What I did this weekend: BarCamp Vancouver 2009
5Oct2009 Filed under: ramblings, vancouver Author: MikeI went to BarCamp Vancouver 2009 on Saturday – my first BarCamp ever. Was it a good time? Yes. Would I go back? Maybe, but I’d really have to think about it.
First, let’s talk about the good:
- The Remote Working session by @sticksallison. Shared lots of good tips on how to work remotely. Plus, dude lives on a BC gulf island and does Drupal development. That’s *my* plan.
- The “I got phished!” roundtable commiseration was fun, although it quickly degenerated into a discussion about how to secure your Facebook account.
- The price. $25 for admission which includes the conference, a t-shirt, food, and a pre-party (apparently there must be a Vancouver bylaw which requires all “tech” events to have an accompanying party.)
- The venue. The Discovery Parks Vancouver Centre is a nice spot. I’m even thinking of getting a co-working workstation for myself there. Yes, it’s not in Gastown, and you know, that’s not necessarily a Bad Thing.
- The smoothness. Props to the BarCamp organizing committee, you guys did a great job. You took a bunch of people, threw them into a room, told them to come up with a schedule, and then ran the conference without a hitch. Nice work.
- Friendly folks. There was no difficulty in striking up a conversation. Taking notes on my Newton Messagepad 2100 made it even easier as people kept asking me “IS THAT A REAL NEWTON?!” (note: old/retro tech is a great way to spark conversations)
The disappointing:
- The presentation on “Education and Social Media”. One of my main clients is a BC university, so I was interested in hearing how BCIT used social media to facilitate learning. I was even more encouraged when the presenter opened with the statement “Social Media is not Marketing”. The rest of his 45 minute presentation focused on how BCIT uses Social Media to pull in new students and showcase the school. In other words: MARKETING. (note: if the presenter ever reads this post – your presentation was excellent, just not what I expected given the title & intro. You may want to consider that for future presentations)
- Speaking of marketing, I felt as though I was at a marketing convention. There were a lot of people looking to “leverage social media”. Not quite as much talk of “monetization” as there was at the MESH conference in Toronto, but it was still there.
- The guy who made a sneery-face at my Macified Sony Vaio-P, while commenting that his Linux laptop was superior. Dude: 1) that’s just rude, and 2) make sure the person you sneer at isn’t a former embedded Linux developer and sysadmin. Good thing I was in a good mood!
- It felt like the Northern Voice conference, part deux.
I think what really disappointed me was the soft-tech nature of the event. It was less of a tech event and more of a “who let the marketers play with computers?!” kind of deal (oh, now that’s going to generate some comment feedback I’m sure )
Mind you, I wasn’t looking for sessions on proper soldering technique – but the “Education and Social Media” presentation I mentioned earlier is a perfect example of what I didn’t like – the concept of “Social Media” seems inextricably tied into selling a product. While Social Media might be a great marketing tool, there are so many other applications of the technology that are frequently ignored.
The last thing I’d like to mention (and this is the big one for me): How similar the BarCamp Vancouver and Northern Voice conferences feel. That’s not really a surprise when you consider that many of the same people are on the organizing committees for both conferences (update: that was an assumption on my part based on the folks that I assumed were “in charge” at the conference). But is there really a need for both? Northern Voice is a social media conference, whereas BarCamp is supposed to be whatever the attendees make of it. But given the same set of attendees with the same interests, you end up with a lot of duplication between the two conferences.
In the end, for $25 I can’t really complain. I met some interesting people, made a couple contacts and attended two great sessions. Would I go again next year? Yes, but to either Northern Voice or BarCamp Vancouver. Not both – they’re just too similar.
PS: If you’re interested in a more techie conference, BazCampYVR looks pretty interesting.
5 Responses to “What I did this weekend: BarCamp Vancouver 2009”
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My name is Mike Kelly. I'm a Vancouver-based technologist and non-practicing physicist. strangely entangled is my home base on the internet. If you look hard enough you'll find some blog postings, articles, photos and other stuff I thought might be interesting
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Boris Mann
October 5th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Hi Mike: thanks for the debrief post — this is good feedback on what different people like / don’t like.
