Last month in Portland, Oregon, approximately 250 people convened on Cubespace, a co-working space, for BarCamp Portland 1. BarCamp, if you aren't familiar, is an unconference - an Open and free event whose content and direction is decided by its participants. It's a great way for people to come together in the spirit of community to share knowledge, talk about technology (generally related to Web apps and Open Source), and generally geek out. Started two years ago in Palo Alto by Andy Smith, Chris Messina, Eris Stassi, Matt Mullenweg, Ryan King and Tantek Çelik (among others), it has grown quickly to an international scale. To date there have been BarCamps in Amsterdam, Austin, Shanghai, Milwaukee, Paris, San Francisco, Chennai, London, and many, many more places.
One of BarCamp Portland's organizers, and artisan of all things community, Dawn Foster, took a moment to answer some questions relating to BarCamp Portland and the BarCamp phenom in general. Read on!
DLS: What inspired you to take up organizing BarCamp Portland?
Dawn Foster: Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to FooCamp, which is a yearly invite-only O'Reilly event that was the model for BarCamp. Spending the weekend having discussions with some very smart people from across the technology industry was an amazing experience, and I wanted to replicate that experience here in Portland. We have a great tech scene in Portland with so many users group meetings, but very little cross pollination between groups. I wanted to create a monthly meeting that brought a diverse group of techies together for networking and discussions about a variety of technologies. As I was talking to people about this idea, I learned that Raven Zachary was starting to plan BarCamp Portland. The two ideas were so similar that Raven and I decided to merge them into a monthly BarCamp Meetup that we would use to plan the BarCamp Portland event.
DLS: Have you been to any other BarCamps? What was your experience like?Dawn Foster: I have been to other BarCamps and similar conferences, but all were very different from BarCamp Portland. FooCamp draws people from all over the world, but it is an invite-only event, and Tim O'Reilly can only invite about 250 people before running out of space at the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. BarCamps, on the other hand, are all inclusive with attendance open to anyone wanting to attend. I attended BarCamp in Austin this year, which was held alongside SXSW in a local Austin bar. It was a great time, but it seemed more like a party than a BarCamp, which made listening to the presentations a bit difficult. Like the other Camps that I have attended, the networking opportunities were still amazing at the Austin event, and I attended a particularly interesting discussion about co-working. I also attended RecentChangesCamp here in Portland this year, which is similar to a BarCamp event, but with a narrower focus on wikis.
DLS: What were the biggest challenges?
Dawn Foster: The biggest challenge we faced was having the attendance grow very rapidly in the 2 weeks leading up to the event. Based on the number of people signed up on the wiki a few weeks before the event, we expected around 125 people - a solid turnout for the first Portland event. The week of the event we watched signups grow to ~275 people. We had planned food for 125 people, and this last minute wave of interest resulted in last minute catering increases. The attendance increase could have been a disaster, but thanks to very generous and flexible sponsors, we were able to cover the costs of additional food. Our final count for the event was around 250 people.
Our biggest surprise about the event, aside from the number of attendees, was how many people attended from outside of the Portland metro area and outside of Oregon. We were thrilled to have attendees from California, Texas, Illinois, and other locations at our BarCamp.
DLS: What did you take away from the experience? What might you do differently in the future?
Dawn Foster: From a logistical perspective, we would probably put the schedule board up in a less confined location. The hallway we selected when we expected 125 people caused a huge traffic jam with 250 people. We also should have been more organized around note taking during the sessions. Unfortunately, few people took notes during the sessions, and we did not have a good mechanism for getting the notes into a central location online. Next time, I would like to see strong and consistent communication about having a note taker in each session and having a central location where all notes could be posted.
We also have a number of ideas for how to build on this first BarCamp in Portland. We will continue the monthly BarCamp meetups to maintain momentum and to continue networking. We also plan to do quarterly DemoCamp events with the next one tentatively scheduled for late July. An OSCamp event is being organized to coincide with OSCON in late July for Open Source, and it would be great to see more additional focused "camp" events in Portland.
DLS: Any advice for others who would like to organize their own BarCamp?
Dawn Foster: My best piece of advice is to be flexible! Plan the event in a way that allows last minute adjustments for size, food, location, etc. to accommodate more / less people.
BarCamps can be designed to meet your individual needs. You can put as much or as little effort into a BarCamp as needed to meet your requirements. We were able to secure numerous sponsorships and provide meals for the entire event by putting in a fair amount of effort spread across a great team of people who worked hard to make BarCamp Portland a success. You could also have a successful event without as much effort by having shorter events or by not having sponsored meals. BarCamp can be anything you make it.
Without a great team of people, I do not think BarCamp Portland would have been so successful. We planned BarCamp out of a love of technology, with no monetary gains, and in addition to our regular day jobs, so being able to spread the load was a necessity. Along with co-organizer, Raven Zachary, our planning team contained Carl Johnson, LaVonne Reimer, Audrey Eschright, Patrick Sullivan, Sioux Fleming, Kelly Mackin, Todd Kenefsky, and Rashid Ahmed.
Download Squad would like to thank Dawn for taking the time to speak with us. She is the Director of Developer Relations at Jive Software, a collaboration software company in Portland, Oregon. Dawn is also the author of Fast Wonder: An Open Culture Blog, and is currently working on a book for O'Reilly Media about the art of community.
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