BarCamp Miami 2009 Write-Up
by TheRealEdwin on 27/02/09 at 9:06 pm
BarCamp Miami was held this past weekend at Anokha in the Grove and what a crowd! Over 700 people registered for this free event, and while I don’t think quite that many showed up there was still a very sizable crowd. I wasn’t sure what to expect at an event such as this. I’ve never been to one of these and I seriously doubt that a LAN party could compare. For one thing there wasn’t any name calling going on here. So what happened this past weekend, and why am I going back next year?
The people. BarCamp is akin to organized anarchy. I know it’s a stupid thing to say but that’s how it is. If you watched my twitter feed or the #BarCampMiami hashtag then you may have caught my Qik live stream of the event introduction. While it wasn’t as fancy or elaborate as the Olympics, it got the job done. Here is the introduction by the main organizer. So once the introductions are over and you have something to speak about, you grab a stick it note, write down your information (topic, name, etc) and stick it on a time slot that is open for a room, so once all is said and done the board was filled up with volunteers giving presentations about their topic of choice. The topics were all over the board both in a literal fashion and topical fashion. Presentations from search engine optimization to monetizing your blog, iPhone programming, Firefox add on, user interfaces, to traveling with one bag were shown. I wasn’t really sure what to attend till it was far too late. The ones I really wanted to see was the web typography, the Google presenter, and the Firefox addons presentation. Sadly I only got to see three really good presentations, those being the DiSo project, One Bag, Wufoo.com
I am saddened that two of the really good presentations that I did attended I wasn’t able to stream because of background noise, and a dead iPhone battery. Those who presented in the courtyard of Anokha also had the bad luck of being unable to use the projector, because there was too much daylight to see the video feed. So the iPhone devs, Wufoo, and One Bag presentation that I saw there was either had to share their presentation via thumb drive, or in the case of the iPhone dev, the presenter had to hold his laptop up with one arm. Guy must’ve been built or his arm was tired by the time he finished, because it was a beefy looking 17″ laptop.
I’m not going to talk to about the content of all the presentations but I do want to give special props to the boys at WuFoo.com. Not only do they have an excellent website with really good content and provide a very useful service, they had the best presentation I saw. This is exactly what BarCamp was for, going over the thought process on their project from begining to end as well as showing why they choose what they did. Take some time and read their blog at Particletree and give them some love at WuFoo.com.
It was a very enjoyable event and time well spent. Met lots of people, chatted with even more in person, and on twitter. Getting a chance to walk around the grove, eat a good falafel from Anokha, and enjoying the perfect weather was a good way to end the weekend. Checking out the Grove was a nice bonus because I do beleive my significant other is considering setting up shop there instead of Dania. I hear the second floor of Anokha is available.
For a list of everyone that participated in BarCamp Miami 2009 please visit this link.
Laid Off Camp Miami Roundup « holy crap my hair is on fire
Jun 8th, 2009
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