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by rwdaigle.
Original Post: BarCamp RDU: Yes Please, I'll Have Another
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This weekend’s BarCamp RDU marked the culmination of a few weeks worth of work for myself and the organizing committee, and even more for Fred, the head maestro. It was my first such event, and here are my impressions:
Logistically, everything went really well, except for maybe a slight shortage of our lunch foods (for which I am to blame).The volunteers totally stepped up and the cogs of the bar camp wheel operated efficiently.
I would say the sessions were of varying quality. There were a few I heard about during the course of the day and wondered why I didn’t go to them – and some of the ones I went to I wondered why I chose them. I would say as a general rule when choosing which sessions to attend – choose the ones where either the topic or speaker, or preferrably both, are more discussion oriented. Probably the most interesting session I wend to was the session on social networks by Fred Stutzman. It wasn’t that Fred totally dominated and blew us away with some really bleeding edge concepts – it was that he really made it a conversation between Fred and the group, and within the group itself. Choose the sessions whose topic (i.e. ‘Social Networks’) and speaker both encourage active participiation. After all, that is what a BarCamp is about, right?
I was really impressed with the overall quality of people who attended. A lot of different backgrounds and a lot of interesting people. While it was definitely a technology based conference, I really felt like my parents or significant other could have sat in on some of the talks and remained interested. It’s not all about geekin’ out.
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