As I mentioned in the last post, the Social Media Camp in London was my first international barcamp-like event. And as a long-time barcamp participant in Germany, I was interested to see if and how things would be different (I might me out of line here as the Social Media Camp might not be prototypical for all barcamps in the UK). Here are my thoughts and they are also meant as a discussion starter for future barcamps. Let’s start with a few ideas on how to improve future camps.
Room for improvements
My biggest complain is the reduction to the Saturday only. I know that it might have happened due to problems with the locations or something like that. But it produced a whole lot of problems that influenced the whole day. It felt like the weekend had been compressed into one day. A lot of sessions in a lot of rooms kept the day racing by without room to breath and chat. I was constantly torn between sessions happening at the same time.
The BerlinBlase-crew has started to promote the Sundays at German barcamps as the “quality day”. Everybody has shaken all the hands and catched up with everyone on Saturday and is now ready to really get into it. On the other hand all the newbies gotten a hold of the concept and now contribute their valuable ideas and new perspectives. This is why we started to do all our sessions on Sunday. So from my point of view it is always a mistake to miss out on the Sunday.
All the sessions were scheduled for 30 minutes which in my opinion is just not enough for a session to get to the meat and so it felt like a lot of sessions only scratched the surface of the subjects. I might repeat myself but I still think that 45-minutes-sessions starting at the full hour with 15-minutes-breaks to change rooms is still the best and easiest way to organize a barcamp schedule.
Two things totally common at German barcamps which I missed at the Social Media Camp were the people-introduction-round and the sessions-introduction-round. Every German barcamp starts with a round where each participant introduces oneself with name, job and three tags. That gives everybody an idea who is attending and whom you wanna talk to throughout the day. After that anybody who wants to do a session gives a quick introduction to the session. That helps to make decisions on which sessions to choose. At the Social Media Camp all you had of the sessions was a title on the session plan. And as everybody wants to show off how smart they are, the title was more clever then descriptive most of the time. I have been to at least two sessions that I expected to be different due to the title.
A general rant
The fundamental concept of barcamps in my opinion is the collaborative effort of learning about and progressing on subjects. One thing that totally sabotages this idea are sessions that only promote a company or a product. I have no problem with someone from a company doing a session on his field of expertise and maybe pimping his startup for 5 minutes at the beginning or the end. But to take up a slot for just doing a pitch on your product is just plain evil and a sure way to piss off the community.
What was awesome
Ok, let’s get on to the things that were really great. Although the day was packed everything work absolutely smoothly. The organization of this event was just awesome. It all happened on time and without any hassle.
As I tried to display in the last article, the location was perfect for a barcamp. A lot of smaller rooms with tons of power outlets everywhere. A lot of corners with sofas. Fridges with sodas on every corner. The food was incredible and the staff really nice. I think you can easily underestimate how much these factors create the atmosphere for a barcamp. If everything is running really smoothly you can totally focus on the sessions and the networking. An exquisite meal provides the perfect base for extended table talk. The room was buzzing at the meal times.
The best session I attended was called “How not to get fucked by social media” and was moderated by Zoe Margolis aka Abby Lee. The key term here is moderated as she instantly opened up the floor for discussion. People kept arguing back and forth and giving a lot of different perspectives and Zoe did an amazing job of keeping the discussion alive and developing. I think this sessions was the perfect example of what can happen at a barcamp session if people work on a subject in an open and collaborative way. Each participant building on what has been said before. It made me coin the new term “practical voyeurism” (observing other peoples lives out of curiosity of how they live their lives different to myself and what I could learn from that) through during the discussion on why people follow other people on Twitter and other similar services.
Resume
If the next Social Media Camp will happen at the same place strechted out over two days with 45 minute slots, count me in.
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