Blog Posts About: barcamp

If you live in or near Seattle, try to make it BarCamp Seattle this weekend.  Common Craft is a sponsor - I'll see you there.

What's BarCamp? I suppose you want an explanation in Plain English?  I'll try, but here's the Wikipedia page. 

People have gotten tired of the normal conference format.  Speakers on a stage, everyone else quiet. Everyone knows the best stuff happens over lunch or in the hallways.  BarCamp is an event that happens in cities around the world that offers a different, more open and free flowing take on conferences - known as an unconference. People (often geeks, entrepreneurs, artists, etc.) come together for 2 days. During that time, participants volunteer to contribute in some way. Often these are workshops, talks, demos, discussions, etc. BarCamp is all about having fun and doing what feels right. 

Here are the details:

Register Here

Sat Jun 13, 10am-5pm.
Sun Jun 14 10am-1pm.

Adobe Conference Center
801 North 34th Street
Seattle, WA 98103

Follow @barcampseattle on Twitter and use #bcs09 in your tweets.

Pink shirts - that may be the one thing that will stick out years from now - the pink, er, fuchsia, shirts of BarCamp Vancouver 2007. This is not to say that the content and people weren't amazing - they were. But the shirts were unforgettable.

This was my first actual Bar Camp, but I've become accustomed to the unconference format and really dig it. It gives everyone an equal chance to be involved in a low-key, highly diverse, fun environment with interesting people. It's no surprise that there are so many "camps" these days - the format works.

Sometimes is feels like Vancouver is our second home - we have a lot of friends there that we see often. It's easy to have a good time around the Vancouver Tech Mafia. I talk about those folks enough - what I really want to say is how much I enjoyed meeting new folks.

It was a pleasure to be a part of a panel discussion run by Jordan Behan on Marketing and Social Media. The co-panelists were Monique Trottier, Linda Bustos, Tanya Davis and Geoffrey Gachallan. Lots of interesting questions.

One of my favorite experiences of the day was a session on DIY ads and AdHack, a business from James Sherritt of Work Industries. We divided the room into three groups who each had 30 minutes to produce an ad for a local pizza place called "fatih's pizza" - pronounced "fatty's pizza". Of course, with such a name, the ideas wandered into less-appropriate territory. The three videos are on YouTube here, here and here <-- ours. So fun.

I also enjoyed a session with Todd Sieling of Ma.gnolia, who talked about how he is using their Ma.gnolia Twitter Account as a way to work with their fans and customers. His advice was solid and focused on how twittering for business is different - you should be responsible and twitter with meaning and relevance.

My own session ended up being called "Fighting Complexity with Video" and I was happy with the results. Lots of great questions and interest. Monique has a nice write up here.

The conch played a huge role in keeping us organized and Dave "uncle weed" Olsen was a pro, but risked the health of his sinuses with each blow.

I'm sure to miss some folks, but I wanted to give a shout out to some people that I enjoyed meeting for the first time. I've known about Tod Maffin for a long time, but never got a chance to interact - great guy. Simon Koldyk of Scribblewiki and I have talked in email, so it was great to put a name to a face. It was a pleasure to hang out with Derek Miller after seeing his head 30 feet tall at Gnomedex. I'd seen John Ounpuu before, but I never realized he had acting chops (from our Fatih's Pizza ad). I'm not sure but I think Scott Laird from Google was the only other Seattleite there. Matthew Trentacoste showed us his amazing video screens at the lab at UBC at Northern Voice, but this time we got a chance to hang out. John Biehler was someone who got the crowd of Canadians revved up about hacking the iPhone (Canadians can't use iPhones). It was great to get to Wordpress and Automattic low-down from Lloyd Budd. James Andres and Dave Gratton of Donat Group and Project Opus hosted an afterparty (maybe preparty?) with Lyal Avery and the Outcome 3 folks (yay1 more pizza!!) in their loft offices. Phillip Jeffrey got everyone on the same page about Facebook and came out with us for post-event Chinese. Those Canadians really are nice folks.

And of course, a big ole thanks to the organizers, who pulled off a wonderful event - I'm coming again next year.

Kris Krug Roland Tanglao Robert Scales Zak Greant James Sherrett Ianiv Schweber Megan Cole Jordan Behan Aaron Gladders

To this list I would also add Bill from Workspace, which was a great host for a perfect venue (window view below) for the event and to Travis Smith for hosting a homeless American for a night (I have my fingers crossed).

But the pink shirts - that's what I'll remember most. ;)

BarCamp Vancouver is about to lift off and I'm so excited. Vancouver is easily one of my most favorite cities in the world and happens to have a load of great people - many of which are planners of the event.

I was there was for Northern Voice and Moose Camp - the unconference in the Spring. For that event I signed up for a session early and then remember it the night before the event. Luckily Nancy White was there to co-host the talk on "New Rules for the New Communities" which made all the difference.

Since then, our videos have taken over our lives and I just signed up for a session at Bar Camp. See what you think of this title:

Making Paper Work in Video - A discussion on the role of simplicity, plain English, basic tools and technical amateurism in the creation of online videos that go places.

Does that sound interesting? What would you want to know from such a session? Any suggestions are welcome...