Looking at the organizer list, I believe I’m the only one that has ever organized a Northern Voice (I’m an organizer emeritus – I’m not involved anymore). Darren came and helped run the morning, but he wasn’t actually a Barcamp organizer.
But point taken – as I said in my blog post (http://bmannconsulting.com/blog/bmann/barcamp-vancouver-2009), I think the principle of “radical inclusion” has moved BarCamp to a softer focus.
Of course, the people attending (including yourself…) are what make the schedule. I, too, could have used some “harder” sessions — I didn’t give one, but no one else stood up and gave one either.
What are you thinking of presenting at BazCamp? I’m looking forward to just being a participant there.
Mike
October 5th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Hey Boris, thanks for the reply. I guess I didn’t look closely enough at the organizer list between the two conferences – I assumed you & Darren were involved in both. But yes, you’re right – it’s up to the attendees to set the tone of BarCamp, and I think the similarities between it & NV were due to the similarities in audiences.
As for BazCamp, not 100% sure what I’d be demoing if I can make it (that weekend is in flux for me right now). But possibilities are:
1) Homebrew EKG
2) A Linux gumstix project that I’ve been tinkering with
3) ???
4) Profit!
Kemp Edmonds
October 5th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Hi Mike,
I appreciate the mention and a link the actual presentation “Social Media and Educational Institutions: Highs, Lows and Silos” (http://bit.ly/bcv09ke) would be nice to let readers decide for themselves as well as read your perspective.
I understand your frustration about my presentation. I have so much content around this topic, literally there is enough out there that I could have spoken all day about “Social Media and Education.” I had to start somewhere, so I started with what I know the most about: BCIT’s adventures in social media and the challenges presented in building community through these new tools. Building community is more about honest storytelling than marketing and this presentation was about the how social media works on an institutional level with external and internal groups.
I am currently preparing another presentation about Social Media and Education called, “A tool for learning” which focuses more on the uses of the tool for learning inside and outside the classroom. I look forward to creating a third in the series with your input on “…many other applications of the technology [social media] that are frequently ignored.”
Part of the challenge is meeting the students and public in ways they are able to receive. This is the reasoning behind my focus on how to ‘leverage’ popular tools to reach your audience. For busy educational institutions the costs of reinventing the social media wheel are very high and an extremely low financial priority, sadly. I would love to see as many other applications as of the technology as you.
This was my first time presenting any material from my recent job at BCIT (started mid-June, graduated in May) and I have to speak to what I meant by ‘Social Media is Culture not Strategy.’ Indeed the ways we use social media for as you say, “Marketing” is how we use media to build community and culture. I don’t see this as marketing in the traditional sense, this is culture. Be it, build it, foster it. I had to speak to what I know.
I would love more feedback on what you would have like to have seen. For me this was a first in many ways: first barcamp, first presentation, first time with the content so your feedback is greatly appreciated. I am always looking to develop what I present into a more well-rounded and thorough way. Your feedback is awesome and I greatly appreciate it. Without it how would I know how to improve my work.
Thanks again and I would love to sit down with you to discuss more in-depth the other stories about the topic and how I can hone my presentation to be most beneficial to my most important audience, educational professionals (like yourself) and educational institutions.
Cheers,
Kemp Edmonds (http://kempedmonds.com
Mike
October 5th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Kemp: awesome reply, thanks for taking the time to write all that out.
Like I said, your presentation was top-notch (loved the tool you used too), just not at all what I was expecting. But thanks for the link – I’m going to be passing that along to my education clients to take a look at.
I’ll give it some thought & see what I can come up with in the way of suggestions regarding your presentation.
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October 7th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[...] click through to Mike Kelly of Strangely Entangled, who also lamented the absence of a tech focus, too – and the consensus was [...]