Wacdesigns | Technology, Web 2.0 and Life

This Saturday i attended the first BarCamp in Mauritius, which was a great initiative from the organizers(Pierre Bernard). Even though some of the persons that should be attending did not come, it was really great and everyone that attended the session was really satisfied by the level of discussion and presentations that took place.

The first presentation was on Ubuntu Linux release performed by Malcolm(hobbyist bater bis). He detailed several aspect of the OS as it is becoming more and more popular for it’s ease of use and growing community support. And the possibilities for anyone to have access to a free operating system that enables any user to perform basic PC operating. With slides showing Firefox 3.0 installed by default on the latest version and Open Office with is a pretty good free alternative to Microsoft Office.

Then came the intervention of Vincent(bloggeur solidaire humorist), on how to install, manage and optimize a new WordPress installation. His presentation started with the installation of the WordPress zip file in a virtual directory that is used by his Apache server on a local machine. He created a new database using phpMyAdmin and then finalized the installation explaining the purpose of a good prefix for your WP Tables, which is by default “WP_”. After the installing we shown how to use plugins and widgets to enhance your WP Experience and you pages presentation. There was also a small debate on SEO Optimization on WP and how to enable permalinks or clean links to be better reference by search engine. It was a good introduction to WP and how i can be use to perform day to day blogging on the web.

OpenID Mauritius, this conference was performed by our Organizer Pierre Bernard, who will be the representative of OpenID in Mauritius.  He discussed on the advantages of using OpenID compared to have multiple authentication information for each website you are using. OpenID will be keeping all your authentication in one and only one location so that you need to remember only one password the one of your OpenID account and you should be able to have access to any of your favorite websites. You can find a list of comprehensive sites that are using OpenID here.

There was several other small brainstorming and discussing mainly on the use of the different video streaming technology used for making web conference on the web. SEO: the good, the bad and how it the mystification about how it actually works. There were also some discussion about a possible creating of some Linux Ubuntu user group to show people that there are other OS out their that can suit their needs too without the hassle of having to pay a license.

Hoping that you enjoyed this little resume about the first BarCamp that was held in Mauritius. We are hoping of doing another one in August to celebrate the anniversary of BarCamp. As soon as i can hold of the photos i’ll update this post.

Update: 23.06.2008

You can also have access to the minutes of the BarCamp available in french on Bernard’s Blog with video’s and photos