“Let’s build a crowd-sourced, location-aware, social-networked healthcare mobile app in 15 minutes,” he said. LOL. He did create a functional and fun app during his presentation. It was so cool. We awfully regret not taking a video of it.
Adrian of BadSector Labs clearly explained the importance of responsive web design. I am learning responsive web design and I think it’s great he gave this talk because many designers only design for large resolutions and do not think of mobile devices.
His talk on “software development processes” was quite good and something all developers should appreciate. Most of the talks were about Ruby.
Because Andrei’s talk was so interesting, it became the discussion during the networking break. Some consultants shared their opinions and Shane Clark mentioned “communication” as a key to success. Ken Daganio mentioned something about being realistic. I would agree most that being realistic is important because many times projects fail because of unrealistic expectations and low budget. Jim Ayson agreed that often you can’t expect the best behaviour from developers and the budget matters.
Introduced him as one of the senior Ruby on Rails developers I know and one of my mentors. His talk was on “lean software development.” He bashed Rails but showed other options like Sinatra and Cuba. I also use his project dep which is an alternative to bundler for Ruby developers.
One concern on lean software development is “slower development” but I agree that it is possible to develop something without Rails with the same features and the same amount of time.
So this was the surprise: Bryan was not one of the expected speakers. His talks on Ruby and Ruby on Rails (yes, he talked twice) were all impromptu and well-delivered even if he didn’t get much sleep. What’s funny is he talked about Rails after Cyril bashed Rails. Again, it was unexpected. And his token is still an IOU note.
I like to thank John not just for giving his talk but for convincing other colleagues from BadSector labs to join. He did very well in explaining “Git.” I know Git but he still mentioned things I didn’t know especially about the history of Git.
His talk was so advanced. It’s Backbone.js. Again, it was well-delivered and he even showed a demo project.
He gave some practical advice on TDD. “Cut & Paste TDD” is something which could work even for those who are not using Ruby. I appreciate what he said about “testing first” and the benefits of thinking of expected behaviour before writing code.
I like to thank the co-organizers:
I have no regrets because of these people who are reliable. I look forward to their leadership for future events. If it won’t be Geekcamp, it’s probably something else which is still relevant for technologists.
For everyone who attended, thank you so much.
Getting from Manila to Baguio and back to Manila is not easy. Apart from the time it takes to get here in Baguio, there are many risks that is why we chose the month of May even if it seemed impossible as we didn’t have much time.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Thanks to these reliable companies:
- Dencio's at Mile Hi Center, Camp John Hay
- AIM Conference Center, Camp John Hay
- Bahay Kurio Shoppe, Porta Vaga Bldg., Session Road
- Raytheonet Media Ventures, Porta Vaga Bldg., Session Road
And thanks to the photographer. All photos on this blog post were taken by Paolo Marinduque.
The next Geekcamp as Andrei suggested would be called “Geekcamp Philippines.” Hopefully, it would be more organized with more time and sponsors.