So … I went to Barcamp.
There were a few presentations some nice others so so. By order:
- Carlos Rodrigues (FireHOL)
- João Rico (Técnicas de Apresentação)
- Victor Domingos (service/product/platform comparison)
- Halfbaked.com
- Wizi (www.wizi.com)
- Bruno Pedro
- Guillaume (point.pt)
- Guillaume (bookmarklets)
- Joao Rico (6 meses numa presidencia)
- Victor Domingues (co-working)
- Joao Rico (empreendedorismo nas universidades)
Ignite was fun but as we are not used to present stuff in 5 minutes it quickly became presentations as usual.
Half Baked is always a LOT of fun with some crazy ideas.
Lunch was awesome! And as I sponsor it … I’m truly happy about it 
All in all it was time well spent.
A few personal thoughts on how I would have organized it (and I did talk about it with Pedro Custódio but we’re also organizing Shift and time is scarce) :
Although Barcamp is a non-conference supposedly without any order at all, it is my experience that there should be an “order” of some kind and rules must be “enforced”. Example: ignite, halfbaked
There should be zones and certain conditions:
- two rooms, full works (mic, projector, wireless, etc), simultaneous
- one chill out/networking area
- Blackboards/paper/pens/pencils/whatever
- food (morning and afternoon/codebits style/coffee breaks)
- open area (a garden for instance and if possible it should be an active area with presentations)
- lunch
- one day ain’t enough. It should be a two day event and it should be on a conference-free weekend.
- dinner & night out (helps bonding)
- at the beginning there should be a meet & greet (as in barcamp coimbra)
- it should be easy to get to
- it should be near hotels (couch surfing/hostels are options)
Barcamp 2007 at Coimbra had most of this. FCT‘s missed a few things namely the two rooms for presentations, a two day event and the meet & greet. One other important factor is who goes there and some of the big players couldn’t be there … that didn’t help also.
Later I’ll post an extended article on my way of doing a barcamp to explain why I think all that stuff is really important.
Nevertheless, organizing something like this ain’t easy and it should be always encouraged. I think overall João Moreno and João Rico did a great job and the glory of organizing the first one in Lisbon goes out to them. I’m sure that next one will be better. (Btw … anyone want to co-organize? drop me a line…)
You can check the official site here: http://fct.enses.org/barcamp/app/
You can also check other people’s opinion here (I’ll add as I found them around):
Media:
