BarCamp Miami Memories and Recap

Bar­Camp Miami came and went but the mem­o­ries remain excellent.

Before talk­ing about the event, though, a very well deserved round of grat­i­tude is due:

• first and fore­most, to Pro­fes­sor Kim Grin­feder and the Uni­ver­sity of Miami School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The School pro­grammed Bar­Camp into its annual Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Week pro­gram and sup­plied the venue, pro­jec­tors, and free wi-fi, essen­tial for the live demos. Kim in par­tic­u­lar was a dri­ving force behind Bar­Camp Miami and he secured the spon­sor­ship for the event, which allowed us to order T-shirts and cater­ing. We also appre­ci­ate the help of San­jeev Chat­ter­jee, the School’s Vice-Dean, and Lelen Bourgoignie-Robert, Jim Virga and oth­ers at UM who helped make Bar­Camp a reality.
• to Nick Dominguez and Brian Bres­lin. Brian cre­ated  Refresh­Mi­ami last April and has done more than any­one to get the web/tech/design com­mu­nity started and going in Miami. We owe him for his vision and his exe­cu­tion. Brian also pro­vided guid­ance and sup­port when the idea of hold­ing a Bar­Camp Miami first occurred and helped select the logo. Nick has been a key dri­ver of Refresh­Mi­ami and took time out of his busy sched­ule to help us with the ban­ners and in pub­li­ciz­ing Bar­Camp Miami.
• Finally, to our spon­sors Aurora Ven­tures, Knight Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Media, Server­Grove Net­works and Scrap­blog, where I work, as well as to our sup­pli­ers, Gate­ways Unlim­ited and Once Upon A Party.

So how did the event go? Dou­glas Hanks from The Miami Her­ald wrote about us in the Busi­ness section:

So it goes at Bar­Camp, a sort of viral con­ven­tion with no sched­ule, fea­tured speak­ers, or agenda until the atten­dees them­selves cre­ate one. For South Florida’s first Bar­Camp, orga­nizer Alex de Car­valho posted a notice on blogs he and his friends run, as well as a col­lab­o­ra­tive ”wiki” Web page ded­i­cated to Bar­Camps held around the world.

And from this “viral” word of mouth, about  60 peo­ple showed up.  The for­mat of Bar­Camp is “open-source” in the sense that any­one can present and indeed every­one is encour­aged to par­tic­i­pate. We had three areas with pro­jec­tors and four time slots to present, and of these twelve slots, 11 got filled in:

1. Mike Gibaldi talked about Businesswire.com’s new “social media” and search engine opti­mized press release offering
2. Michael Froomkin pre­sented the secu­rity and pri­vacy chal­lenges of get­ting munic­i­pal wi-fi in Miami-Dade. Now’s the time to get involved to avoid restric­tions on your access to wi-fi!
3. Ruben Duque cre­ated dig­i­tal graf­fiti with a laser pointer!
4. David Hoff drove from Naples to present IMi­fied, which helps you man­age every­thing through your IM client (and then he drove back!)
5. The Calleiro broth­ers demoed ourscene.com
6. Leonard Boord pre­sented The Gorb rep­u­ta­tion manager
7. Nick Dominguez and Ant Bryan spoke about an enhanced down­load stan­dard for bit­tor­rent, met­alink
8. Don­ald Llopis pre­sented python and pygame for rapid pro­to­typ­ing of video games
9. Caleb Elston spoke about usnacks.com, which helps busy col­lege stu­dents buy their snacks
10. Tim Hoyt showed us picturemarketing.com while Cort­ney Mills took our pictures
11. I gave a live demo of  Scrapblog.com. We offer a rich, enhanced photo and video shar­ing expe­ri­ence and will launch in three weeks

Update: Blaine Zuver pre­sented as well. He spoke about Arc­tic­Tropic Blog and Metroblog­ging Miami

Besides the pre­sen­ters listed above and peo­ple men­tioned ear­lier, I also met and spoke to Ben­jamin Li, Jason L. Bap­tiste, Fran­cisco Mar­tin, Maria de los Ange­les Lemus, Danay, Jackie Paz, Caleb Elston, Blaine Zuver, Denise R. Jacobs, Jorge Bar­roso and Eduardo Hen­riques.

We are also grate­ful that some ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists showed up, includ­ing from Long­worth, Aurora Ven­tures and H.I.G. This is very reas­sur­ing and I hope we’ll see you par­tic­i­pate in future events.

What’s next? We hope to do another Bar­Camp soon. How soon? It’s up to you. And who’s “we”? It could be any­one. Bar­Camps can be run on any theme and any­one can take the ini­tia­tive. And if any­one would like to do another Bar­Camp Miami on web/tech/design, please do so. The Bar­Camp wiki is open to all and the Bar­Camp­Mi­ami blog is open to more authors.

We would also like to cre­ate a more for­mal con­fer­ence, called webpl.us. Why more for­mal? Because we would like to have speak­ers from across the US, from Europe and from Latin Amer­ica present, and when you fly in peo­ple and pay for their hotels, you need to ensure atten­dance, cover your costs and pro­vide your speak­ers with a forum.

Which brings us back to run­ning a Bar­Camp. The expe­ri­ence is exhil­a­rat­ing and there is a def­i­nite adren­a­lin rush to orga­niz­ing one, and it stays in your sys­tem. Why? Because after all the prepa­ra­tion, you really don’t know if any­one is going to show up … and Bar­Camps are all about people.

And every­one that showed up have each other to thank for mak­ing the event so enjoyable.

See you soon, I hope!

Here are some links:

• Flickr pho­tos of Bar­Camp Miami
• The Miami Her­ald article
• Bar­Camp Miami wiki page
• Bar­Camp Miami blog
• Refresh­Mi­ami monthly events

Cross-posted to tapio.com, Refresh­Mi­ami, Bar­Camp Miami

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