BarCampLjubljana2 – a bit of reflection

Running forward and never taking the time to smell the roses or to reflect things that just happened. In order bo break this bad habit, here’s a bit reflection from someone who was present during most of Mini SeedCamp Ljubljana planning as well as second BarCampLjubljana.

Events are group efforts

Both #SCLJ and #BCLJ were organized by a great team of people who worked together and that made a world of a difference as there was less stress on the day and you can achieve so much more.

I do feel that groups organizing community driven events should grow or if that not, at least rotate some of their members to ensure that new perspectives get put in place and that the team is not limited by their networks and abilities.

Having a great team of people around and being just one of the many that is trying to achieve the same goal – have a great event – meant a world to me.

We need to grow the community

We did forget to ask the classical BarCamp question – “who here is a first-timer” but I did see lots of known faces. Almost too many and I think it showed. We’re still not reaching wide enough audience of thinkers and doers and are limited mostly to web geeks. While this means that we might have a good seed for SocialMediaCamp or WebGeeksCamp, we should be able to go broader.

One positive effect of having event on Friday at IJS, was that researchers working there could join us and a few of them even gave talks. The question is – how to attract them to the event, even if it’s being held on Saturday?

Lets upgrade the format

We held event twice at IJS now and I am extremely happy with the support from Nina and Sebastjan and the infrastructure that they made available to us. Wi-Fi that just works, enough space to talk and mingle, while still having enough tracks for the amount of people present.

At the same time, I do recognize that the venue leaves an important mark at everyone present. As such I would be interested in seeing ideas on alternative venues as well as maybe upgrading the event to 2 days with maybe a possibility of sleep-over. I do recognize that the second is a big step forward, but if we manage to attract wider audience – we might be able to do it.

I’m also missing more fun stuff from BarCamps – Werewolf, PowerPoint Karaoke, del.icio.us karaoke and many other events people play to relax after very constructive day. Maybe even group projection of latest episode of Dr. Who (in spirit of BarCampLondon). Right now we’re just focusing on networking and talks and this isn’t right. We should be able to provide space for more fun activities as well as space and opportunity for people to grab their computers and hack or just discuss things in pairs or small groups.

BarCamp inspires and is breeding group for big ideas

We heard some great updates on stories from #BCLJ1, how Pixna continued, the upcoming features of  Twitulater and probably several more that I missed. It would be great if we could track these things and show the real value of these events to skeptics and newcomers.

Conclusion

I have a few simple wishes for the next few months:

• Alternative BarCamps from other organizing teams organizing events, even if much smaller. BarCampKoper or BarCampLjutomer would be great 🙂
• Starting work on educating new parts of public on great new collaborative ideas
• Lets grow the event and mix in even more people!
• Make sure to followup on all the inspiring ideas and provide stories from participants at barcamp.si so we can enable them further