While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they’re yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Unfollow Quandry

In the fourth episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Alex Muse of Big in Japan.

We start out talking about the new online etiquette quandary: is it polite to unfollow someone in Twitter? How do you sort out this gift economy stuff when the gift is your attention?

The Dallas Tech Scene

Being based up in Dallas, I ask Alex to profile the tech scene in the Dallas area. Alex says that he’s sort of frustrated with the tech scene in Dallas, jealous of Austin’s and, of course, the bar area. From this, Alex and some bar-bound friends started up bi-weekly happy hour events up in his parts. This kicked of Spring Stage, where the drink-together idea is spread to different tech scenes nationally. There’s some impressive outcomes from Spring Stage: Alex knows of 6 startups that have grown from it.

Here, I ask Alex to profile the technology tribes up in Dallas. He says there’s some rails guys and increasing mobile interest. Pulling back from the hotness technologies, I ask what the other, more traditional tech silos are like: for example, Sabre/Travelocity is up there, along with Match.com and about 4 other online dating sites. In the past, there was QueCat, which we all fondly remember

Dallas vs. Forth Worth

Wrapping up, I ask Alex to tell us what Dallas folks think of Fort Worth folks. From an outsider’s perspective, “DFW,” seems like one big metroplex. But, from within, Dallas is “totally different” than Fort Worth.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they’re yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Austin Tech Scene

In the third episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Mando Escamilla of Symbiot.

Him being a local, I ask him what he thinks of the Austin tech-scene. He says it seems “obsequies,” more specifically, that it’s highly fragmented and not too well connected. It seems, he goes on, that tech people are not too social with each other. Why? Perhaps because of the city is spread out, maybe because there’s no big name employers, maybe it’s another reason.

Rails Update

I then ask Mando to give us an update on the rails community. To hear him tell it, the old school rails folks have made up with the merb folks and are successfully preventing community forking.

Desktop Ajax?

From here, we get into a discussion of RIA’s, specifically about desktop RIAs. While he’s been skeptical, Mando recently started using a new Twitter app, Spaz. This gets us into a discussion of using desktop RIAs to develop Ajax applications, as opposed to using Flex or another non-HTML language. Here, I dig deeper to get Mando to tell us if he’d move to desktop application development using this model. We brain storm about what’d this look-like and how you might transition to it.

He’s still reluctant to move from web applications, but he’s starting to creek open the door a bit on the possibility. Still, he likes that Spaz is all HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but on the desktop. (See more commentary on this in a recent post of mine about RIA’s at SXSW).

Disclosure: Adobe is a client, as are Microsoft and Appceletor.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they’re yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

The Human Relational Database

In the second episode of Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, Zane and I talk with Mark Cathcart, Director of Systems Engineering at Dell. I start out asking Mark about his life in the IT world, starting off, as he put, as a relational database where he shuffled punch cards to look up demographics and other info through the punch card hatch.

After this, we dip into Mark’s time at IBM working on systems, in particular a little stint he had in the hospital making “scribbly diagrams” and working on one of the earliest IBM laptops.

Chips, man

Pulling ourselves from the IBM days, Mark tells us what he’s up to at Dell. This gets us into a discussion of laptop chips, ARM processors and the trick the power button plays on you.

Getting to one of my favorite boondoggle ideas, I ask Mark what he thinks about the looming problem of multi-core programming. The core issue is getting developers to start doing multi-threaded coding as the normal course. When you cross the difficulty of caches, locks, and all that with the ease of virtualization, Mark says that there’s “no point” in worrying about it too much for the average application developer.

Mainframe Heated Curries

Next, I ask Mark to tell us about his thoughts on cloud computing. While it’s not in his current wheelhouse at Dell, he points to Dell’s Jimmy Pike. Here, Zane’s server room scotch tasting fantasies elicits a story from Mark about warming his curries in cruise-line IBM mainframes.

Pulling out another pet-topic, we discuss netbooks, which Mark doesn’t have much of an opinion of, liking larger machines. Somehow, this gets us to talking about the Office ribbon.

