Yesterday, I attended BarCampMiami. If you’ve never been to a BarCamp, basically, it’s a conference that has no agenda until the conference starts. It starts with a blank board, and the people who are attending put up the topics that they want to present, on a first-come-first-served basis. And then the other attendees go to the topics that sound interesting.
I was a little hesitant at first, even though I was very much looking forward to going. And the way it was explained to me, the 2 feet rule is in effect at a barcamp. If you don’t like the topic, then by all means, get up on your 2 feet and go to a different presentation.
About 800 people pre-registered, and probably more than 500 people attended, although it would be hard to get a good count, as there wasn’t a ‘registration’ table aside from one where you wrote your name on a nametag. Oh, did I mention that it was free? And that it was organized by a handful of people, pretty much using Twitter, Facebook, and a couple of other Social Media platforms?
BTW, it was friggin amazing. For every session I attended, there were at least 2 that I would have liked to have gone to. Attendees came from not only South Florida, but a large contingent came from Orlando and around Florida. Some people came from other states also (so they said).
Tomorrow, I’m attending Future Of Web Apps (FOWA) in Miami. The agenda has been set, the speakers probably submitted their powerpoints last week, and the registration table is probably already set up. I’m sure that there will be a whole bunch of people there from the organizers to make sure that everything goes just right.
While I’m sure that FOWA will be a great conference, it will be interesting to see the difference between the 2.
BTW, I was lucky enough to get to present. More on that later.
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I spoke to someone the other day who works for the Orlando Weekly about a group he was trying to get started. It would have no official members or structure. It would simply be a group of people getting together to tackle whatever social issues were presented. I was skeptical about the value of this until I read about your experience with barcamp. Perhaps we can engage each other without structure.