At long last, it’s finally time for BarCampRDU 2009. The pre-party is tonight, 7pm at Flying Saucer and we hope to see you there.

Before the festivities begin, we need to thank all of our sponsors.

Thank you!

We’ve thanked all of the Gold-level and above sponsors here on the BarCampRDU blog and now it’s time to call out all of our sponsors. Without these generous organizations and individuals, BarCampRDU would not be possible.

Diamond

• Red Hat – thanks to our friends at Red Hat have hosted BarCampRDU for four years now. We owe a great deal of our success to them.
• Google – thanks to Google; they came through with a big sponsorship right at the end. We’re pleased as punch to have Joe Gregorio again at camp.

Platinum

• Cuthrell Consulting – Cuthrell is a new sponsor for BarCampRDU and Jay Cuthrell himself will be attending camp.
• rPath – rPath has helped out with a big sponsorship before and again this year. We’re happy to have their support and happy to see so many rPath folks at camp.

Gold

• Compuware – thanks to Compuware, one the world’s largest IT services providers. They make IT rock around the world, and we’re happy that their world includes BarCampRDU.
• Crazylikethat.com – thanks to Crazylikethat.com, makers of fine t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers and greeting cards.
• DesignHammer – thanks to returning sponsor DesignHammer; the build smarter websites for outfits like RTI Internaional, Durham Bulls and IndyWeek.
• Freshbooks – thanks as well to Freshbooks, providers of super easy-to-use online invoicing services with free introductory level.
• Intridea – thanks again to Intridea, full-services consulting firm that specializes in design, development and strategy for web-based products and sites.
• OpenNMS – thanks to OpenNMS, makers of community supported network management software that is both enterprise-grade and open source.
• Viget Labs – and big thanks to Viget again this year. Viget builds web business and is well known around here for sponsoring and hosting Triangle tech events.

Silver

• Programmer’s Paradox – thanks to Mark Mzyk, a local developer and blogger who wants to learn from and support the community.
• Terralien – thanks to Terralien a local business that can help you build web applications and products and specializes in Ruby on Rails development.

Others

Due to a registration glitch which we quickly fixed, these folks were forced to donate a small amount when they got their tickets. Thanks for your donations. Every little bit helps.

• Nicolas Napp
• Scott Southard
• Mark Newton
• Wesley Walser

Thanks again to all of our sponsors!

Last but not least, we’d like to thank Google, a Platinum sponsor of BarCampRDU 2009.

Everybody knows Google Search and the average RDU BarCamper probably knows the whole Google product portfolio, and the APIs to boot. What the average camper may not know is that Google has a presence right here in the Triangle.  Google’s Joe Gregorio (http://bitworking.org), who works out of Google’s Chapel Hill office, will be attending BarCampRDU and will be ready to pitch a talk about Google Wave and/or Google App Engine.

Thanks Google!

This year we’re happy to have a Cuthrell as a new sponsor at the Platinum level and to have Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul on Twitter) himself coming to camp.

Cuthrell Consulting helps clients navigate, reach, and exceed goals.  With offices in the Triangle and Montana the team at Cuthrell Consulting serves clients in rural broadband markets as well as technology startup companies from coast to coast.  To learn more visit them online at http://cuthrell.com

Thanks to Cuthrell Consulting, LLC!

We’ve only got a couple more days until BarCarmpRDU and a couple more sponsors to thank. Today, we’d like to thank new Gold sponsor FreshBooks.  Here’s a message straight from Freshbooks via Sunir Shah, who’ll be attending BarCampRDU:

BarCamps are some of our favorite events and we always meet the most fun and interesting people when we hop on a plane and visit folks like you! So, we’re really pumped to meet some new folks and see some familiar faces at BarCampRDU this week!

If FreshBooks is a new name in your repertoire, here’s the super quick low down: FreshBooks is an easy-to-use online invoicing service that saves you time, gets you paid faster and makes you look Fortune 500 professional. From estimates and expenses to time tracking and invoicing, FreshBooks makes everything quick and simple—letting you focus on your work, not your paperwork. Customize the service with your own logo and colors, share projects with contractors, send invoices by e-mail or ground mail, accept payments with PayPal, Authorize.net and more. To learn more about FreshBooks or to create your FREE account and get started on the Freshbooks site.

Thanks Freshbooks!

Intridea is a full-services consulting firm that specializes in design, development and strategy for web-based products and sites. They’ve got a wealth of Ruby on Rails knowledge, but the flexibility to do the same great work with Java, Perl and PHP.

Intridea is based in Washington, DC but they’ve got folks around the country and including North Carolina. They’re here and this year, we’re honored to have them as gold sponsors of BarCampRDU.

Thanks Intridea!

You can keep up with Intridea via blog or twitter. Oh and by the way, Intridea is hiring.

