We're two weeks into the first month of planning for StarCamp, which is intended to find a venue and identify our requirements.

Thanks to Jonathan and Tania for suggesting and chasing up potential venues.  So far, the University of Western Cape is the first to give us a "Almost certainly yes" in response to our queries.  I'm in contact with someone there, and we're going through the StarCamp venue specs to see what the best opportunities on the UWC campus.  I'm hoping we can use the UWC residences for those who are coming from afar or who would just rather stay over instead of driving home, sleeping, and driving back again the next day.

We're still looking at and for other venues for the next week or two, in case this doesn't come through, or if we can find another venue that can compete with UWC in terms of location, security, facilities, or cultural fit.  (UWC certainly fits well culturally.)

We have our first two confirmed sponsors - ProsperIS and Amobia.  Confirmed in the sense that they're willing to put their money where their mouths are.  But if we end up using UWC, we might not need to use either.  But they'll still be on the sponsors list, and be counted as people helping to make things happen.

Still a whole six weeks to go, and we already have 8 events offered by a total of 7 people, and 23 people signed up in advance, and 5 people offering equipment from their own homes to make sure that we can avoid having to charge anyone anything to take part.

The Ubuntu-ZA Cape Town community is holding its Gutsy Release Party on Sunday, at Cantina Tequila at the V&A Waterfront.  Jonathan Endersby has the details, and please RSVP with him for numbers for booking tables and so forth.

(I'm really looking forward to Gutsy on my new-work laptop, especially after drooling over the new dynamic screen detection at CLUG a few days back, and there seems quite a few other things that will make it worth the upgrade.) 

A long long time ago (probably only a few weeks back, knowing my memory), Ian Gilfillan approached me about an awards program for South African students who are involved in FOSS projects.  Earlier this week, he officially announced the FOSS Awards.

I think it's a great idea - I'm a big believer in creating local heroes around FOSS.  We don't need international speakers to come tell us things - we have Dwayne Bailey, AJ Venter, Jonathan Carter, Karl Fischer, OpenLab, translate.org.za, Impi, and KnowledgeTree.  And many more people locally who've contributed to or started their own projects, and run their own companies.  The missing part is recognising these heroes and getting them in contact with each other, and the FOSS Awards is a good way to do that for students.

Before I even announced *Camp (the self-organising unconference on 8/9th December in Cape Town), I sounded the idea off a few people.  Two of those people just happen to be involved in some of the more exciting Cape Town technology businesses - Frogfoot (the friendly Linux-powered ISP) and Amobia (the wireless access guys).

Amobia returned fairly quickly and said they'd be willing to sponsor the installation and standard operational costs of a wireless link to Amobia, and sponsor a 150MB "scratch card" per attendee.

Prosperis is another company that responded almost immediately to the idea.  It has offered up to 100 PCs and LCD monitors for tutorial rooms, as well as to manage the internal operation of the network, as well as some other stuff I don't understand (something about "reticulation" of "electricity").  They do a lot of work with events and conferences, so their experience should be very useful.

There's always the possibility that the venue we find is not be in the Amobia coverage area (or already has good connectivity), or that we won't need or be able to use the PCs and LCD monitors that Prosperis is offering, but it's great that local companies are so quick to respond to making an event like *Camp happen in Cape Town.

Our biggest outstanding goal is a venue.  Thanks to Jonathan, we've tried a few schools, but unfortunately have not yet had success.  We've got a few more ideas, but we'd love some suggestions - either comments here, the starcamp-planning mailing list, or on the *Camp planning page.

Trust Tania to put together a pretty reasonable and equitable political history of the Cape Town technology get-together scene since BarCamp Cape Town through 27dinner, GeekDinner, and towards *Camp.

We've just had our first post to the starcamp-planning mailing list, where we hope people who are interested in helping out will join us to plan *Camp.  Our main aim over the next month is finding a venue, but more publicity and discussion about what people want out of it is always useful.

It's just under one and a third years since the first BarCamp Cape Town and it's just under two months until *Camp, the next BarCamp-style technology unconference in Cape Town.

One things that struck me about BarCamp Cape Town was the breadth of those who came - anything from hard-core C programmers through the Python/Ruby fanboys to more run-of-the-mill PHP programmers to those who couldn't program at all as well.  Those who work in marketing to those interested in it to those who find the entire field a bit distasteful.  Businessowners to wannabe-entrepreneurs to those who'd just like to code and have pizza slid under the door every evening.  It was a place to meet new people in your area of interest - existing groups weren't really growing the pool, and also a place for inter-pool connections to be formed.

