www.johndbritton.com

I put together a proposal for our Mozilla Drumbeat project, P2PU School of Webcraft, to go to SXSW Interactive and we need your help.

1. Please register for an account on the panel picker website: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
2. Confirm your email address
3. Vote up our proposal: http://bit.ly/sxsw_webcraft
4. Leave comments and start a discussion

Please pass this along to as many people as you can. If you tweet, RT this: http://twitter.com/johndbritton/status/20906260210

Mozilla School of Webcraft @P2PU

P2PU School of Webcraft: Web developer training that’s free, open and globally accessible. Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University are creating the P2PU School of Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web developer skills. Our classes are globally accessible, 100% free, and powered by learners, mentors and contributors like you. Our goal is to provide a free pathway to skills and certification to help people build careers on open web technology. Existing developer training is expensive, out of touch, and out of reach. We leverage peer learning powered by mentors and learners like you and self-organized study groups. We use existing open and free learning materials In this sixty minute session we'll briefly cover the inception of the Peer 2 Peer University along with details and success stories from the first three cycles of courses. We'll then dive into more detail about our collaboration with Mozilla Drumbeat including Mozilla's mission to engage the next million Mozillians. We'll present the P2PU School of Webcraft, and a case study of courses offered so far, including the first course, 'Mashing Up the Open Web.' Additionally, we'll introduce our plans to separate learning from assessment and our community driven credentialing system. At the end of the session we will invite the audience, and all of SXSW, to join a course on open web skills to be offered during the week of the event. Read more: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/one_pager

Here are 7 Tips for demoing at the New York Tech Meetup. This list is definitely not exhaustive, but it should help people out a bit. In the spirit of the advice I'm going to give, I'm going to get right to the tips.

1. Intro in Under 30 Seconds

No one cares who your partners are, they just want to see cool tech now.

2. Always be Demoing

This is the most important thing I can tell you. People don't give a damn about your Steve Jobs-esque Keynote deck, make sure everything you do shows off your product for real.

3. Make the Crowd Do Something

You want to avoid a distracted audience, the best way to do that is to have them do something that requires thinking and physical activity, even if it's just something small like raising a hand.

4. Play Off the Crowd

Sometimes things don't go as planned, take my little typo for example. Pay attention to the crowd and use their reactions to your advantage.

5. Be Unexpected

If the audience knows where you're going they may get bored. Also it's great to catch people off-guard and give them something to remember.

6. Do Magic

Literally. I have to thank Danielle for this tip because I tend to be a teacher. The crowd doesn't have to understand how things work to be amazed. The fact that they know it works is enough to get them to use your product.

7. Have a Damn Good Product

You're demoing to The New York Tech Meetup, your product better be good. If it's not, don't do a demo until it is. You've got more important things to do.

Why You Should Care

I gave a demo of Twilio at the August 2010 NYTM and it went over pretty well. See my summary blog post for a video and recap.

Quick Recap

Tuesday night I gave a demo of Twilio to a crowd of around 850 people at the New York Tech Meetup. The event was a ton of fun and jam packed with great demos. I'd like to thank Brandon Diamond, Nate Westheimer, and the rest of the NYTM people for putting on such a great event. I can't wait to come back and demo some more cool stuff, these guys are awesome.

The demo went over really well. Here are a few of my favorite tweets from the evening. There were a lot more than I could list here, check out the Twitter search.

Some Press Coverage

Silicon Alley Insider called it "the best demo we've ever seen" and Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures featured it in a blog post called "How to Pitch a Product." Scott Heiferman, the guy who started NYTM, cited it as his reason for starting NYTM. Read Write Web, The Village Voice, and Technoverse blogs also covered the event.

Fred's blog post was picked up on Hacker News and then I posted it to Reddit. The article was on the front page of both sites for most of Wednesday night and Thursday. I eventually started an open conference call for anyone on the web who wanted to see the demo... I'll be calling everyone back later with a special message.

Other Stuff

I'd also like to congratulate Texai and Indaba on super-impressive demos. Philo, Eventros, Market Publique, and Turnto showed off some pretty cool stuff too. I don't know how I feel about Bing, but they had a great quote. Mike Lewis has a blog post summarizing all the demos, so I won't duplicate that here.

If you're interested in catching up about Twilio, check out our Meetup Everywhere page.

August 7, 2010 - 12:00pm - 5:00pm
OpenPlans
148 Lafayette Street
New York, NY, 10013
http://www.drumbeat.org/events/drumbeat-new-york

Join us Saturday, August 7th for a look at some cool people and projects that are keeping the web open. Plus, free pizza and beer!

About Mozilla Drumbeat
Will the web still be open in 100 years? Mozilla thinks it can, and should, and must be. That's why we're starting Mozilla Drumbeat, an invitation to everyday internet users to imagine ideas and projects that build a more open web. We want you to get involved!

We are building a new community that includes teachers, artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, lawyers, and policymakers—not just open web geeks. Online, Drumbeat is catalyzing new open web projects that address critical needs and make the Web healthier. Check out current projects or initiate your own at www.drumbeat.org/projects.

About Drumbeat NYC
The Drumbeat NYC event will showcase cool projects and people that are keeping the web open. Come to Drumbeat NYC and learn how you can get involved, or show others what you've been working on.

Drumbeat events aren't just for geeks. We're here to weave together local networks of creative, Web-loving people and start new projects to make the web better.

Please RSVP at Facebook OR Eventbrite

Check out the agenda.

I'll be at the Open Video Conference in NYC, if you're in town, you should definitely join. Here's a quick message from the organizer:

Open Video Conference
October 1-2, 2010
New York City
http://openvideoconference.org

Register by August 1st for early bird rates!
See a preview of confirmed OVC programming

About OVC

The Open Video Conference (OVC) is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of video on the web. Join us October 1-2 for two days of learning and inspiration. And stick around for the OVC hack labs, presented in partnership with NYU ITP.

Who's coming to OVC?

Connected creatives, technologists and businesspeople of all stripes. Over 100 open source projects. Innovative filmmakers. Visionaries like Tim Wu, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, former Obama adviser Susan Crawford, and Damian Kulash of OK Go.

OVC partner organizations include Creative Commons, the Workbook Project, Intelligent Television, Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and more.

Sponsor application deadline

If your company or organization is interested in supporting the Open Video Conference, please be in touch by August 13th.

Open Video Conference
Contact: Ben Moskowitz
conference@openvideoalliance.org