BarCampSydney

I’ve been encouraging people to come to BarCampSydney and some people get it straight away; “Yeah, that sounds awesome!”

But some people tilt their head to the side and give me a; “Huh?”

I know what they’re thinking. Why would you go to so much trouble putting together a ‘conference’ and then just let it go chaotic? Isn’t it going to be a useless mess? Isn’t it going to fall apart?

(Image ourtesy of Eris Doll and Flickr)

“No! You’re missing the point”, I want to shout. But I’m diplomatic.

Here’s a couple of reasons why it’s a great idea.

1. Most people find normal conferences, seminars and the like boring as bat poo. “Blah, blah, blah, my product is the best, blah, blah, blah”.Tech people find them especially boring and we dropped out of uni specifically to avoid boring lectures.
2. Smart people will be coming. We don’t have to make them form lines and tell them what they are interested in. They can walk around and work it out for themselves.
3. The content is so fresh and so changing that to try and formulate a schedule would make it out of date as soon as it was finished. Whatever happened the day before will be the big topic and worthy of discussion.
4. The people at the barcamp are the experts. They don’t want to hear from industry politicians, they want to talk to other experts like themselves and ask/answer/argue directly. No middle man. No taking notes.
5. Our jobs, companies, industry is crazy and messy and wonderful because of it. So our gatherings should match.

OK, that’s a start. Come on people, give me some more…