We’re happy to announce that the BarCampRDU Pre-party is on and set for the Flying Saucer in Raleigh on the Friday night before camp. We hope that you’ll all* join us for drinks and good conversation.  It’ll be great to get a head-start on meeting new BarCamp friends and catch-up folks you might not have seen since last time around.

Look for us around the couch section. We’ll be providing name tags and drink tickets so you can sample the Saucer’s amazing beer selection. We won’t be providing food, but you’re free to order dinner or appetizers from the Saucer’s fine menu.

BarCampRDU Pre-party
7PM Friday August 7, 2009

Flying Saucer Draught Emporium
http://www.beerknurd.com/stores/raleigh
328 W Morgan St
Raleigh, NC 27601-1369
(919) 821-7468

We’re looking forward to seeing you there.

* in this case “all” means a significant portion of those who registered for BarCampRDU and indicated that they’ll attend the pre-party. We don’t want to overrun the place!

Today we’re welcoming new BarCampRDU sponsor Crazy Like That, makers of fine t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers and greeting cards. They cary some very cool Tees for Geeks including a sexy biochemistry shirt, Linux command line humor  and Twitter designs.

Check out the Crazy Like That blog.

You can also follow them on Twitter: crazylikethat

Thanks to Crazy Like That!

If you’d like to sponsor, help plan or volunteer to help out at the event let us know. Check theBarCampRDU wiki for more information on volunteering or contact us via email for questions (dave.johnson at rollerweblogger.org).

Fundraising for BarCampRDU is moving much more slowly than in previous years and we’re only half-way to our goal. Last year we had 247 registered and 137 attended. We spent $5150 on pre-party, breakfast, coffee, lunch and t-shirts. This year, we have about 250 registered, but only $2950 in sponsor pledge. If we don’t come up with about $3000, we’re going to have to cut some things.

So, we’re doing another call for sponors today and we need your help.

Please help us spread the word about the unqiue event that is BarCampRDU, about the 250 influential technology geeks, early adopters, entreprenuers and social media mavens that come together to create a conference right out of thin air. The benefits of sponsoring are social networking opportunities, publicity, new friends, mentions in announcements about BarCampRDU and your logo on the event t-shirt.

We’d want to get a couple of messages out too. The first is that pledging money is not the only way to sponsor. For example, A local restaurant or coffee shop could sponsor by providing lunch or coffee. If you’ve got contacts that could help us out then please let us know. If you’ve got local contacts that could help us out then please let us know.

The second is that $300 is not the one and only pledge amount. In the past we’ve asked for a minimum pledge of $300 and that limits our sponsor pool. So we’re also establishing some sponsor levels to encourage donations at all levels: silver ($50 and up), gold ($175 and up), platinum ($500 and up) and diamond ($1000 and up). Contact us for more information about these levels or any other questions about sponsoring  BarCarmpRDU.

Thanks,

Dave (dave.johnson at rollerweblogger.org)

Raleigh, NC based rPath has been working on key problems in the area of cloud computing, application virtualization and management, for years now and before cloud became the buzzword of the day (they do a pretty good job explaining cloud computing too; check out Check out Cloud Computing in Plain English).

We know rPath well because they’ve also been participating in and sponsoring BarCampRDU every year since our since our start in 2006. Now, we’re happy to welcome them again as sponsors.

Thanks rPath!

If you’d like to sponsor, help plan or volunteer to help out at the event let us know. Check the BarCampRDU wiki for more information on volunteering or contact us via email for questions (dave.johnson at rollerweblogger.org).

BarCampRDU is Saturday August 8, 2009 and less than two months away. It’s not too early to start thinking about sessions. Are there any particular topics you’d like to learn more about? Issues you’d like to discuss? What would you like to teach others?

Last year, we had forty sessions. There were eight business sessions, fifteen software development sessions, five social media sessions and an assortment of talks on open source, healthcare, lifestyles, fun and games.  Below is the session grid we came up with and a spreadsheet that lists all the 2008 sessions.

Now’s your chance. If you’ve got a great session ideas,  then propose it on the BarCampRDU wiki sessions page so you can connect with other campers interested in the same topics. Here’s how things are supposed to work according to the BarCampRDU wiki:

A BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference. Here’s how sessions are run at a BarCamp

1. People suggest sessions on the Wiki
2. People claim sessions as leaders on the Wiki
3. A time slot schedule will be drawn up based on the number of sessions suggested and claimed on the Wiki

The morning of the BarCampRDU, session organizers will present an abstract of their sessions. Organizers will then sign up for slots on the time schedule, so the schedule will be created on the morning of.

Proposing up-front is not 100% necessary and you can definitely throw a great session on a spur of the moment, but it will increase the chances of getting the session you want.