I just returned from BarCamp San Francisco , and I'd have to say it was a success.
This was my first BarCamp, so I had no idea what to expect. It really is as simple as it sounds. A bunch of folks show up and schedule events on the spot based on who is present and what they're interested in.
It took place at Microsoft's offices on Mission and Embarcadero. While normally I'd be inclined at this point to offer one of several heartfelt opinions about Microsoft, I'll just say that it was very generous for them to allow us their location for the weekend, and it was very well suited for this great event. <gulp> Thanks, Microsoft.
"Take Aways"
One of the unfortunate survivors of the dot-com bust was a vast set of obfuscated vocabulary collectively known as buzzwords, a value-add semantical meta-markup linguistic solution used to define hi-tech marketecture and other domains. Can you feel the synergy?
Yes, there was no shortage of buzzwords floating through the air, and it's hard to avoid them when they are made up largely of otherwise very usable terms such as "solution" (which now means software application), bandwidth (which now means intelligence or ability ["I don't have the bandwidth to..." actually means "I'm not smart enough to..]") and "orthogonal" (which is used in so many disparate contexts, I don't know what to make of it).
Point being that the following section may be populated with buzzwords, so watch your step.
Talent Co-op
This was probably the coolest concept I came across (read: most relevant to me). The idea of bringing together in a single (virtual) place geographically dissimilar supplies and demands is not new. Elance.com, Guru.com, blah, blah. What hasn't been done, to my knowledge, is this sort of thing without the blatant and irritating commercial aspect to it. Something just plain bothers me about relying on some corporate interloper to supply me with suitable clientèle, particularly when they have no reason to take any concern for the quality of either the supplier or the suplyee.
The internet is too obvious an answer to the problem of many people working (or wanting to work) from Location Unknown doing things they love and are good at, and other people wanting to find good worker units and not really caring where, when or how they work as long as they can do the job.
Citizen Agency is the first effort (that I'm aware of) to bring a bunch of talent together to pool talents, resources and work. The effort is only weeks old, and I believe BarCampSF was the official announcement of the effort.
Micro Formats
Here's an example of something I ignored as more buzzword blather that turned out to actually be something potentially very useful. Microformats is like XML in that it's easy to explain and difficult to completely understand. As I see it, microformats would turn any standard web page into a potential source of data objects like contacts, locations, content objects like reviews, and anything else you might normally look for in a database. Main problem, widespread adoption. Microformats probably won't blossom until these formats are managed behind the scenes by blog software, document editors, email and so on. But I can definitely see that happening, at which point you'll see all sorts of useful tools (first appearing as extended functionality to clients like browsers and email apps). Read up a bit on this so when it finally breaks out, you can say something like, yeah, I saw that coming back in 06.
Communities
No need to go into any detail here. Everyone wants to be like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, etc... I find the subject tiresome myself. The *concept* of community has no meaning or value to me. Implementation of community oriented websites, features and so on is what interests me.
Drupal
While there was a very nice showing from the Drupal camp. I got to meet Drupal luminaries jjeff, dries, drumm, roland and others. Sporting my own Drupal tag, I struck up Drupal related conversations with most of the folks I met. (I'm hereby pronouncing myself as Drupal's chief petty evangelist.) I don't think I met anyone who wasn't aware of Drupal. Most had at least some direct experience with Drupal. Most folks had a lot of questions about it. Some had the common "I installed it, now what" experience with Drupal. I think we might benefit from expanding, somehow, our efforts to help folks (hi sepeck!) install, use and love Drupal.
The BarCamp experience was better than I had anticipated. I highly recommend you attend one when it hits your town. I'm going to attempt to help organize the first BarCamp San Diego.
Is the Barcamp, whereever it is held, specifically for the Drupal community or those who are interested in exploring it? It could be more useful than trying to figure out the technical terms used on websites talking about it, at least for me.
Mike
That looks like it was a lot of fun! When I read bar camp I thought you were going to as many bars as you could and drink as much as you could :) Glad it was an educative experience!! Best regards