Perth has a interweb.

scbarnes — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:50:40 GMT

I'm finally back on deck after a week out on the road, and after spending a few days in Perth I've settled on the fact that this city is piping hot when it comes to the interweb.

I must admit, it was my first time in Perth and I jokingly expected to see a fairly medium sized city in the middle of the desert. Instead I found a city worth visiting again that's for sure.

The main reason for my attendance was Perth BarCamp, which was a great first time event for one and all. A lot of things were discussed around the web and I felt really welcomed (being an Eastern Aussie wasn't sure how the Wild Westerns would take to me being there). There were some great topics discussed and my favorite was @madpilot and his off the cuff discussion around Ruby on Rails (even I learnt something new about it).

The day ended with a "Silicon Beach" discussion, where folks were outlining a plan to see what can be done in terms of putting Perth on the IT radar, in that given its location and lifestyle why shouldn't it be an Aussie "Silicon Valley".

It was a great discussion to be honest and it's something that I walked away thinking that there is definitely passion in Perth when it comes to the web industry, and I for one am more than happy to support the folks in WA anyway I can.

I guess the walk away point I took, was that despite the massive divide (5hr flight) between Eastern seaboard and Western, there is a thriving community and they should also have access to international geek-celebs should they visit our shores. I can appreciate their plight in having to hand a hat around to invite folks to fly over, so I'll see what I can do to encourage some "Easities" to jump on the plane(s) as it's actually a nice city to visit.

Special thanks to the BAM & BarCamp Perth organizers for making me feel at home in Perth, you folks did an awesome job and I promise next time I'll spend more time giving a more deeper overview of all our new toys here at Microsoft (so much to tell you, so little time).

(Be sure to check out Perth BarCamp for a summary of what went on, see you next time!)

Don't forget Perth folks, that Shane Morris is there this week doing the Age of User Experience roadshow, so do attend as it's a must see event.

In Perth.

scbarnes — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:09:17 GMT

I arrived in Perth last night and spent most of this afternoon walking around for a bit of a wonder, to check out the CBD and try and absorb as much of Perth as I can (First time here).

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with some of the local User Group leads and we touched on how Microsoft could do better in this part of the region. It left me walking away with a number of ideas that I'll unpick when I get back home next week and see what can be done to do more in this part of the region.

That being said, I was impressed at how switched on these guys were, and their approach by appearance seems to be very focused around driving more awareness around Microsoft's offering through deeper community involvement.

I'm also going to be at Perth Barcamp this Saturday and looking forward to seeing what the Perth Web community has been up to in person, and it looks like a fantastic line-up. I'll be doing my rant on Silverlight and I've worked on a brand new presentation to spice it up a bit more as I got some great feedback on my Spiderman vs Batman (with Yoda) decks at WebJam.

The key for me is to have fun, relax, geek-out with some coders & designers and look at ways in which Microsoft can contribute more to the overall community.

I love my job.

The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009 : Perth

Perth has a interweb.

In Perth.