Learn, create and play at the BuzzConf Technology Festival. Over 30 emerging tech presentations & workshops and great live music. Just $250 for the weekend!
General Assembly + BuzzConf invite you to come to one of Australia’s largest learning events in history at the Melbourne Comedy Theatre on Friday 12 August at 12pm as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. Code in the Cinema is a free event designed to support and inspire everyone to acquire new digital knowledge for the future of work, innovation and creativity.
The afternoon will be jam-packed with:
Entrepreneurs panel with tech leaders & diversity champions from around Australia
Interactive coding lesson for beginners with General Assembly
A live music performance by artist and programmer Andrew Sorensen
Creative coding project demos by digital artists and more..
Why should everyone learn how to code? “Because it teaches you how to think.” Steve Jobs
General Assembly (GA): a global educational company on a mission to empower a global community to pursue work they love. Focusing on the most relevant and in-demand skills across data, design, business and technology, with 15 campuses including Melbourne, Sydney and around the world.
Each generation of embedded processors is even smaller, faster, cheaper and more capable. This talk discusses the Espressif ESP8266 SoC, what this generation of chips means for theInternet of Things and how to get started on development. We’ll also demonstrate a couple of Open Source / Open Hardware projects based on the chip, and discuss why Open Source / Open Hardware are vitally important to education.
3D Printing, Crafting, Prop making and Female Makers – April Staines
April describes herself as a “Maker” and a “Geek” she has a passion to create, starting back in the in the day as a software developer and now works as an architect for Digital at NAB. Outside of her day job her passion for creating and making combines her love for geek culture (she is a massive Star Wars fan) and digital fabrication, 3d Printing, robotics and what we used to know as “craft”. April is also one of the co-founders of Girl Geek Academy, an organisation who’s aim is to help increase the number of women in tech.
Building the Internet of Farming Things – Hadi Michael
Hadi is a digital adviser and software engineer, with an interest in making the physical world more connected. As part of the Mobile and Connected Devices team at Deloitte Digital, he has helped organisations capitalise on disruptive innovation in web-technologies, mobile and ambient computing. Most recently, Hadi has been working with Observant, to help build an integrated platform for the precision management of water in agriculture.
Looking to incentivize your team with end of the year activities?
Look no further! BuzzConf has it all!
BuzzConf offers family-friendly technology festival with a really unique atmosphere – all participants and presenters spend the weekend together in country Victoria, learning and playing with tech during the day and being entertained by live music all night!
BuzzConf weather forecast Written by BuzzConf on November 30, 2017
Last updated: Fri Dec 1 @ 13:21
The latest info from BOM is that the rain will get heavier over night and mainly come on Saturday – so come up and join us early. Gates officially open at 5pm, but come down before then if you want to beat the traffic.
We’re running extra shuttles from Ballan Station to BuzzConf between 18:00 and 20:30 so if you don’t want to drive up we’ll look after you. If you get stranded at the station give us a call on 0401372974.
We have a team standing by to help you set up your tent if you’ve not done it in the rain before, and still have beds in dorms available. Again – if you’re concerned about the price let us know.
Weather forecast
As you may know, we’ve got some weather coming our way in Victoria, and BuzzConfers will need to prepare to get a little wet. We’re actioning some contingency plans to ensure the weekend is still as fantastic as usual – and really excited by how the site is taking shape.
In particular, please note that on Friday and Saturday we are highly likely to have very significant rainfall totals and subsequent flash flooding and flooding. Although the rainfall is expected to be heaviest north of the Divide, areas south of the Divide including Ballan are still expecting heavy rainfall.
Stay safe
In order to stay safe whilst playing with our tech toys, do not leave any electrical items unattended or on the ground as flash-flooding may occur without warning. If you want to run power in to your tents do so only when you are in the tents (and awake) and use weather-safe cables.
What to pack
We strongly advise you to pack extra changes of clothes, waterproofs, gumboots, and hats. Although all the marquees are under cover you will likely be walking between them or back-and-forth to your campsites or rooms – and with such severe storms you might still get drenched. If you are camping, you might want to bring an extra tarp to cover your tent.
Consider booking a room
If you are concerned that your camping equipment may not cope with the unusual amount of rain, we do still have a number of dorms available – so please email us at [email protected] with the number of beds you would like to reserve in male/female rooms, include your order number and phone number, and we will see what we can do. If you are concerned about the cost let us know and we will call you to discuss a discount via our hardship fund.
