Welcome to BarCampSydney
BarCamp is an intense community event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to participate. Find out more.
We’ll be back…
As Christy says: we’ll be back in about 3 months for another event
BarCampSydney over!
BarCampSydney was a great success with over 120 attendees and a wide range of topics/discussions/arguements.
You can check all the action on the flickr stream.
BarCampSydney and the 9am start
There is a possibility that we will have around 200 people coming to BarCampSydney.
At 9am we will attempt to:
- register people and hand out name badges at the door (make sure you sign up if you haven’t done it yet)
- give out BarCampSydney t-shirts to the first 100 people who signed up on the wiki
- give a quick rundown on how the event will work
- point people to the “room charts”, where they can begin scheduling.
The scheduling will be the most exciting part of the day!
We will provide a huge charts for each of the three rooms and computer lab. The charts will be broken into rough time slots. We will provide a pile of cards and marker pens. Attendees can write down their presentations, panels, discussions, forums etc and stick them in available slots on any room chart.
Remember, there are no formal time slots, no formal presentations, no formal break. So, be prepared to negotiate, discuss, argue, barter, persuade!
In a short space of time we will have an overall schedule for the day.
Of course, with BarCamp, there are no rules - the schedule can change any time. All part of the fun of BarCampSydney!
I’ll Drink (Milk) To That
Big ups to Alan who has thrown some cash behind the bar so we can all have a post BarCamp beer (or house wine).
Cheers Alan and the babes at Milkooler
The Spirit of BarCamp
Despite starting relatively recently in 2005, BarCamp has a long heritage. Open Space Technology, for instance, started a couple of decades ago. The method involves workshopping rather than presentations, with the aim for a particular outcome.
Open Space Technology is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 20+ years, it has also become clear that opening space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations, where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results with regularity.Â
Harrison Owen, one of the core drivers of Open Space Technology, describes it as follows:
“At the very least, Open Space is a fast, cheap, and simple way to better, more productive meetings. At a deeper level, it enables people to experience a very different quality of organization in which self-managed work groups are the norm, leadership a constantly shared phenomenon, diversity becomes a resource to be used instead of a problem to be overcome, and personal empowerment a shared experience. It is also fun. In a word, the conditions are set for fundamental organizational change, indeed that change may already have occurred. By the end, groups face an interesting choice. They can do it again, they can do it better, or they can go back to their prior mode of behavior.
Open Space is appropriate in situations where a major issue must be resolved, characterized by high levels of complexity, high levels of diversity (in terms of the people involved), the presence of potential or actual conflict, and with a decision time of yesterday.
Open Space runs on two fundamentals: passion and responsibility. Passion engages the people in the room. Responsibility ensures things get done. A focusing theme or question provides the framework for the event. The art of the question lies in saying just enough to evoke attention, while leaving sufficient open space for the imagination to run wild.”
We don’t have a theme or outcome in mind for BarCampSydney 0.1, so anything goes.
Tim O’Reilly developed the Open Space Technology approach and applied it directly to the theme of technology. He created FOOCamp and held the first one in October 2003. His description of FOOCamp was:
We’ve invited about 400 people who’re doing interesting work in fields such as wireless, web services, open source programming, GPS, and all manner of emerging technologies to share their work-in-progess, show off the latest tech toys and hardware hacks, and tackle challenging problems together. We’ll have some planned activities, but much of the agenda will be determined by you. We’ll provide space, electricity, a wireless network, and a wiki. You bring your ideas, enthusiasms, and projects. We all get to know each other better, and hopefully come up with some cool ideas about how to change the world.
For BarCampSydney we’re adopting most of what O’Reilly outlines here, except for two factors. 1) We’re making topics open to those beyond software in particular to include creative uses in entertainment, art, marketing, podcasts and so on. Other camps that have explored this as a theme include: ArtCamp, MarCamp and BlogCamp. Rather than see BarCamp as a technology-only event, we’re using the term to encompass all the possible conversations that could be had about digital media. 2) The other approach we won’t be employing is the invite only model. Indeed, this is why BarCamp was invented.
The spirit that you can see in the Open Space Technology and FOOCamp approaches holds true in BarCamp too. Some quotes from the BarCamp wiki, The Rules of BarCamp:
When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.
Looking forward to experiencing this event with you all…wherever it leads…
BarCamp Sydney in Sydney Morning Herald
Oh yeah, we’ve made the big time!
Sydney Morning Herald and BarCampSydney - Unconferences Open To All. Nice comment Simon;
“There is no agenda, save for participants’ desire to discuss early-stage web technologies and open-source software in the hope of learning from their peers and perhaps advancing their commercial prospects. Attendees organise themselves into groups with shared interests and then discuss whatever they want.”
Unfortunately the wiki was having a tantrum at the time…
Wiki Issues
We’ve got some issues with the wiki. If you’re trying to RSVP but can’t, just write your name in a comment below and we’ll add you to the list.
Calling Bloggers, Podcasters and YouTubers
Anyone who is a blogger, podcaster or avid YouTuber, should get along to BarCamp Sydney to record this massively multiplayer real world event.
- Audio
- Video
- Photos
- Interviews
Write the book that becomes the smash hit big screen blockbuster: “BarCampSydney - This Time It’s Personal!”
BarCampSydney (Already) Rocks!
Robin has created an app that shows the greatest activity on the BarCamp wiki. Guess what? BarCampSydney rocks!
Ideas on How to Rock the BarCamp
BarCamp is pretty unstructured, but it’s good to have a bunch of things happening throughout the day. We had some ideas on the wiki;
- Panel
- Presentation
- Goldfish Bowl
- Soap box - Just stand on a box and spout your wisdom.
- Half-Geeked - Half-Baked, but tech focused.
- Demo new stuff
- Debates
- Games
- Competitions
- Races
- Rolling story
What else could we do? Any ideas???
If you have an idea, just prepare it and run it sometime during the day. Ideal time frame is about 5-10 minutes. Keep it nice and simple. Least props required the better. Keep it legal, keep it clean and keep it tech.