Just a heads up that I’ll be attending BarCamp Austin 3 with some of my FreshBooks compatriots on March 7th. If the crowd’s willing, I’m hoping to get up and talk about my experiences building the FreshBooks API—what worked, what didn’t, that sort of thing.

Personally, I love BarCamp-style events over traditional conference fare. The openness, low cost, and great people you’ll find is tough to beat. I had a great time last year at BarCamp Toronto, and I’m sure Austin will be no different, judging by the names on this sign-up list (not to mention their awesome logo). Whether you’re a local or in town to catch SXSW, you should find the time to drop by.

Just came back from Enterprise Camp, one of many BarCamp-style events organized by the Toronto technology community, this time for discussing enterprise development, infrastructure, solutions, and so on.

If you’re unfamiliar with the BarCamp format, as I was going in, anyone’s allowed (and encouraged) to lead their own session. Topics included how to apply web 2.0 technology and concepts to enterprise-level software (think tagging, news syndication), getting users and managers to buy into it, other domains for the BarCamp format, and at least one software demonstration that I totally missed. Okay, maybe that sounds a little dry, but every session enjoyed a high level of participation, and I feel I sat in on some pretty exciting conversations.

When Enterprise Camp rolls around again, I would love to lead a session on how Ruby on Rails can work inside the enterprise. How can we convince managers and IT departments that Rails-solutions are robust, cost less, scale well, and will play nice with their legacy systems? Jay Fields and the ThoughtWorks bunch seem to be leading the charge on that front.

Edit: Will Pate has since put up some photos.