BarCampLondon3 last weekend was sponsored by Google and BBC Backstage and organised by the inimitable Ian Forrester with Amy Gepfert from Google. I've only just about recovered from my second BarCamp ever, the first being mobileCamp.
For those not familiar with the concept of a BarCamp or UnConvention or "user generated conference", the attendees are supposed to present or contribute in some other way e.g. helping out. You don't know the programme till you turn up. After they arrive people write on a whiteboard what their presentations will be, and you just decide what to go to on the day.
I haven't figured out how to present and stay anonymous. I did try a Cyberman helmet but it didn't work for me, you could still hear my real voice, I returned it to the shop! So I didn't lead a session, but I tried to do my bit by videoing lots of the presentations, and I'll be putting them online so that people who couldn't make it to the event can benefit from the presentations too.
This event kept pretty well to Imp's laws of BarCamp, except that many didn't even write down their names, never mind the details of what their talk would be about (a catchy title just isn't enough when you're competing with other talks in the same time slot). And there weren't microphones in all the rooms, or if there were not everyone used them, so on some of the videos the audio needs to be turned up quite a bit to hear the speaker properly. On the later one it's fine thanks to the loan of a gun microphone from Tom Hughes-Croucher, thanks Tom!
It takes me ages to process videos, so I'll be uploading them gradually over the next few weeks. To be going on with here's a lighthearted video of my own debut BarCamp "presentation", entitled "How to Fall Off a Segway". They said it wasn't possible - I proved them wrong! Plus a secret trick I wish I knew - how to get people to move the furniture out of the way for you - and BarCampers in action playing with the Googlers' Nintendo Wii. Lucky, lucky Googlers, to have the use of two Segways and a Wii, free meals 3 times a day, free snacks, beer, icecream etc etc...
The night festivities included games like London BarCamp fave Werewolf, and a chocolate fountain, but I was too exhausted to stay for those. For those interested in more info, there are photos on Flickr and various slides on Slideshare, plus several blog posts.
Keep checking back on this blog for more videos. I hope to have them all up by Christmas, the ones that are suitable for re-playing that is (not the "you had to be there!" ones) - including videos of the welcome and closing talks, and presentations on digital rights, voluntary economics (where people pay only if they choose to), Noserub, DIY user research, Yahoo Pipes, Website psychology, learning JQuery, the art of self-publishing, mobile web, mobile data and fair use, the future of BarCamp, and data portability.
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1 comment:
Seems like you shoulda kept the helmet for Segway ridin'. Need a good crash helmet you do.
Man, you shoulda really taken a spill. Imagine the lawsuit. Hurt at Google! Ka-ching ££££
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