BarCampBoston – June 2006

Headed out to Maynard yesterday for BarCampBoston. I had the dubious distinction of being the first person to show up (other than the volunteers putting it together), but fortunately some others were quickly behind me. Hung around for about an hour or so before the first session… At first, it looked like it was going to be slim selection, but the schedule filled up quickly. The first session I went to was on “Neo-Cartography”, but it was pretty lame because the guys running spent about 15 of their 30 minutes on going around the room … I was worried that the “ad-hoc” nature of the event would cause all the sessions to be kinda chaucey, but I think people just needed a bit of time to figure out how short 30 minutes actually is.

Went to several great sessions, and I even took notes for several of the sessions I attended.. I used SubEthaEdit for the first time, and while nobody else contributed to my documents, a few people requested copies of the notes by adding their address to the bottom of the docs.

I didn’t go back for day two of the conference because I woke up early to take to the airport and when I got back I took a nap that ran “a little long”. I was going to do my talk today on “Why working on classified software sucks”, but oh well.. The deal with BarCamp is that every attendee is supposed to give a talk, so I’m a leech, but the whole grid was pretty much full yesterday, so whatever.. I’ll be more prepared next time around…

2 thoughts on “BarCampBoston – June 2006

  1. I came back for day two and found it to be a much better experience. Everything was reduced to one side of the campus, and all the sessions were jam-packed. I got to meet and talk to a lot more people that way. For the next BarCamp Boston, I hope the try to make the treks in-between rooms much smaller – I think that was a real killer for day one.

    1. Yeah, that was a big problem… Also, people need to stick to the schedule a bit more… It’s tough when one 30 minute session runs 10 minutes long and creates a huge cascade effect..

      Also, having the two “wings” of conference rooms not only so far away from each other, but so far away from the schedule board was a bit frustrating… Eventually the wiki schedule was updated, but it took awhile…

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