BarCamp Cape Town was the catalyst of a few ad-hoc "Geek Dinners", from which sprang 27dinner (in Cape Town and Johannesburg mostly, and also in Durban) and GeekDinner (mostly in Cape Town).  While there are some who move between the two, there hasn't been the sort of mass integration the likes of BarCamp Cape Town since then.

I want *Camp to be the place where that interaction can happen again.  We'll probably have separate "tracks", so that nobody is forced to listen to "marketing" or "geek" speak when they'd rather not, but there should be plenty of opportunity to swap tracks for a bit and to mingle between talks or in the Games Room.

What excites me is that I feel we've become more aware of our surroundings, and we've started to build local heroes (people and sites/businesses), and we've got a bunch of interesting startups to talk about.  There was no Amatomu or Afrigator back then, and Muti was still young.  I'd love to hear from the people who've built the businesses and/or technology behind these and other South African "Web 2.0" (much learn not to feel so bad saying the phrase) social media/user-generated content/&c. endeavours.

There's quite a bit happening for geeks in Cape Town this month. 

On Saturday 6th from 14:00 to about 16:00, the Cape Town Python User Group will be holding its sixth meeting at the Bandwidth Barn, where you can hear me talking about Pylons and Graeme Glass talking about Python on the S60 mobile/smartphone platform.

On Tuesday 9th from 18:30 onwards, the Western Cape Linux User Group will be holding a meeting at the UCT Chemical Engineering Lecture Theatre (as usual), with Jonathan Hitchcock talking about the Gentoo Portage package management system.

On Wednesday 17th, Moodia is hosting the first Facebook Developer Garage Cape Town (Facebook required), at the Waverley business park from 18:30 to 22:30.  This should be an interesting event, and hopefully we'll see some Facebook development talks, tutorials, or projects at *Camp.

On Saturday 20th, the first PodCampCapeTown is happening (although I think I might have to give it a miss, given my schedule) from 9am to 5pm at The Wild Fig (you might remember that they were the venue for the May Cape Town GeekDinner).

On Saturday 27th, slightly less geeky, there's the 27-13 27dinner from 18:30 onwards at the Deer Park Cafe (you might remember that this was where the "1 of 50" open content party was held last month).

Also by CLUG, on Tuesday 30th, UCT Chemical Engineering Lecture Theatre from 18:30, Jeremy Thurgood will be talking about the DARCS version control system.

I like that we're discovering some good venues - the Bandwidth Barn, the Wild Fig, and the Deer Park Cafe all seem quite friendly to being used as venues for the kind of events we're organising.

I soft-announced *Camp at the Dangerous Drumstick GeekDinner on my birthday and created a Facebook event over the weekend, and things are already progressing well, with 26 confirmed guests at the Facebook event and offers of connectivity, tutorial computers, sound equipment, AV equipment, and so forth.

So, what is *Camp?  It's a 36-hour-long self-organising event in the spirit of BarCamp.  Everyone is invited to attend, entrance is free, and everyone who attends is strongly encouraged to give an event on something about which they are passionate in the area of technology and the Internet.

It isn't just talking - the second day will offer many opportunities to do real work on projects.  It could be helping write some code for an open source project, doing a web site (with a CMS, full SEO, brand identity, and so forth) for a deserving organisation, or launching a new Web 2.0-buzzword-compliant company and web site.  We'll try have options for everyone to get some real, and fun, work done - whether you're a geek of the programming, designing, managing, marketing, documentation, or other variety.

And when you feel like taking a step out of the high-intensity action on either days, there'll be a games room where you can play or watch people play some fun multiplayer games on the Nintendo Wii (and potentially other consoles).

If you're interested, sign up on the event page (if you're using Facebook, you can sign up there in addition, but please sign up on the event page too) and join the announce mailing list if you want to be reminded about the event and other important announcements, offer an event, suggest a venue, offer some equipment, suggest some sponsors, or sign up on the planning mailing list.

(If you're talking about *Camp, please tag with "starcamp", since some aggregators or blog searches don't like "*" in their tags.  We'll start aggregating posts about the event shortly.)