Modwest Blog

Barcamps and Ecosystems

Some people say that while Missoula may be an awfully nice place to live, it comes with a significant disadvantage: insufficient access to a critical mass of talented and creative people. They go on to say that if you really want to build a successful tech company, you'd better relocate to a vibrant tech/business ecosystem like Silicon Valley, Boston, Austin, etc.

This past Saturday, I attended the 2nd Annual Missoula BarCamp, which challenged that notion.

Thirty-eight creative designers, programmers, sysadmins, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and nonprofit leaders came together for five hours and, in recommended Barcamp style, collaboratively developed a session agenda that included social networking, storytelling on the web, Twitter, biomimicry, Drupal, shopping carts, helping nonprofits catch up with technology, and using open source to promote social justice, among other things.

The cross-pollination of skillsets and backgrounds and interests was fascinating, and everybody learned something from somebody. The flexible non-agenda ensured you could always be at a session that interested you. And it was great to meet so many talented folks in Missoula.

One attendee summed it up:

Many times during BarCamp 2009 when I closed my eyes, I could have been back in Palo Alto minus the traffic, noise and sky high housing prices. Great ideas and discussions.  It really showed that you can develop tech companies and expertise just about anywhere so why not in one of the most beautiful and creative communities in the nation? 

- Russ Fletcher of the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables

Here's the photos from the 2009 Missoula Barcamp.

Many thanks to Harold Shinsato for being the spark that got these Missoula Barcamps started.  I am sure there's more we can do together as a community and region. What other ideas are out there for developing the tech/business ecosystem of Missoula and the Northern Rockies?

- JM

New Shared Hosting Environment - an Introduction

As we've mentioned previously, our shared hosting environment has a long overdue upgrade in the works. We're really getting close now, and we thought we'd offer a few technical details about the new environment and what to expect.

Some things will stay the same:

• You'll be able manage your website in the same ways (SSH, SCP, SFTP),
• Files within your account will look pretty much the same,
• Your scripts will still run as your user in the context of your hosting account, as we describe on our "Advanced PHP" page,
• You'll still have your own php.ini file to adjust as needed.

Some things will change a lot:

The new environment is based on Debian 5 and so all the system software is new:

• PHP 5.2.6-1+lenny2 with Suhosin-Patch 0.9.6.2
• Perl 5.10
• Imagemagick 6.3.7
• Ruby 1.8.7
• Python 2.5.2
• Vim 7.1
• Graphviz 2.20.2

Since the new environment contains software several years newer than the old environment, a mass migration or "cut-over" isn't feasible, as older sites might be relying on older server software. So, our intention is to run the two environments side-by-side and allow site owners to decide when to switch. This complexity added a lot of engineering work, but it was required in order to ensure the smoothest possible migration path.

If you'd like to switch your site to use the new shared hosting environment ASAP and help us test its stability, we'll be able to do that in the next few weeks. Just let us know and we'll coordinate a switch-over with you.

-JM