Saturday was spent with a bunch of the coolest geeks in the DC area (and a few from out of town too). Jason Garber, Justin Thorpe, and Jackson Wilkinson along with others put on one awesome event this weekend. Congratulations to them for a job well done.
BarCamp as I've mentioned before is an unconference. If you ever have a chance to participate in one, take it. Here is hopefully a brief re-cap of the fantastic event.
My day started running into my co-worker Kevin and his son Max at the metro station. Max was by far the youngest attendee, but I have no doubt he'll be running the show in a few years. Max was really excited about spending the day with his dad and attending BarCamp. He, like a lot of us, can't wait for the next one.
The conference started out with people signing up to talk or hold discussions about a topic and then all the participants went through indicating which topics they'd be most interested in attending. The sessions were held in three rooms that varied greatly in size so this helped put topics in rooms that best fit with the interest level.
I started the day attending Kevin's Intro to Rails talk. I followed that with a discussion led by Samantha Warren on User Interface design. This session wasn't what I was expecting, but was pleasantly surprised by the engaging conversation on what exactly user interface design means. This is part of the beauty of unconferences, since everyone participates you're never sure what you're going to get. Usually, the conversation is very enlightening even if not what was planned or expected.
Next I went to a session on Web Typography that was run by Nathan Herald. This is a topic I'd like to see addressed more frequently as typography is a large part of web design (as Nathan says, it's 95% of web design), and I find good typography on the web to be challenging. I finished up the morning attending a session on Portable Identity — a topic that is becoming more and more valuable as people are required to or want to sign up for more and more sites on the web.
Photo by Jason GarberNext up was lunch, sponsored by the AOL Developer Network. Mike had the opportunity to address the attendees during lunch about all the cool things AOL is doing these days. I even managed to speak somewhat coherently (I think) about CircaVie when called upon. And I didn't even turn red — a huge accomplishment considering my fear of public speaking (I really need to get over that).
The afternoon flew by. I started the afternoon in Productivity Tips, but ditched Bill and landed in the mobile web session. I had seen Jackson speak on the mobile web previously at Refresh DC and enjoyed the presentation and discussion in this session. Next up was a very informative session on Google Analytics. Anyone go to that session and not implement it on a site if you weren't already using it?
I finished up the afternoon with The Future of Television — there is a whole world of video content beyond that box sitting in your living room (I think I need to watch more tv, or less), the Facebook Platform, and an open rails session run by Bill and Joe.
Next came the after party at Cafe Asia where I spent a few hours hanging out with some current and former co-workers and a few other cool people.
There a lots of really cool, smart, creative people in the dc web community and without them, BarCamp would not have been nearly as cool. Overall this was an awesome experience and I can't wait to do it again! My only regret is there were some sessions I didn't have the opportunity to attend and I didn't talk to as many people as I should have. Thanks to Fleishman-Hillard for providing the space, Justin, Jason, Jackson and the rest of the organizers, the sponsors, and the participants for making this event great.