The Singles Car

Finally, we close out with a non-tech topic. What with the Austin commuter rail coming in, eventually, I ask Mark to tell us about the idea of “The Singles Car” in New York and if that’d work here in Austin. As Mark says, “I don’t think it needs it here in Austin. there’s enough cool places to go that you don’t need to hang out on a train to meet someone.”

Disclosure: IBM and Dell are clients.

While at barcampAustin this year, my pal Zane Rockenbaugh (Dog Food Software) and I recorded a series of interviews with barcampAustin and SXSW attendees and friends. We dubbed it Profiles in Courage, and now they’re yours to enjoy.

Download the episode directly here, subscribe to the RedMonk Radio podcast feed to have it automatically downloaded to iTunes or other podcatcher, or just click play below to listen to it right here:

Cloud Boy

Zane and I kicked off Profiles in Courage, barcampAustin edition, talking with Jesse Silver, co-founder CloudCamp and the CCIF. We jump right in and start talking about “large, New York banks” are using cloud computing. From there, we get Jesse to tell us about the history of CloudCamp. We go over the unconference format and the sponsorship options. Part of the idea of CloudCamp – as with all “camps” – is that local folks take over organizing camps regionally: so there’s CloudCamps in San Francisco, London, Atlanta, and one coming up April 24th and 25th in Austin.

Selling Cloud Standards

Tacking back to cloud computing in general, I ask Jesse how he’d reply to a common reply I get about cloud standards: I’m a (cloud) startup, and I don’t have time to worry about standards bodies. This gets us into a discussion of the current cloud standards efforts.

Get Into Software

Finally, I ask Jesse what he thinks of the software industry now, is it a good field for “The Kids” to get into, or is it tapped out? Jesse’s answer – painfully summarized – is that software is in and helps drive everything, so of course it’s good to be in.

The organizers of this year’s barcampAustin asked me if I knew anyone who’d be interested in sponsoring the event, so I thought I’d post the details here to throw out as wide a net as possible. The event is this Saturday, March 14th (soon!). If you’re not interested in sponsoring, it’d be awesome to see you, dear reader, or some of your people there (you can RSVP in Facebook). I’ve been every year, for 3 years, and it’s an excellent time, both professionally and personally. I don’t spend a lot of time pitching for other people, and the fact that I’m doing it here should show you how much I like and find value in the event. They do it during SXSWi when all the round-corner, Web 2.0 cool kids come to town, so there’s tons of people who come through and participate in the unconference format. This year, they tell me there’ll around 2,000 people during barcampAustin.

barcamp formats are great because all of the attendees decide on the talks and sessions in the morning, organize an agenda, and then go for it. The great thing is that people tend to be more engaged and participatory than big, for-pay conferences. Not to mention that attendance, and everything else, is free.

Sponsorship doesn’t really have a formalized structure, but it usually starts at around $500, or it could be supplies like food, ice, or things like cups. They also need someone to sponsor the internet and wifi (around $175). You get your logo shown on all sorts of places and special mentions throughout. The money goes towards event rental, breakfast and lunch, A/V equipment, and all sorts of things: it’s definitely a not-for-profit enterprise.

The benefits to sponsors are exposure to a type of community that’s typically hard to reach: the elite developers and thought-leaders that come to SXSW and barcamps that tend to bristle at other forms of marketing. I’ve seen people like Microsoft take advantage of this to start seed-marketing for things like their Silverlight and web development toolchains (few things endear developer’s hearts like a few rounds of drinks on the house ;>). And you can start to imagine where other past sponsors like VMWare, Optaros, MindTouch, and GSD&M have benefited.

If you’re interested in helping out, I can pass you along to the organizers. I know they’d appreciate it. At the very least, I hope to see you there. I aim to be lounging around and hanging out with as many people as I can.

Update: thanks for all the response so far! We’ve had Appcelerator and All Web Leads sign up, Tiff’s Treats sponsor with some warm-n-tasy cookies, and others folks in the process of sponsoring. Super-special thanks to my buddies at Porter Novelli Austin for working helping out with this! I appreciate it, and keep it coming, they’re still in need of help ;>

Disclosure: Microsoft and MindTouch are clients.