BarCampDenver - the thoughts
BarCamp explains itself as:
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 participants.
How it took place in Denver was a few people organized it, and found a place and posted info online. Everyone meetup on Friday night and organized what was happening on Saturday. I did not make it down Friday night, but Andrew and I went down on Saturday to catch the afternoon ‘session’. The jest is, no one is supposed to be an attendee but everyone is supposed to present on something. This leads to a wide range of presentations, all posted on a white board. One funny aspect of this was, as sessions came, the white board would be attacked with arrows and lines crossing things out. People would move their session so they could make it to the ones they cared about.
The meetup is backed by the BarCamp website. It is a wiki (a wiki is a community website where ANYONE can change it.) This allowed the Denver page to be started, where the schedule was posted, the event was originally organized. As people started their session, they may post their notes up to wiki so you can follow. One page was simply the attendees page, so everyone can add themselves to the event.
One great part of the event was simply meeting the people. Next time it happens in Denver I will definite participate again, but try to fully be a part of it. The people who are apart of it all had some awesome things they were working on. The event is worth the time simply for the communication and shoulder rubbing you can find nowhere else. The neat web projects I saw being developed by such little teams really hit me. I need to just apply my time more to some of my ideas and projects.
Andrew and I broke the rules of BarCamp and simply attended, and worse than that, we only attended the afternoon. My apologizes.
Now how did I find out about this crazy happening? Props to Andrew, he talked me into going with him to a Blogger Meetup in Boulder. We drove up to Boulder and meet about 8 other people at a coffee shop and just had a discussion. I am very entertained by learning about others and this hit the spot. It was a group with not too much in common, but were out going enough to meetup with a bunch of strangers. At this event, Joe mentioned he was going to attend BarCamp and recommended we check out the website and do the same. Dave who I meet at the blogger meetup was also at there.
I am hoping to do something a little less organized this semester before the weather gets too cold. I have heard about ‘unwired’ trips, where a bunch of nerds meetup and go camping. My idea is ‘unlearned’, an evening where a ton of people from Mines take up a whole camp ground at White Ranch and just hang out. Keep your eyes open, I think it would be one heck of an awesome night.