

Ask YC: Been going to BarCamps? (BarCampBoston3 is May 17th & 18th!) - JayNeely

Is the Hacker News community aware of the free unconference phenomena, like BarCamp/PodCamp/MacCamp, etc.? They're community-organized conferences for hackers, geeks, techies, webheads, and entrepreneurs.<p>There's a huge list of BarCamps at: http://barcamp.org/<p>For those of you in the Boston area, I hope you'll come to BarCampBoston3 May 17th &#38; 18th, and give a talk or otherwise participate: http://www.barcampboston.org/<p>Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software,
startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking,
robotics,mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software,
programming languages, and the future of technology.
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pk
I went to last year's Boston BarCamp and it was a great event overall. Some
workshops were a little "eh", but others were really good. I'm thinking about
doing a session on "Graphic Design for Coders" - anybody here have any
thoughts on whether that would be a good topic?

A neat thing I saw at last year's BarCamp was an early demo of Dropbox by Drew
Huston who went on to be part of YC Summer '07. I think Reddit demoed at the
Boston BarCamp the year before that too, before they went into YC Summer '06.

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ericb
I would _kill_ for a graphic design for coders workshop. If you do a workshop,
I promise _not_ to kill you. It would be someone else of your choosing. ;-)

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ericb
Any thoughts on whether this would be saturday or sunday if you do do it? I'm
moving that saturday, sadly.

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pk
It would definitely be on Sunday - I'm going to a friend's graduation at
Worcester Polytechnic Institute that Saturday.

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shimon
BarCamps are great for (1) meeting local people, (2) vetting ideas, (3)
scoping out new technology. Not unlike Hacker News. :)

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martythemaniak
I've been going to the local ones (DemoCamp, StartupCamp, FacebookCamp) for
the last little while and they're definitely worth it. You learn a few
interesting things, see a cool demo or two, meet some people etc.

Depending on when the next democamptoronto is and how much work I put into my
project, I was hoping to demo it and launch it then. Realistically, it'd
probably have to be the other afterwards though.

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thingsilearned
Yup. They're awesome. Minnebar (Minnesota) may 10th.

<http://barcamp.org/MinneBar>

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damon
I'll be @ minnebar May 10th also. I've heard estimates of 400 attendees
planned! If you're interested in iPhone development, lets meet up. I'm doing a
5-min lightning round talk on native iPhone objc development.

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jamesbritt
There have been two in Phoenix, AZ; I organized the last one.

They are great, and will likely look to roll another one at the end of this
year, but I was a little frustrated in getting more people to stand up and
show off.

Perhaps Phoenix is just not happening enough place for this, or I need to get
some marketing smarts.

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babul
I tried to go to barcamp3 and 4 in London but never get registered in time.
tickets get booked within 5mins of going live and they advertise going live
time of 11am but systems opened at ~10am and sometimes even earlier/later.

This upset a lot of people in London wanting to go.

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rubymaverick
BarCamp is great. I have been to both BarCampOrlando's. While some of the
talks where a little on the basic/general/boring side (I'm looking at you
Agile proponents), there were also some that were great and totally outside my
normal realm of what I am interested in.

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hendler
I was in the last Bar Camp Miami, great time.

If you go with an open mind and less of a mission, it's great. The camps
attract curious, ambitious, and savvy folk - not just for Bar Hoppers!

I'm moving back to Boston just in time for this one! Thanks for posting!

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igexome
I helped throw BarCampRochester3 - largest one in upstate NY! RITers
represent! Gathering quality people who want to give something of interest to
each other truly does cull the best and the brightest in an area.

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a-priori
So far, only one: a DemoCampGuelph back in January. I'm planning on going to
more similar events in Guelph, Waterloo and maybe Toronto this summer.

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jdroid
They're skipping nyc, huh?

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andrewparker
No, BarCampNYC3 was back in March... great event:
<http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampNYC3>

