Barcamp Vancouver ’09

this year's barcamp T

I had the most amazing Saturday at Barcamp Vancouver with my friend Richard and a whole panopoly of Vancouver’s creative community. I’d never been to Barcamp before, so I really wan’t sure what to expect in terms of the organization or presentations, but like most user groups/conferences, there was waaaaay more amazing content than one could take in.

On the Friday night before the camp, there was a meet and greet at Ceili’s where you could pick up your t-shirt and a couple of pints and get to know people in more social setting. I managed to talk to an interesting range of people with really diverse and creative backgrounds ranging from coders/developers, sound and hardware. I was surprised to run into Chris Mathieson (@cognoscento) from the Vancouver Police Museum, who I had met earlier in the year through a mutual museum connection. But on second thought, Chris is kind of everywhere, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

The event itself was an amazing mix of presentations and collaboration that was really inspiring and challenging. I started my day by going to a presentation on the positive impact of choirs in students, followed by a creative jam on Charettes and the importance of brainstorming on solving big difficult problems with lots of variables like reducing accidents at known dangrous intersections. I’m definitely going to steal ideas learned from this session in my own workshops.

I also saw amazing presentations/workshops on:

• Working remotely as a contractor, telecommuting and the problems of collaboration
• Social media and educational institutions
• Open sourcing law
• Government data, the problem of access and applications like googlemap mashups. My favourite example was the Vancouver Garbage Reminders, simply because of the sheer usefulness of getting reminders about garbage collection day (you don’t want to see the pile of recycling currently in my apartment).

Overall barcamp was an amazing day full of incredible ideas and passionate, intelligent people that make me proud to be a Vancouverite involved in technology and information. The willignness to share knowledge and be open to ideas was like the university seminar that I always longed for. A huge thanks has to go out to the organizers and sponsors for doing an incredible job of making such an amazing day possible!

Go to the barcamp vancouver site:

http://barcampvancouver2009.eventbrite.com/

See pictures from the event:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/barcampvancouver/