So, that's a wrap: BarCamp Vancouver 2009 is "in the can". I really enjoyed this year's event -- I even went to and gave some sessions! (yes, that's worthy of note - as an organizer, it can be hard to relax and get into the flow)

I attended a great talk by Dustin Sacks on the 10 principles of Burning Man and how they compare / contrast with BarCamp. It was great, and made me think about a ton of things.

One thing that stood out for me is that I think that BarCamp has "moved on" from its original core focus on making code -- in part because of the principle of "radical inclusion". We kept making it more inclusive until lots of people that weren't at the same "level" started coming (in tech, in background, etc. etc.). It's not a problem, per se, it's just evolution.

What I've learned - and relearned with every conference and event I attend - is that every event is what you make of it. You are there, and you can participate. Nothing says you have to sit in the audience - get outside and network in the "lobbycon". Most especially with unconferences, the people that are there are those that make the event.

I'm one of the BarCamp Vancouver 2009 volunteers this year. Yes, you read that right: volunteers. In Vancouver, this has always been a community, grass roots event. You'll see some of the same names and faces involved with other events, but every year you'll also see new people that step up and GSD.

Joe is grumpy that we don't have more makers presenting. I would LOVE to see more makers. And I hope everyone with connections to makers encourages them to attend and present and share and make the entire community richer for it.

Here's the comment that I left on Joe's post:

Photo by Ariane Whew. /me lets out big breath. As always, this year's BarCamp Vancouver event was absolutely fantastic. Ideas, social media, intense thinking, tossing around concepts, learning from everyone, lots of fun, beer, eats, etc. etc. Feedback and thoughts in no particular order.

Here we are at noon on the eve of BarCamp Vancouver 2007. Duane Storey and I are hacking some phone VoIP stuff, I'll be doing geo logging (surprise!) and....and I don't know what else will happen.

It was great to read through Roland's retrospective of BarCamp's we've been involved in. I think he missed BarCamp SF at the Microsoft offices...I caught part of that after a late flight in.

BarCamp Amsterdam has to be one of my favourites. Chris Pirillo came in with a big donation that helped (European) beer-fueled hacking, the Mediamatic people and offices were fantastic, and lots of my European friends were there that I don't get to see very often. Oh, right, and I got to cook for 50+ people over an open flame indoors :P

I love unconferences. I wasn't involved in organizing this year's BarCamp Vancouver, so thanks to the many organizers and helpers. Here's what Jordan Behan has to say:

After last year’s event, I was so amazed at the things I learned and the people I met that I wanted to help out anywhere I could this year. So I joined (invited myself onto) the organizing committee, and thus I feel it is my duty to share a bit of Barcamp How-to.

That's exactly the spirit we want to see. See you tonight...

• every event should make a list of "fun URLs" that get thought up at events -- and then registered, like http://www.myurlistoolong.com
• there were are as many great presentations that I couldn't make it to as I did attend
• we need to find a kit to stress-test wireless networks ahead of time...or revert to wired connections
• I got to talk to many great people...and also missed spending time with others (too many to mention...but Zug is definitely in my thoughts)
• Google needs to point out who the heck is going to talk about identity issues (from technical interop to privacy); also, say things in public about your logging policy
• every time I talk about microformats I passionately argue the opposite case; they are a great solution for putting mixed, structured content into one big text blob (i.e. a blog post with an event, a location, some people, and a resume); they are not a great solution for passing structured data between systems and/or for presenting a pure feed of one type of data (events, people, etc.)
  

BarCamp Vancouver is coming up quickly. It will take place in Bryght's new offices at the edge of Gastown. Now we have to talk to the construction dudes and make sure they finish in time. Add it to your calendar on upcoming.

Stewart Marshall actually emailed me, concerned that my name wasn't on the list...I stuck my name on the attendee list -- technically we're maxed at 90 people, so there are only 3 slots left as I am posting.

