This past Saturday at University of Baltimore, Dave Troy and the Barcamp Organizers put together Barcamp Baltimore 2009. For a warm and rainy Saturday it was well-attended and I wore my Barcamp Austin 2009 badge which generated alot of conversation.
For those of you not familiar with this type of event, BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.
Here are some highlights from the day’s sessions:
Hackerspace
Hackerspace is a word that might conjour up thoughts of “The Matrix” but it is far from it. A new Hackerspace recently launched here in Baltimore and the founders were there to talk about the launch, decribe the concept and promote its growth. A Hackerspace is:
“A hackerspace or hackspace (from Hacker and Space) is a real (as opposed to virtual) place where people with common interests, usually in science, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialize and collaborate.”
It seems like hanging out in the basement and talking about all this stuff with your closest friends has gone completely social. Very Cool. You can find more information on their wiki here and their web site here.
Future of Journalism
This was a great session lead by Dave Troy and discussed the current implosion of traditional newspapers and the movement to being completely online. Bottom Line? Even though everyone in the room thinks print is dead it won’t be dead for another 20-30 years because generationally many people are used to getting their news in a paper format and the online stuff is nice but they like getting their morning paper. My interjection had to do with two words – legacy and sentimentality, this will cause the newspapers to stay in hard copy format for some time to come. We will have this session at Barcamp probably at Barcamp Baltimore 2019.
Laser Focus on Business
Jared Goralnik, AKA Technotheory gave a great session on “Having a Laser Focus on Business”. His session was about
Lead Startups
Dave Troy gave this session which is based on the Eric Ries presentation on “Lean Startups” seen below on Slideshare:
Bottom Line of building a lean startup – Lean Startups can go faster using Rapid Development, Continuous Deployment, Split Testing and Root Cause Analysis. Click through the presentation and if you have speakers, the presentation has an audio track embeded.
Wrapping Up – Beer and Networking
The day wrapped up at the Brewer’s Art on Charles Street for some beer and some networking.
Interestingly enough, it was at the end of the Gay Pride Parade that day so it made for an interesting cap to the event. People continued their conversation and the networking went on well into the evening.
Thanks to Dave Troy and his team for putting on a great event which we were happy to sponsor. We are looking forward to the next Barcamp Baltimore as this is a region thriving with great ideas and innovators.
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