Sun Oct 9, 2011
The news rarely mention the positive aspects of the Internet, but there are hundreds! Yesterday I attended a BarCamp for the first time and I really enjoyed it. Even it is not strictly an Internet thing, it is often organized and announced through the Internet.
Since it was my first time I’m really not an expert on this, but for what I’ve seen, a BarCamp is a one or two day event where people meet, present and discuss ideas. BarCamps are a kind of unconference. According to Wikipedia, they are participant-driven meetings. In normal conferences there is a speaker and many listeners. But unconferences have many speakers who are also the listeners.
A few years ago there was an Android related BarCamp in Berlin. That was the first time I heard about this idea, but I did not attend. I must admit that one of the reasons was that I believed that a self organized meeting would have a low quality. But I was wrong.
Yesterday we were about 20 or 30 people. The program was decided in the morning, as people wrote on a whiteboard the time and title of their presentation. The event took place at the Futurice offices, which is a beautiful space. There were free drinks, including Club Mate :) There were a few technical presentations about mobile phone development and others about photography, music writing and the Internet. I also gave an improvised presentation about my Fun Programming videos.
I’m glad I participated.
I’m now going to tell my friends in Mallorca they should organize a BarCamp there =)