BarcampLeeds is taking place on 17th November 07, thanks to startup evangelists such as Imran Ali. North’s first Barcamp took place in Sheffield, which I could not attend. Manchester has not yet managed to pull off a Barcamp this year, even though it has been on the agenda and has been discussed many times by North West Digital Community. So what is a Barcamp?
According to the official Wiki:
BarCamp is 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. The name BarCamp was inspired as a complement to FooCamp.
The event has attracted more than 100 participants, but fire regulations have limited this to a maximum of 100. Here is a list of sessions identified on Wiki so far:
- Intelligent human-computer interfaces and their possibilities – Reinhold Behringer
- From start-up to £67m in 10 years – passing on the wisdom and hopefully not the pain 🙂 – Lee Strafford
- From startup to £45m in 8 years (Learn from my mistakes)) or Launching BT BizBox a small business CRM solution in 5 weeks – Dean Sadler
- SEO Site Clinic – – Dominic Hodgson and Others
- Why big companies are missing a trick by ignoring social media – Ian Green
- Ladybank Company of Distillers – building a real co-creation business through the internet – Ian Green
- Unleashing social media and technology for the good of local communities – Stuart Bruce
- From Zero to Game in 30 Minutes – Tom Scott
- From a Mobile Telephone to a Computer – a Reality Dysfunction Ian Hay
- Paradigm shift in business document interactivity – Manoj Ranaweera
- Drupal – Isriya Paireepairit
- Conquering Time and Space – A survivors guide to distributed dev team management – Ian Pringle
By the way, there are also some simple rules to observe, these being:
- 1st Rule: You do talk about Bar Camp.
- 2nd Rule: You do blog about Bar Camp.
- 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
- 4th Rule: Only three word intros.
- 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
- 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.
- 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
- 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don’t really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)
I am very much looking forward to my first Barcamp experience. Thanks Imran Ali, Tom Scott and others for making this a reality.