What is this BarCamp thing anyway?
So what exactly is Barcamp? The name was originally derived from ‘foocamp’ which is an invitation only conference organized by O’Reilly Media. Foo and bar being common placeholder names in hacker and other nerd slang. The barcamp.org site says, “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.”
No Spectators, Only Participants
Barcamp has been described as an ‘unconference’ where the attendees are all encouraged to make a presentation on something that they have some expertise with. As it turns out it’s not even necessarily required that one be an expert in a subject to present, as the cooperative nature of the event probably will mean that someone else will be willing to help out if they know more than you on the subject.
Topics discussed have historically been tech-centric, but the floor is open for anyone that is passionate about a topic to present to an audience. Anything from programming languages to graphic design to how-to sessions dealing with crafts or art or I don’t even know what.
So the idea is that the conference starts as a blank slate, and everyone there picks a time slot and a topic and reserves a room for the presentation. Details may vary but that’s essentially the heart of it. So what topics would you be interested in seeing presentations on? And I guess even more importantly: what topics would you be interested in presenting? Also, if you’ve been to or organized a previous Barcamp, what topics worked well?
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Some of the most interesting topics have been those that spanned various areas, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, BarCamp GR had a presentation on lessons learned from farming.
The presenter followed traditional writing/storytelling practices, and the end point was that tech presentations could use a heavy dose of storytelling to better communicate/connect with audiences. OK, that probably sounds a bit odd and the retelling doesn’t do it justice, but it was one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen.
I think the more you can include people from diverse backgrounds, the better the presentations/topics will be.
I’m a historian and always want to hear from web folks about design, technology and connecting with users. I’ve never been to a BarCamp but I would love to come and I could possibly get a great venue for it (aka the museum where I work).