Our big mistake at the Turin BarCamp
Posted by Paolo Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:50:00 GMT
Last saturday we attended the Turin BarCamp. I left the event with a strange feeling and during the weekend I tried to figure out what made me feel that way.
Here I’m writing down a few random considerations about the event and our attitude there.
First of all: what the hell is a BarCamp? quoting the official definition taken from BarCamp.org a barcamp is …
”...an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants”
So basically people get to the event, listen to presentations (kind of lightning talks) and start discussing about the topics presented. Great things happen when smart people get together.
In Italy it seems that bloggers are the kind of people who like the most discussing, commenting and dissecting topics. That said I wasn’t surprised by the fact that the audience was mainly composed by bloggers and the topics spanned from web2.0 to building online communities and web projects management.
A BarCamp gets interesting if people interact each other. The more you’re involved in the discussions, the more you can benefit. What I feel we haven’t been able to do is to truly interact with people. We’ve been just lurking. We have been listening to people and talks and we made our own considerations, but those considerations were only inside our heads. On the trip back me, Jacopo and Michele have been discussing for hours… but we should have done it with other people at the BarCamp instead! We already know our position on those topics!
So what doors can you open not acting as a lurker?
- You can make contacts. Business is not only about selling products but it’s also (mainly?) about relationships. You can make new contacts, you can make people remember you and your company. If you start discussing with someone you won’t be just-yet-another-blah-blah-web-company, but you’ll be “Paolo, the SeeSaw’s guy”.
- You can gather feedbacks about your business model, or the way you work. Exposing yourself will let you see different point of views about you ideas. There’s always something to learn seeing things from different perspectives, and people not involved in your job are the best candidates for giving you those hints.
- You give people the chance to explain you better their position. While listening to someone talking, people build up an opinion about the speaker and the topic. Telling your opinions you will let the speaker argument better his thoughts and maybe answer questions that float in your mind.
That said, my willings for the next BarCamp:
- Have a speech.
- Not be shy.
- Not be afraid to say the “wrong” thing, mine is just an opinion.
- bring business cards (otherwise Jacopo will kill me).
- annotate blogs I’d like to start commenting on.
You can find pictures of the event here (pictures in this post are taken from Antonio).
PS: we actually chatted a bit, we’re not totally autistic, we just haven’t done it as much as we could… Great people we met and talked with are: Alberto Mucignat, Antonio Patti, Luca Mascara, Matteo Balocco, Marco Camisani Calzolari, Fullo, Maurizio Pelizzone, Andrea Beggi and others…
