BarCampAustin

I swung by BarCampAustin Saturday morning before the SXSW Interactive keynote. I'm a fan of the self-organizing, everyone-is-a-contributor conferences, so I was excited that BarCamp was coming to town. (And that another is in-the-works for later this year!)

The conference (technically) started at 9am; However, it took a few hours for enough people to stumble in for sessions to start organizing. That was unfortunate because I had to bail after lunch to hit the SXSW Keynote. Still, I met some interesting people and I look forward to having another local BarCamp (that isn't scheduled on the first day of the largest Film/Interactive/Music conference in town.)

Even though BarCampAustin started late, it was actually a well planned event. The facility was nice, there was food and coffee (not for free, but it was a free conference so I'm fine with that) there was free parking, free wi-fi, plenty of seats, plenty of space, good location (center of town) and good people. If I had any complaint it's that I think the activities could have started sooner if a formal introduction had been planned. (For example, we could have pulled everyone into a room at 10am and each given a 10-30 second intro. This kind of introduction greatly speeds connections with the people you want to meet.)

I look forward to the next BarCampAustin and hope to see you there!