December 18th was the first ever StatusCamp. It was also another ChangeMedium experiment – bringing the context of the medium of change to the developers building its future.
The event was an excellent day with over two dozen folks including the Status.net team and Peter Deitz of SocialActions. It was an amazing event to learn about where Status.net and the OpenMicroBlogging initiative (OMB) are going. The wiki has more details on OMB but it is due for a major new release and will be integrating PubSubHubBub, ActivityStrea.ms, Salmon, and WebFinger. What this means is an integration of emerging protocols to put people at the centre of micro-messaging. Not only is this a positive protocol development, but it signals the collaboration of major participants in this field to create an 0pen, interoperable system – an essential aspect of the medium of change.
I also presented a new pitch (below) on why all this really matters to all of us. It prompted a good session on social uses for Status.net and sparked a number of unexpected side conversations. What I’m learning more and more is that many developers have a social streak – a bent for making the world better. Many don’t publicize it but it seems that most do. This is encouraging as I look forward to future ChangeMedium events and seems to fit with the notion of bringing research, development, and application together to build this medium better.
Following that thread, I received some great suggestions for ways to do just that including compiling social use cases for developers to hack, doing developer challenges – prizing the best apps/hacks, and focused dev days to tackle specific problems. I’m interested in all ideas like this – they give fodder for communities who want to create events that move and make this medium for all of us.
If you want to dig into the details there’s a pretty comprehensive wiki up with notes from the event (update: good summary post from Jon Philips too). Here also is the context presentation I piloted at the event.