SeeSaw's blog: Tag barcamp

RomeCamp after-speech Interview

Paolo — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 12:19:00 -0600

The great guys at Dolmedia have just published the after-speech interviews from RomeCamp...

This is my interview:

RomeCamp

Paolo — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:19:00 -0600

Hi Guys, we got back from the RomeCamp really tired but happy. I gave a presentation on RubyOnRails that has been pretty successful, and we have received many compliments. You can imagine how happy we are with this.

The Barcamp Itself has been good, it’s always a nice chance to get in touch with new people and exchance opinions. Only one sad note: the speeches weren’t well organized and many great people didn’t have the chance to talk just because of this disorganization, and that’s a drag.

I heard different feelings about this event, if you’re an Italian reader point the browser to FucinaWeb and join the discussion there.

I want to personally thank the ruby-it crew and my fellow ruby-miners. You guys rock!

I owe a special note to my friend Bard that is developing a great peer-to-peer layer on top of Jabber and Firefox. Take a look at his blog to understand what I mean, and give him feedback. This could really change the way we use the web :-)

You can also see our pictures of the event or watch my presentation (sorry, Italian only) or, if you’re a firefox user, take a look to my slides.

If you want to give us feedback, you know, it’s always appreciated :-)

Rome Barcamp

Michele — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:15:00 -0600

We could say It’s for seeing the colosseum or for enjoying the warm temperature our capital is experiencing during these days… or just because we’re going to meet old good friends… but the truth is we’re having a trip to Rome mainly to talk with passionate professionals. We won’t be touring or visiting. Just brain-storming and sharing ideas with great people.

Emotions have witched us again, so this Saturday we’re attending the first Barcamp of the year, in beautiful Rome; Will we see you there??

Our big mistake at the Turin BarCamp

Paolo — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:50:00 -0600

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…