Changes on site
We’ve made a few changes to the locations of our venues – we’re bringing the Kids’ areas in close to the rest of the action and setting up huge umbrellas between the marquees. We have moved the Glamps to the south west corner, and this has opened up a big space in the middle of the field if you don’t want to camp under trees.
Forecast is for a great BuzzConf
Despite the weather – the forecast for BuzzConf is still looking fantastic. The marquees are going up, the caterers are on their way and we’ve cracked the first beer of the weekend. We can’t wait for you to join us!
A Classic emerging technology lineup for the next BuzzConf Nights event!
We thought last month’s BuzzConf Night was a great snapshot of the energy and variety of the BuzzConf festival, and we’re really excited to be doing it again! If you want a little taste of what BuzzConf is all about, this event is a great place to start, and you can see what happened at the last event on our website.
Nicole is from the internet, and splits her time between word-herding and nerd-herding. She is extremely enthusiastic about the possibility of getting some mud on her laptop, as she feels it will give it an authentic, distressed look and increase her credibility in cafes. She is hilarious and snarky and crap at coding.
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You have probably already seen them in the wild, but we need your help spreading our new flyers and posters far and wide!
We want BuzzConf 2016 to be bigger and better than ever, so get in touch to have some posters and flyers sent to you – and help us bring news of the BuzzConf Technology Festival to HackerSpaces, Co-Working Spaces, Offices and Bus Stops all around Australia!
If you would like to help us promote BuzzConf Digitally, then visit our Partner Promotion page for loads of pre-written Social Media updates, videos and images that you can share with a simple cut-and-paste!
BuzzConf are delighted to have partnered with Pause Fest just ahead of their annual event in Melbourne between 8 and 13 February.
Pause Fest describe themselves as a catalyst for innovation, a uniter of industries, a platform for the future. Pause Fest stands for the content you can’t Google.
The organisers have kindly offered a 10% discount to BuzzConf fans, using the promo code: “BuzzConf”, so go and grab your tickets now – before they’re gone!
Join us on 15th September for an evening of presentations, discussions and demonstrations on The future of Work and The last 200 years of the Internet [yes, you read that correctly]
The full program for the BuzzConf Technology Festival in November has also been released and it’s an absolute stunner – so check that out at https://buzzconf.io.
Our BuzzConf Nights are proving to be very popular with people wanting to experience the energy and variety of the BuzzConf festival, and this month we’re bringing you another night packed with amazing topics and toys to play with. If you want a little taste of what the BuzzConf festival is all about, this event is a great place to start. You can see what happened at previous events.
Held in The Loop Bar in Melbourne, there will be plenty of options to eat and drink late into the night!
We’ll be holding similar events all over Australia, so if you’re not in Melbourne but would like to be involved in one of the other events just let us know!
We’ve been able to Skype our dogs and send our friends reaction gifs from anywhere in the world for several years. But in the centuries before the advent of butterfly Snapchat filters, humanity was still marrying each other, organising crime, and debating privacy over the wires.
Many of the flame wars we have today about the social impact of the Internet were had about telegraph technology in the 1800s, and are buried in newspaper archives.
Lilly Ryan will dust a few of these off to see what our great-great-great grandparents can teach us about the Internet.
The future of work: Will your job even exist in 20 years time? – Rick Measham
At the beginning of the century, Google futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that the next 20,000 years of progress would be compressed into the next 100. Nowhere will this have more impact on humanity than in the area of employment.
In the past 10,000 years we’ve gone from hunter-gatherers to agriculture all the way to technology workers with location independence. And all of that at an ever increasing pace.
If anything, Kurzweil has understated the speed at which our lives will change. It was only 200 years ago that the Luddites destroyed machinery that threatened the jobs of weavers. Today many jobs are being replaced with technology.
100 years ago the assembly line replaced the craftsman. And today the assembly line is largely run by robots.
Just 10 years ago Melbourne’s tram conductors were replaced with Myki machines. Want to know who’s really taking your job? It’s the robots.
So what will happen in the next 100 years? Which jobs will still exist in 20 years time? What can we do about it? What should we do about it?
Great set of talks with creative and passionate people. Another great Buzzconf nights with very different talks, opened my eyes! Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks to everyone who came down, and a big big thank you to Rick and Ben for making this happen. I think BuzzConf is probably one of, if not the best tech communities in Melbourne and it was a real honour to be a part of what you’re trying to achieve here.
That was a fantastic meet-up everyone! The speakers and topics were interesting, enlightening and actually blew my wee mind. Loved it. Nice work BuzzConfers
