I go to many conferences each year; unfortunately, most are deadly dull. I guess I’m tired of the traditional format (keynote speakers, marketing panels, etc). Usually, the best learning happens in the hallways in between sessions–during sessions people are too busy surfing the web or checking email–but because too much material is packed into too few days, there often isn’t much hallway time.

That in mind, I was excited about BarCampNYC, an “unconference” designed in a fundamentally different way than most traditional conferences. The utopian-sounding idea is for everyone to share and learn in an open environment. There are a few rules:

1. Anyone can attend (for free).
2. All attendees are expected to present a panel on a subject of their choosing. Presentations are scheduled on the day they happen.
3. After the event, attendees are asked to share their presentation (typically by posting it to a public wiki).

In practice, the event worked better than I expected. People showed up on a Saturday morning; an hour or two later, the presentation schedule was completely full. Session topics were timely: several attendees demoed new companies (ideashrub, Feed Pile, Simpy), others built or presented apps based on various technologies (Drupal, Flash, Lucene, Ruby, Wordpress), while some discussed interesting concepts (including how to subvert social networks–I may write a separate post about this). Most important, there was plenty of time for people to talk, share ideas, and make connections.

Of course, behind the scenes various people did a great deal of work to ensure that the event ran smoothly. Amit Gupta, who led the organizational efforts, posted a good recap on the event’s nuts and bolts.

You can find a calendar of upcoming BarCamps here. If you live in a location where a BarCamp hasn’t yet been scheduled, why not start one yourself?

Posted by Dan Grossman on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm.