Live from BARCamp 2005!
I’m live at BARCamp, which is what I would term an offbeat but fun “meatspace” networking event. Back story: Tim O’Reilly, who is the founder of the O’Reilly publishing house, holds an event called FOO Camp every year in the woods in Sebastopol, CA (read: middle of nowhere) which brings together a bunch of geeks (200 or so). The geeks get together and brainstorm all weekend on new technology. This is considered the “A-list” party for geeks to attend every year.
However, there are many more geeks who want to go to FOO Camp than who actually get to go due to the limited space at Tim’s hideout in Sebastopol. So some geeks decided to do an event here in the Bay Area instead. The premise: FOO Camp, only without the woods, and without the “exclusive invite” strategy. SocialText donated a 2500sq.ft. office in downtown Palo Alto, several sponsors (including Simpli!) donated money for food, and the rest is history… an all-weekend, goofy geek party with free food, tents in the office, people camping out under tables, and lots’n’lots of laptops and interesting people. Oh, and in the spirit of things like Burning Man, you’re supposed to give or participate in a conference or demo session of something cool that you’re doing.
I stayed here last night till about 4AM, went home, slept for about 7 hours, and came back to an already-packed house full of weary (or, in some cases, caffeine-buzzed) geeks. I’ve attended several fascinating sessions on everything from “How to succeed at Google AdWords” to “Women in technology” to “Why our pluralistic voting system sucks, and which voting systems don’t suck.” I must say that the conference sessions are amazingly well-done considering people signed up for slots on handwritten pieces of paper on one of the walls!
My goal here was to walk out with the conference attendees knowing what Simpli was all about and that we offer dedicated servers, colocation, and shared hosting here in San Jose. I started off by talking to Andy Smith, one of the organizers, about doing a hardware sale of some of Simpli’s old hardware to raise money for food. A couple of us in irc.freenode.net #barcamp thought it might work even better as an auction, so Ben and I spent 5 hours on Friday labeling old equipment and hauling it up to Palo Alto for the auction. I would definitely consider the auction a success! Most of the items (which are old hard drives and computers with prices starting at $5) have received at least one bid, and a few have even had multiple bids. We’ve gotten rid of some old hardware and raised about $200 for this BARCamp (or the next one, if this one already has all of the meals bought.)
I definitely think BARCamp was executed quite well for having been planned so quickly. I’m also celebrating being able to meet other women who are in this industry; geek women are so rare and it’s great to meet some who live close by. I definitely think BARCamp will be happening again, and I also think it will shape the direction of the next SuperHappyDevHouse. (One example: The presentations really do add to the event and “gel” the whole thing together, as opposed to it just being a weekend-long water-cooler hangout.) It has been a great weekend so far!
