BarCampMelbourne

BarCampMelbourne2008 -- 6th March 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Simply put, AWESOME!” -- Kathy Reid

“Best value conference I've ever been to.” -- Paul Fenwick

“I had a blast attending my first BarCamp” -- Tomas Varsavsky

“a very full day of interesting presentations by a lot of very smart people ... Don’t miss BarCamp Melbourne 2009” -- Evan Bottcher

Melbourne's second BarCamp opened at 9am on the 23rd of February seeing around 60 people participate in 25 sessions during a one-day event held at ThoughtWork's offices in Melbourne's CBD. The presentations and discussions were as diverse as the participants. Topics included the latest developments in programming languages and development tools, advice on volunteering your tech skills to charities and redesigning the public transport system.

BarCamps are designed to be unorganised -- most of the organisation associated with traditional conferences is not performed prior to the event. Therefore, upon arrival, participants that wished to give a presentation, or conduct a discussion group, provided their talk details on a sticky note. An informal scheduling session took place shortly after the official opening and within an often vocal 15 minutes, the attendees had decided upon the order and timing of the 25 presentations.

The rest of the day went exceedingly smoothly, due in no small part to the self-appointed room monitors, Kathy Reid, Paul Fenwick, Joshua May and Ben Balbo. Monitors used an IRC chatroom to coordinate their efforts and ensure presenters completed their talks within their allocated time.

Discussions continued during the lunch hour with plenty of food for all, thanks to Jacqueline Webb-Pullman at ThoughtWorks who assisted with organising catering for the event and to SitePoint and the Open Source Developers' Club for covering the cost. SitePoint also donated a handful of books which were given to the two presenters brave enough to start the day, and to the 4 favourite presentations as voted for during a live voting session at the end of the day.

"The venue was excellent," commented one participant, with three rooms dedicated to presentations and a few break-out rooms available. With only a few days notice, Angus Booker of Lettuce Systems replied to a call for help and provided a third projector, without which the schedule would have been a lot less flexible.

The event closed at around 18:30 with half the attendees making their way to Prudence Bar on Victoria Street in North Melbourne. Drinks were on Microsoft's tab, courtesy of Nick Hodge who flew down from Sydney for the event.

"While I've named a few of the participants, I would like to extend my appreciation to all that attended," commented the event's organiser, Ben Balbo, "Everyone agreed that participation levels were very high and that they got something valuable from the event. One attendee even commented that they got more out of today's BarCamp than they got out of a similar event consisting mostly of participants with overwhelming individual achievements and considered by some to be the top smart thinkers in the industry!"

In order to simplify the pre-event organisation process, people interested in attending BarCamp register online and subcribe to an announcement mailing list. Firesyde were kind enough to donate hosting and developed the http://barcampmelbourne.org/ web site, as well as funding the advertising and promotional aspects such as the leaflets that were handed out at the Software Freedom Day, Linux Conf Open Day and user groups in Melbourne.

Planning for BarCampMelbourne2009 via the mailing lists has already begun. Anyone wishing to be kept up-to-date is encouraged to join in the discussion by subscribing at http://barcampmelbourne.org/mailing-list/