BarCampSeattle

This past Thursday I received an email forwarded to me about an event called BarCamp happening in Seattle June 14th and 15th. I initially passed it over without any interest because I’d never heard of BarCamp and had no idea what it was. Eventually I came upon the email again and read the description of the event which made it sound like the type of great geeky internetty event that I’m always jealous of Andrew Mager and everybody else in the San Francisco Bay Area for getting to go to. When I realized I had the chance to get to one of these geek events locally I decided I would go.

BarCampSeattle was a two day event that allowed the two hundred or so participants to offer presentations or discussions on a wide range of technological topics. Sessions I attended included topics from leveraging game design principles in enterprise management and assessing the Seattle start-up scene, all the way to increasing the utility of the social graph and Copyright and royalty issues around a music based start-up.

The event was hosted in the conference rooms of the Adobe’s Seattle campus in Fremont. Both Saturday and Sunday morning the all of the Campers received free breakfast, and on Saturday we even got tons of pizza for lunch, and everyone met up after sessions finished up at The Red Door.

Overall it seemed like everybody in attendance had a great time, and at times on Saturday, BarCamp was even the hottest thing on twitter. Though some attendees ended up being more self-serving in their methods of participation than others, I personally thought the large majority of the sessions were well-intended and informative. From not knowing anything about the event to begin with I was impressed at how productive and enjoyable the experience could be with no agenda and the participants in control. I was a part of some interesting conversations at BarCamp that I plan to use for the basis of postings for future days. I enjoyed my BarCamp experience and plan to attend the next one that pops up around wherever I’m located at the time. If you get the chance to check out a BarCamp I recommend you do, and if there isn’t one coming up around your area, you could always just start your own…