Joining us for the first time this year we have Work Fu, who are sponsoring our lightning talks area. Work Fu are an innovative company who are helping put people in the right jobs by utilising their existing social networks to recommend opportunities. The Work Fu vision is to “Create a beautiful, super simple, free web platform that recommends opportunities and talent to you based upon the networks you use everyday.”

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for your free account on their website  using your Twitter credentials. It literally takes a few minutes to get your account setup, perfect for those of you that are busy job-seekers, or just those keeping an eye out for new opportunities.

You can get in touch with Work Fu via Twitter or Facebook to show your appreciation!

Lally.

This blog post is here to  give you all the information about what you can expect on the day.

First things first, here’s an outline of the schedule;

As you can see, we’ve scheduled as many talks as possible, the slots are 25 minutes long with a 5 minute change over after each, giving people time to move around to the next talk. We’ve got three rooms for talks, meaning we should get around 30 talks all together. The rooms will be set up theatre style for anywhere between 20 & 70 people depending on which room you choose, so try and pick the room most suitable for your talk. There will also be plenty of space to sit around and chat, out of ear shot, so if you want to carry on your conversation after a talk, or continue with questions, please take your conversation to one of the break out spaces.

It’s really important that you don’t over run your session, as it throws the whole schedule (that we’ve worked really hard on!) out of whack. If you need to, you can bump two sessions together giving you that room for 55 minutes. If you’ve got a topic which is going to take more than 25 minutes to cover, my advice would be to get to the board early! If it’s the opposite, and you only need 10 minutes, see if there’s someone who’ll split the session with you.

We have projectors in all three of the talk rooms, with screens, so you just need your laptop/tablet for slides and any adapters you might need for VGA input, if you’re struggling for an adapter or charger on the day, let Les or I know and we’ll try & find one for you. We’re also going to record/film as many talks as possible on the day thanks to the fantastic DigiEnable who have volunteered as AV crew for the day. Videos and audio will be licensed for use under Creative Commons Share Alike, so if you have any objection to being recorded, or you’re presenting sensitive information, please make sure to mention it before you start.

In the main ballroom we won’t have any traditional talks this year, however there will be a jobs lightning talk area sponsored by WorkFu running all day where you can take 5 minutes to pitch your company to potential employees or pitch yourself to the people hiring!

In the ballroom we will have sponsor stalls, a range of community interest and not-for-profit groups demonstrating their wares, as well as a Raspberry Jam taking place courtesy of Manchester Raspberry Jam. There will also be plenty of space available to chill out or continue a conversation in the main room.

The boring stuff.

We’re happy for you to bring your kids, nieces, nephews etc with you for the day and for them to take part in the talks. We do ask you that you keep a very close eye on them, as the venue is part of a large hotel which is accessible to members of the general public, and there are plenty of places for young ones to wander off to or get lost! For those bringing children; after the closing talk, we’re intending on heading to the bar (Copper Face Jacks) attached to the hotel for an hour whilst the staff set up for dinner. The bar is strictly over 18s, however if you want to stay, there is a family bar in the hotel which you can use until we’re allowed back in the ballroom.

There is free parking at the venue and plenty of transport links. Check out this post from last year for more travel options.

See you there!

Lally.

Magic Missile is the trading name of Tim Hastings, a software developer based in Blackpool and all round lovely bloke. Tim is a regular on the Blackpool and North-West tech scene, and works with a range of clients across the UK as well as internationally on projects great and small. He lists his services as follows;

• Data Transformation
• Business Intelligence
• Data Warehousing (ETL)
• Social Media monitoring and analytics
• API Development and Integration
• Application Performance Tuning
• Single Sign-On Integration
• Machine-to-Machine (M2M)
• Software Development

Tim also knows a hell of a lot about Amazon Web Services and is partial to the odd pickle! As a long term sponsor of #bcblackpool we’re thrilled to have Tim on board, so please make sure you give him your thanks on the day, or say thank you via Twitter.

Lally.

We’d like to welcome on board a new sponsor for this year; Rackspace! With data centres across the UK, USA & Australasia they are one of the industry leaders in cloud computing. Here’s what they say about themselves;

“Fanatical Support® has made Rackspace the service leader in cloud computing. We deliver enterprise-class hybrid cloud infrastructures to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world. We started in 1998 and we host hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Rackspace combines public cloud, private cloud, and dedicated bare metal computing to provide the perfect infrastructure for each customer’s specific needs. And, the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud is powered by OpenStack® and backed by Fanatical Support. ”

Sadly no one from Rackspace will be able to make it to Barcamp this year, but make sure you tweet your thanks to the team in particular @JesseNoller who hooked us up this year. If you’ve got any questions about the Rackspace service (or you’re a community interest/not for profit group looking for low cost hosting solutions) get in touch with Jesse.

Lally.

Last year, we had an idea, well to be true, we had two ideas.

1. Stalls, dotted around the main room, to show the best new technologies, and groups from around the North West.
2. A jobs board, where those looking for work, and businesses looking for new hires could swap details.

This year, we have gone bigger and better.

We now have more stalls around the venue.

• Manchester Girl Geeks
• WomenTech
• Preston Hackspace
• Manchester Hackspace
• Leeds Hackspace
• Blackpool LUG
• Rossendale LUG
• Cefn’s Shrimp kits (Arduino)
• Manchester Raspberry Jam
• Simon Walters & Jason Barnett’s Raspberry Pi powered robots
• Aunty Social
• AltBlackpool
• DigiEnable
• Blackpool Roller Derby

And this year we have a jobs board and an area setup for lightning talks.

The lightning talks, are 5 minutes in length, and are there to help people connect and learn more about their skills and business.

This is a great opportunity for you to tell the world about you or your business.

So if you are looking for work in the tech community, or you are a business in needs of people with specific skills, Barcamp Blackpool is the place to be.

Don’t forget that the second wave of 50 tickets for this year’s event are going online today at 3pm!

You can pick up your tickets from barcampblackpool2013.eventbrite.com/ so make sure to schedule your tea break for 3pm, as the first round sold out in under 30 minutes!

Lally.