This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending BarCampGR and I tell you - it’s really got me thinking about professional conferences/seminars, and my involvement at them.
For those that have never heard of or been to a BarCamp, here’s a quote from the site I linked to above:
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees, usually centered around design & technology topics
But that doesn’t quite cover it either - better still are the rule posted on the parent BarCamp site:
1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.
2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.
3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
4th Rule: Only three word intros.
5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don’t really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)
To be honest - I was a bit intimidated by these rules before signing up. However a couple people I knew had also signed up, and I saw some other names on the list that I wanted to meet and hadn’t yet. I decided that no one could make me do something that I didn’t want to do, so went ahead and signed up anyway (worse case I could take out the trash or something…).
I arrived Friday and milled about some by myself…I always tell people I’m neither an extrovert or an introvert but rather just a “vert” who takes a bit before warming up to a given situation. There were a couple of whiteboards in the hallway where the presentation schedules were to be posted, but I held back and didn’t offer one until I could get a better feel for the event.
I sat in on the opening session, and while waiting for the speakers to begin had a pretty good conversation with the guy next to me. We discovered some common challenges in getting people to buy into new technologies once installed - in his case knowledge management and in my case content management. It seems like no matter how cool the tool it still boils down to someone having to take the time to go write content, and we had both had ideas and experiences around this.
After the opening sessions I ended up back at the schedule board next to the same guy so thought “What the heck” and proposed a session around the topic we had discussed - not one intended to communicate solutions but more of an open discussion to see how other people and companies dealt with the issue. He was game, and we called it “The People Side of Content and Knowledge Management”, and had about 14-16 people show up and some pretty good discussion around the issue. I came away thinking I need to develop a new post-launch service offering for clients, where somehow I stay more engaged with them than in the past and hopefully it will lead to them continuing to use their new website effectively.
At this point I was really having a great time - the adhoc, loose and last-minute BarCamp approach really suits my personality and style.
A few sessions, hallway conversations, and brewery company tables later and I had met several other local web guys, programmers and designers, and had fun connecting the dots between them and the companies and people I’ve worked with in the past.
I had many conversations around ExpressionEngine, and it’s got me thinking that it might be time for a W. MI EE user group (I intend to follow up on this idea, but it’ll probably be a couple of weeks).
By the time things were over at the GR Brewing Company Friday night it was after midnight. I drove back to the College and had the decision of where to sleep. I figured that no matter if I:
- Drove back to Holland for the night
- Slept on a classroom floor
- Slept in the back of my car
I’d get about the same amount of sleep, so choose the car (since I was already there). The car is a ‘96 Roadmaster Station Wagon so with the back seat flopped down there’s plenty of room for even a long-legged Dutchman like me. It took a while to drop off but the lot was quiet and I managed a few hours sleep before being checked on by a Calvin College security guard about 6AM. He must have been hip to the BarCamp going on as he quickly apologized and moved on.
At that point I got up and drove to a McDonalds for breakfast, then headed back to the BarCamp session for a few more munchies before getting going for the day again.
After a couple more conversations that included ExpressionEngine I relented and put an EE demo on the schedule - with the assumption that if no one wanted to see, they wouldn’t come..
I hadn’t prepared much - so while in another session downloaded a template from OpenSource Web Design. My main goal for the provided 30 minutes was to do a bit of template “chunking” to show how embedded templates worked, how to pass a variable to an embedded template, and then how to quickly setup a static section of a site with the one weblog, one template approach.
I had 10-12 people show up, and managed to get through the process. It was a bit stressful to code with an audience but luckily I didn’t screw up too bad.
I sat through some more sessions on jQuery, Tumblr, and Firebug, and then BarCamp was done. The participants helped clean up, and as I went to leave was encouraged to take some leftover food home (Subway cookies? Uhh..sure….).
So in the space of a day and a half I:
- Met lots of new people, all local, and all in the same or related industry.
- Had lots of really great conversations around content management, web marketing, working with clients, project management, as well as specific tools for use in doing this kind of work.
- Spent the grand total of $5 on one breakfast
- Got to speak/host at two different sessions
- Got to do some low-ley promotion of my services as a business
- Have leads on some local resources I’ll have a need for at some point (designers, etc).
- Came home with food
And honestly, the experience leaves me wondering—why would I go to SXSW again, when BarCamp delivered on every front (education, networking, conversation) for (virtually) no cost? I’m seriously considering looking for another BarCamp or two within driving distance and going to them instead of SXSW.
Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed SXSW this past year. But mostly because I went with the intent of meeting both the EllisLab and Godbit folks. This year I don’t have those same goals, and if you remove the whole SXSW after-hours party scene that doesn’t interest me, I’m thinking the BarCamp approach just flat-out makes more sense.
Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.
Ben Carlson on August 18, 2008
Ty on August 25, 2008