It's a great list of folks on there already, and I keep bumping into more that should come. Specifically, I attended the Google presentation at VanHPC last night, and bumped into a few folks:

• Michael Stewart, who works at BCIT and is digging into identity (and who tells me his friend Kate is moving to Vancouver...excellent, more cool locals)
• Chani, who is going back to school for a CS degree at UBC...she reminds me of some other smart, cool geek girls I know like Sacha Chua and Leigh Honeywell (that's a compliment)
• Michael Dyck, who spends time working on the Distributed Proofreaders project that helps with Project Gutenburg (he should talk about this at BarCamp Vancouver)
• Dale McGladdery, who is  my partner in crime in helping to organize the Vancouver Drupalleers and is looking for something to get into outside of his BigCo dayjob

I see Michael Stewart and Chani have already added themselves, and of course Dale is #5 with a bullet on the attendee list. So much other tech (BrightSide display tech) and people (yay! Bre is coming from out of town, Alex Williams will be podcasting) Good stuff!

Greg Narain and I had a long discussion with the Jive Live team at BarCamp San Francisco. They take high quality video of all sorts of live events, from art openings to the Pride Parade here in SF, and then post it to their website. In some ways they think of themselves as a daily video newspaper.

We talked about using blogs and RSS and existing video communities to spread their content everywhere, to get traffic going to their site. They currently host their own videos, and Greg and I were of the opinion that as soon as they actually got significant traffic, their video costs would start going through the rough. The difficulties of success when it comes to video content on the Internet today...

A large part of the discussion centered around what we all would and would not do on the Internet, including talking about who subscribes to RSS, uses tags, etc. As I have said time and again, feel free to ignore the small part of the population that uses these tools directly....just stick the functionality on to your site, and the structured nature of RSS, the tag glue, and the automated tools and aggregators that are in place will blast your content around the Internet, which has the net effect of raising your Google ranking, which is really how everyone finds stuff on the Internet today. RSS = higher search ranking, enough said.

I just landed in San Francisco and took the BART directly to BarCamp San Francisco. I grabbed some coffee, some beer, and some North Beach pizza from the common areas, and then landed straight in an intense session about microformats.

Tantek and Chris Messina are trying to herd us cats in the room as we think about what "actions" we can do if there is lots of data that is microformat-enabled online.

I'm hearing lots of actions that at their base sound like publish and subscribe actions. But we're trying to stick at the UI layer -- one of Messina's stated goals was actions that are the same across sites for the same type of data. e.g. a Greasemonkey plugin that could do "add as contact" when given an hCard, no matter which site you are on.

Looks like Mesh Conference was just announced -- a "Web 2.0" conference for Canada. At $350 for 2 days, I have to think about this vs. Gnomedex. Of course, those are Canadian pesos, so lots less. Many interesting faces, but not a lot of details on tracks, conference style, etc. The blurb from one of the first blog posts goes like this:

There is all this buzz around Web 2.0. But what’s really happening, especially around here? Does anybody know? Can anybody help me understand it, and what it means for me? My business? My future? My family? My world?mesh’s mandate will be to answer this question in as compelling, credible and authentic a way possible. Everything to do with the event will be around furthering that objective, and the content itself will serve to help mesh participants (not attendees :-)) to really start to get it, this year and in years to come. We will create the Canadian forum for next generation Web ideas and leaders.

So I kind of stealth launched the concept of BarCamp Brussels in some posts wrapping up FOSDEM 2006, slated for around September 2006 to coincide with EuroOSCON.

I just found out about BarCamp Brussels ForTheImpatient -- for April/May! Boy, those Europeans sure are impatient :P Being organized by Peter Forret.

Hey, Ton, I'm hoping you and your crew will be interested in one or both camps. What do you think? (and yes, I still "owe" you a post on the 4 jobs meme...it might end up being a podcast or something suitably different).

Sounds like fun...wish I could attend lots more European events, but I have to ration out my travel a bit. Hopefully the ForTheImpatient crew will be able to figure out some good areas and set things up nicely for a bigger (or at least...more international?) attendance in September. I'll be watching it with interest.