My first #hackathon via #ADN

 

I've been to a few tech shows, including LeWeb in Paris and the London Web Summit, but I've never attended a hackathon because I've never been invited to one.

I crashed the App.net (ADN) hackathon this evening. 

There was no central project being undertaken by the developers participating in the hackathon, instead they were working either alone or in small groups on creating or improving their own ADN apps for use on the networking site.

I was amazed that watching a room full of people -- I'm 99.9 percent certain they were all men -- working on MacBook Pro (MBP) laptops at the ADN hackathon @storify headquarters in San Francisco was quite -- dare I say -- zen-like? 

Much better than most of the films available on Netflix IMHO.

A group of ADN people gathered in the "#Patter Peanut Gallery" to chat and observe proceedings at the hackathon as they were streamed live via Ustream  -- At first those of us who weren't in San Francisco tried to figure out who everyone was at the Hackathon. We were trying to put faces to ADN handles and avatars.

Fortunately @orian, who was at the hackathon, took pity on us and helped us identify people. @teawithcarl gave us a talk on a whole range of subjects, including his thoughts on the semantic web and redundancy.

"It's going to be one 'Star Trek' database," @teawithcarl said, referring to a utopian future where online services aren't duplicated.

Unfortunately, at around the time @teawithcarl was sharing his ideas, the stream, which was periodically interrupted by advertisements, lack of audio or a frozen image, completely died.

We switched over to a Google Plus (G+) Hangout, which was started by @po -- at first only @po and I were in it, so we left and went back to the #Patter Peanut Gallery.

Then @po started another G+ hangout and more people joined.

It was fantastic to meet @trine @jdscolam @tonymillion @berg @ajmckee @adrianus.

Unfortunately, @sham, who was central to organising the #patter chat, couldn't really join the G+ hangout as he was without a microphone or webcam -- neither could @Indigo because she doesn't have a G+ account.

@duerig and @q, who had helped set up the original live stream, were in their own #patter room, working on something -- not sure what. I lurked in their room a bit, but couldn't figure it out. [Please see below for an update about what they were doing.]

Meanwhile @kosso tried to set up a video stream via G+, which seems to have worked for a while.

Although the event was held @Storify HQ, apparently no one has yet Storified it.

NB***After I published this blog, @duerig told me that he, @ryantharp and @q were working on a system whereby people can post a YouTube song on ADN with the hashtag #jukebox and it will play automatically, becoming part of a stream of songs.

Visiting http://vidcast-app.net allows users to create a stream event that others can join. If users want to try "jukebox mode", which will play the tunes as if by an automated DJ, they can visit http://vidcast-app.net/view and the feed will play YouTube links with the #jukebox hashtag.

Other related posts:

Being @po

Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension

App.net: User utopia? 
Posting a picture from BlackBerry to Shrtmsg.com, app.net

Late to the App.net #MondayNightDanceParty

At this point -- four days after the fact, in the wee hours of Friday morning -- the App.net (ADN) MondayNightDanceParty seems a bit of a blur.

But I know I had something really important to say about it.

If only I'd taken notes.

#MNDP is a virtual party -- people send in song requests to @jdscolam with a hashtag. Then @jdscolam (shouldn't his name really be @djscolam?) plays the tunes by streaming them on his site.

Everybody at the party on Monday flocked into a Patter room, which had been specially enhanced with a themed page for the event, to chat in a kind of parallel universe.

A new broadcast button feature added by its creator @duerig allows people to share from the Patter room into the ADN global stream.

MondayNightDanceParty is not British Summer Time (BST) friendly given that it's broadcast from Central Standard Time (CST) -- starts at about 2 a.m. BST and seems to last for several hours.

Since I had to work in the morning I felt it was time to leave when @wife and the heavy drinkers showed up -- it could have gotten ugly :)

I was there long enough to take the screenshot above from @adrianus' Appnetizens.com -- it shows that Patter was the most popular client being used to post to ADN during the party, surpassing the commercial NetBot.  

TapBots had released Netbot, an iPhone and iPad app for ADN two weeks ago. A flood of new users arrived almost simultaneously raising questions among some users about the integrity of the ADN mandate.

App.net was set up in the summer by developers, for developers, as an environment independent from the influence of advertisers -- allowing creative freedom and more ownership. It was also meant to strike at the heart of Twitter, which has become increasingly commercial, exclusive and more restrictive for developers.  

Some general users are also feeling a certain frustration with Twitter because they are constantly under siege from spammers, auto DMs and viral urls.

The musical experience can be replayed here -- maintained by @33mhz -- for those too busy or tired to participate IRL. Each date has a drop-down menu which lists the featured bands.

Not sure what will happen next week now that @q has launched Quick Communities which has a #MNDP group.

I might have to stay awake and find out.
_____

Related posts:

Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension
App.net: User utopia? 
Posting a picture from BlackBerry to Shrtmsg.com, app.net

#Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension

Maybe, just maybe, I don't get out enough.

After putting out a testimonial about developers' haven App.net (ADN) in which I questioned its viability due to being trapped in a spammy conversation thread about bacon from which there seemed no escape -- I was amazed at how the community swung into action to fix the problem.

It restored my faith in humanity -- at least for a day :)

App.net was set up by developers, for developers, as a refuge to create an environment independent from the influence of advertisers -- allowing creative freedom and more ownership -- and was successfully launched as a subscription service in the summer. 

It was also meant to strike at the heart of Twitter, which has become increasingly commercial, exclusive and more difficult for developers to use as a platform for innovation over the past six years.

The ADN atmosphere is different also because it allows for 256 characters as opposed to Twitter’s 140, meaning there is more in-depth conversation with intelligent people – less broadcast, more chat.

In its nascent, or alpha, state, there are absolutely no protections for users. There's no way to block or report people, mute conversations, direct message (DM) – all those basic protective aspects of Twitter, or even Google Plus (G+) where you can create circles and decide who to share what with -- even your own stream is compulsorily public and there’s no way to selectively hide it.

After my critical "App.net: User utopia?" blog post about ADN, where I outlined some of its pitfalls for users, hit its global stream I was sincerely touched by how many empathetic messages I received from users beckoning me back to the site. 

A significant amount of conversation focused on how to remedy the problem of being reluctantly caught up in a stream or being unable to leave one. People also discussed how to rectify the problem of having nowhere to go for a private chat.

When murmurs started about "Patter", created by @duerig loosely based on some code by @q -- it was as if a bomb had dropped, decimating the main global stream.

We all pattered from ADN into a wonderful chatroom which literally felt like a parallel universe. I've never seen any space online generate such joy and camaraderie  -- I've never seen anything close to it.

Before long, people were getting concerned about the fact that the updates were dying in the global stream as users revelled in the Patter chatroom.

"Now we can tell people to 'get a room'," said @po, referring to Patter's ability to provide private separate space for people to have conversations outside of the main stream. 

The idea is that Patter, which can also be used within the Appnetizens interface designed by @adrianus, can help give users some control over the environment and help bring order to chaos.

Another bombshell was dropped on Wednesday with the news that Tapbots had released Netbot, an iPhone and iPad app for ADN.

The announcement instantaneously brought a flood of new users into the global stream. It also upset some developers slaving away to create other similar mobile products, and raised questions among some users about the integrity of the ADN mandate.

Order was more or less restored on Thursday and the atmosphere was more sedate as users adjusted to the new influx of people on ADN, recovered from the excitement of the previous day and buckled down to work on various apps.

**** Picture created on dood.li