That’s right, you want to join FailCamp Toronto 3, the celebration of FAIL taking place on Tuesday, September 29th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre! Take it from Kanye, you don’t want to miss this event. For more details, see the FailCamp event page and my earlier article on FailCamp Toronto 3.
R.I.P. Patrick Swayze. (In case you don’t get the Kanye West joke, here’s the backstory.)
That’s right, we’re holding another FailCamp in Toronto! Mark Tuesday, September 29th on your calendar and be prepared to share you best/worst stories of FAIL, impress the judges in our “Panel of Fail” and win big prizes!
Here’s what the event is all about, as taken directly from FailCamp Toronto 3’s event page:
The pictures of Sean Connery in his ridiculous costume from Zardoz can only mean one thing: it’s time for another FailCamp!
FailCamp is a celebration of failure. It’s about sharing your tales of epic fail and the lessons you learned from them. It’s about learning not to view failure as defeat, but as a learning opportunity and stepping stone to success. It’s about taking away the fear of failure and learning to take a chance, think big and achieve what you thought you couldn’t.
We’ll start with some stories of historical failure: some you’ve read in the history books, and some culled from our own personal histories — the wisdom of fail through the ages. Then we’ll turn the microphone on you, inviting you to share your greatest stories of failure, challenging you to entertain the audience and even win prizes if our "Panel of Fail" deems your failure or the lessons derived from it to be the best of the bunch. The more embarassing, hilarious and educational your story, the better! Where else can you win big by losing big?
Joey deVilla (Microsoft, DemoCamp, accordion trouble-making) and John Bristowe (Microsoft) will host the event, encouraging you to confess your failures while sharing their own. FailCamp alumni Meghann Millard (Unspace, RubyFringe, FutureRuby) and Justin Kozuch (Refresh Events) and others will be the Panel of Fail whom you must impress in order to win prizes.
FailCamp takes place on Tuesday, September 29th at 7:00 p.m. at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street West, between John and Simcoe Streets). Admission is free — all you have to do is register to attend, and make sure you bring your best story of fail! It’ll be full of win!
The reviews of the book How to Avoid Huge Ships on Amazon UK won’t tell you very much about the actual content within its 122 pages, but they are quite amusing. For example, here’s J. Courtney’s review:
Instead of falling into the same trap that other authors of this subject fall in to, such as "stay on land" or "move out of the way", John Trimmer offers thought provoking, deep insight into the complexities of Huge Ship avoidance.
If you or anyone you love plans on setting out to sea any time soon, and are worried about encountering a huge ship – then I cannot encourage you enough to read this book.
Here’s another review, this one by Gordon Hawk:
Trimmer’s book is deceptively simple, take his opening passage for example:
"when walking down a local thoroughfare, or perhaps on a day out to your local dock, and suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a 40ft metallic compound hull emerges in your line of sight, it is most likely, if not definitely, going to be – a huge ship"
It’s theoretical groundwork like this which lacks from today’s ‘pick and choose’ postmodern discourse. Trimmer unleashes this devastating examination with relative ease; most interestingly with chapters such as "Avoiding the ship itself: Moving Left or Right?" which comes up with a flurried and meticulous deconstruction of ethics and theoretical obstacles, for instance "is there anything on either side of the huge ship? – if so, and there is, it is probably, if not definitely, going to be – difficult to move round to that side of the huge ship".
A must for those with an eye for Naval pragmatism and/or a small ship.
I was led to the book by a comment from a wag about the snag in Australian teenager Jessica Watson’s attempt to become the youngest person to sail around the world. Less than 24 hours into her journey, she collided with a bulk cargo ship, snapping the ship’s mast and damaging the deck. She is unharmed, the ship is getting repaired and she still intends to go through with the trip. That’s very good news, considering how many people I’ve seen give up on something after the most minor of inconveniences, snags and bumps in the road.
Jessica, I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword, and nominate you for patron saint of FailCamp!
(And yes, plans are in the works to have another FailCamp. Watch this space!)
I saw the illustrated map titled The Road to Success on the Strange Maps site and thought that there can’t be a more appropriate day than today, the first day of school, to post it. Enjoy!
Click the illustration to see it at full size.
If you’re wondering who the “Caruso” in the “Caruso can’t touch you” line is – it’s spoken by one of the people in the Mutual Appreciation Society building, in the lower-right hand corner, just above and to the left of Hotel Know-It-All – it’s Enrico Caruso, an opera tenor who became a star thanks tp his embrace of then-newfangled recording technology, namely the phonograph (a.k.a. gramophone).
I’m going to be in Vancouver from the afternoon of Friday, September 11th until the morning of Friday, September 18th. I’m there first and foremost to manage the “Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform” track of the TechDays conference, then to meet up with the local tech community, but also to enjoy the city I fondly refer to as “Vangroovy”.
Here’s what I’ll be up to:
My coworker John Bristowe and I will be holding Coffee and Code on Saturday, September 12th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Pacific time, of course) at the Take 5 Cafe on Granville (429 Granville, near Hastings). We’ll be there to talk about TechDays, The Empire and the tech industry in general – but it won’t just be geeky stuff; we’ll provide scintillating conversation about accordions, the Calgary Flames, deep fried snack foods, “Am I metrosexual or not”, life, the universe and everything. I will have the accordion with me, so tunes are definitely on the menu!
You can register for Coffee and Code Vancouver on its event page.
TechDays is Microsoft Canada’s cross-Canada tour, where we highlight what you can do with currently-available Microsoft tools and tech that you probably aren’t doing yet. We take the content from the infinitely more expensive TechEd North America conference (admission fee USD$2000), update it, and have local techies present it near you at a price you can afford (CAD$299 if you caught the early bird rate, CAD$599 otherwise). You get great content at a great price, and we get to make contact with tech communities across the country. Think of it as “Geek Global, Spend Local”.
TechDays Vancouver will be happening at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which is also the venue of…
Since we had the Vancouver Convention Centre booked for two days, it meant that we had these big rooms lying fallow on the first night. I wanted a pajama party for accordion players, but since that idea got nixed, I called on Boris Mann and suggested we hold a DemoCamp-style event. The end result: Demo Ignite Camp!
Thus far, we’ve got 5 out of 8 presentation slots filled:
I’m more than happy to drop my Ignite presentation to make room for a demo or Ignite by someone local. I’m already hosting, and Demo Ignite Camp is about the Vancouver tech scene, not me!
For more information, see the Demo Ignite Camp event page.
My fellow TechDays coordinators and I will be attending Launch Party Vancouver, which is:
…a lively mixer for the city’s brightest entrepreneurs, tech junkies, and bloggers, who are doing it, have done it or want to make their ideas happen here. The goal of the event is to connect BC’s growing community of Internet and new media leaders with investors and other trailblazers across Canada and abroad.
Founded by local entrepreneurs, LPV is not your typical networking event. There are no presentations or panels to be found. But what you will discover are the individuals responsible for making Vancouver one of the greatest start-up cities in Canada. Every event features local, early stage new media companies strutting their stuff and sharing their ideas with the community.
It’s happening at Circa Resto Lounge from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.; tickets are available via EventBrite.
