This weekend’s BarCamp RDU marked the culmination of a few weeks worth of work for myself and the organizing committee, and even more for Fred, the head maestro. It was my first such event, and here are my impressions:
Logistically, everything went really well, except for maybe a slight shortage of our lunch foods (for which I am to blame).The volunteers totally stepped up and the cogs of the bar camp wheel operated efficiently.
I would say the sessions were of varying quality. There were a few I heard about during the course of the day and wondered why I didn’t go to them – and some of the ones I went to I wondered why I chose them. I would say as a general rule when choosing which sessions to attend – choose the ones where either the topic or speaker, or preferrably both, are more discussion oriented. Probably the most interesting session I wend to was the session on social networks by Fred Stutzman. 
It wasn’t that Fred totally dominated and blew us away with some really bleeding edge concepts – it was that he really made it a conversation between Fred and the group, and within the group itself. Choose the sessions whose topic (i.e. ‘Social Networks’) and speaker both encourage active participiation. After all, that is what a BarCamp is about, right?
I was really impressed with the overall quality of people who attended. A lot of different backgrounds and a lot of interesting people. While it was definitely a technology based conference, I really felt like my parents or significant other could have sat in on some of the talks and remained interested. It’s not all about geekin’ out.
And where else can you learn to Teach Your Wife Version Control and study up on Dancing with Girls in the same day?
All in all, a great experience – let’s do it again, ay?
tags: barcamprdu, barcamp
