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by James Britt.
Original Post: BarCamp Follow-up
Feed Title: James Britt: Ruby Development
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Feed Description: James Britt: Playing with better toys
BarCamp Phoenix was last Saturday, and I had a blast. I want to thank everyone who came out to UAT and made it happen. Special thanks to: Maulik & Google for buying us pizza; April for not only giving two presntations, but helping clean up the trash that was in the room when we arrived; Gregg for buying markers when dopey here mistakenly assumed there would be some available in the rooms. Thanks, too, to UAT. And of course endless thanks to those who gave presentations.
We had plenty of material, with activity going from about 9:30am to 5:00pm. Topics included breaking out of cubicle prison (even if only a state of mind); test- and behavior-driven development; using Google Gears for integrating a multitude of social networks; Google’s Big Table technology; CSS techniques; predictions for what will be significant technology in the next few years (plus a review of our predictions form last year’s BarCamp).
While the event went quite well, there are two things i would do differently if I were to do such a thing again:
Define clearly what is expected of the presenters, and make sure that is understood from the get-go. With many topics and presenters, things need to move at a decent pace. Talks should be set for roughly 20 minutes; assume there will be discussion and questions. Prepared talks are fine, though I have a preference for the “Show some code, goad the audience” approach. But however speakers want to approach it, they need to know that they’ve got ~20 minutes, ready or not.
Rouse the rabble earlier and more often. I’ve been interested in seeing how much can be done with how little effort. Partly this is because I’m lazy, but mostly because I’d like to see many more events take place in Phoenix but suspect that few people will bother to make them happen if they think it will become a full-time job. Once a BarCamp is rolling there is really not that much that need be done (save for watching the clock and keeping things rolling), but in retrospect I think I should have done more to get the word out. This was a topic of a short discussion during BarCamp. Many wondered why we didn’t see more folk from the larger tech companies in the Valley. It was suggested that outfits such as Google are somewhat insulated, and have less need to go outside their work community to hear about new stuff. So, next time, a key goal would be to ensure that word gets spread around the local offices of places like Google, Microsoft, etc.
Overall I’m happy that BarCamp went as well as it did, though still a bit down that there weren’t more people. Attendance was less than half of last year’s event. While those numbers may be a factor of getting the word out, a part of me believes that most so-called geeks here in Phoenix are mainly interested in being spectators.
400+ people will go to something such as Code Camp because they can sit on their asses and get a fee lecture on ASP.net or Cake PHP. I expect very few of those people have a real love for their craft or for the pleasures of exchanging ideas in a room full of bright, active people.
Sadly, it may be that Phoenix just isn’t the right place for things like BarCamp, and no amount of hype would change that.
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