Barcamp: a marketer's review

Attended my first barcamp-style event today. (What is a barcamp?) Fascinating mix of very old and very new ideas about community and events! And in-person relationship building plus social media. Loved the experience, both as a marketer and as a human being.

Here's how I saw the barcamp format play out at this event (vs traditional professional conferences and educational tracks at trade shows).

Pros:
- Highly engaged participants. More than 2 or 3 attendees talking during the sessions. A cross between a round table discussion (which it is supposed to be) and a panel discussion (the most experienced, outspoken, curious, and/or knowledgeable people tend to talk most).
- Lots of networking. People felt relaxed enough to introduce themselves to others - even if they are visibly not accustomed to doing so.
- Lots of available information, freely shared.
- Creative, comfortable setting: conducive to learning, ideation, thinking, asking questions. Nonthreatening.
- Variety and quality of participants' disciplinary expertise, professional backgrounds.
- Diversity of age, interests, personal stories.
- Format is heavily dependent on Q&A; relatively easy to ask questions.
- Very humane, spontaneous forum. Very good cross-training for living in a democracy. Very flexible format, attendee-driven. Responsibility is on the attendees to say what you want, get out there and meet people, and get what you came for.
- Liked the public space where this particular event happened.
- Started with a small panel discussion. This worked well as an icebreaker.
- As with online social media, information flows like a stream at the event. You can get up and move yourself to a different person or group at your choosing. You can go outside and take a break if you need to.
- Liked the use of social media to promote the event, capture RSVPs, capture meta information about the event
- The barcamp forum is not designed for privacy and doesn't really allow participants to be invisible listeners. Not everyone is intrinsically comfortable with that. This event did a nice job of letting people show up and get as involved or as visible as they wished.
- Fun! Really fun. Surprisingly fun.

Other observations:
- A lot happening at once. (Ex: simultaneous sessions, side conversations during the sessions, people coming and going all day)
- As with traditionally organized conferences, you must accept that you're going to miss something b/c of the simultaneous sessions, comings & goings, & side conversations. As with a traditional conference, it's up to you to go after what you want to get out of the experience.
- Because the sessions are essentially unplanned, it's difficult to set expectations or match what someone's coming to learn with the information people are planning to bring. A more traditional conference agenda or some other form of advance planning could offset this. (thoughts on that below)
- I like the informality of the event, which encourages wandering between groups. However, still uncomfortable moments where someone is sitting with one of the breakouts for a while and is wondering whether it's *really* OK to get up and move to the other group.
- Informality breeds side conversations. Uncomfortable moments can happen where someone gets pulled into a side conversation but wants to hear the main discussion. (This can happen in any informal business setting, of course.)
- If you're trying to meet people of specific background, niches, or interests within the community, the format makes it difficult to facilitate that when a bunch of people just show up. This is true of most networking events, but I think barcamp's integration with social media actually offers some avenues to counteract it (ideas further on in this post).
- At risk because of the egalitarian format: breakout sessions could get hijacked by the loudest people in the room, who might not be the most knowledgeable or have the most interesting questions.
- Also at risk because of the egalitarian format: the quietest people in the room may have the most to offer. How to get them to participate?

Ideas:
- Would have liked an overhead projector to...
.......project a "who's who" list of participants and capture keywords about them during the roundtable introduction,
.......capture the session agenda while the attendees develop it,
.......capture notes as the sessions progress,
.......do all of this real-time in the event wiki, which would be available to attendees online after the event.
.......project a countdown timer or clock during the breakout sessions.
- Insert formal break(s) about once an hour. Observed uncomfortable moments when people were wondering when it was OK to take a bio break or go get coffee yet not miss an introduction, an announcement, something important. Also, choreographed breaks will help brains process the incoming information.
- Given the unpredictability of internet access in public venues, would have liked a sign in sheet-- even if just old-fashioned paper or spreadsheet.
- Breakout sessions would benefit from professional (or at least experienced/trained) moderators. That's how focus groups and other types of meetings keep from hijacked by talkative/forceful personalities, and ensure that quiet persons have a voice. It fits the egalitarian, democratic vibe of barcamp but could add a level of professionalism, planning, and order to such events.
- I think there's room to experiment with the sizes of breakout groups. Traditional meeting/focus group facilitation tells you that if you get more than a certain # of people in a group (8-10ish) not everyone can participate equally in the conversation. The larger the breakout group, the less likely quiet persons will talk. The group ownership dynamic of the event changes. Individual accountability for participating changes. I'm not sure that's a bad thing or a good thing. I think it would be interesting to experiment with and understand.
- Ideally, I think attendees should register in advance, receive guidelines for preparing (even specific assignments) upon registration, fill out some kind of pre-event online questionnaire at registration, and (potentially) participate in some form of social network with the group before the event. This would help attendees identify who they need to meet and plan what they want to cover during the time.
- For walk-ins who didn't register and attendees who are new to barcamp, it would be nice to have a "democamp" where organizers hold a panel discussion to demonstrate in microcosm how the entire group will interact during the breakouts. Including taking breaks and having presenters wander in and out of the session. Whatever behavior you want from the attendees, model it.

Overall:
- Excellent format for getting informal mingling/networking with people in a community of interest.
- Really challenges traditional top-down, teacher-driven, classroom-oriented notions of learning!
- A really exciting tension between structured events and serendipitous occurrences.
- Creates much more space for building relationships and trust than traditional networking events.
- Takes some getting used to and a lot more work than meets the eye. You really get out of it what you put into it.
- Very flexible event format which can be customized to serve many purposes -- company meetings, client needs assessments, teambuilding, customer advisory committees, problem solving/war room situations, professional networking events, political organizing, fundraising...