BarCamp Vienna 08 – Impressions after 1 1/2 days

Yesterday, the BarCamp Vienna 2008 started. It is the first BarCamp I am attending and after one and a half day I’m trying to put the experience (which was much greater than I expected) in words.
As there is not much time (lunch will be ready soon) just some short impressions/thoughts:

1) Twitter is really a useful tool for such Conferences. Everyone is tagging their Tweets with the Tag #bcv08. You can find all Tweets with that Tag on Twitter Search. Even if you are there and see what’s going on, it’s great to see what’s happening in other sessions or read other peoples thoughts about the session you are attending.

2) The Sessions are not everything. As every event, BarCamp is also a social Event and so there is much “networking” going on. But “networking” in a good & nice way. Soo many different people (Students, Founders of StartUps, People working in the IT Sector, Marketing People, Politicians,…) in one place makes the BarCamp such a great experience.

3) It’s interesting to get to know People you know by their blogs (or even people you “know” already since years through Online Communities) in person. As with many events organized by Online Communites which I attended, you feel like you already know the people you meet in person because of their “online presence”.

4) Somehow (probably because there are so many Bloggers here), by attending this BarCamp you find motivation to blog, you find out how useful Twitter can be and how to really use it. I twittered more in the last 1 1/2 days than in the 24 days before. The motivation to blog partly comes also from the fact that by Twittering for example about the BarCamp you have more attention from persons who before didn’t know your Blog and this way more people look at your blog or mention it in their blog. And due to the fact that I see that people are reading and at least partly interested in this blog, I’m more motivated to write Posts.

5) By attending such a “Conference” with your Laptop, you also change your style of Internet Usage. You no longer just browse randomly from website to website, you “report” about the conference via Twitter, IRC or Blog; watch the Twitter Search for the #bcv08 Tag, reply to people and twitter short thoughts about the Sessions or something else. In between you think what you will talk about in your Session and prepare a Presentation for it in the Evening. I think from now on I will more often take my laptop with me when I’m not at home and try to work with it on interesting things (read blogs/articles,write on twitter or on the blog,do university related stuff,…) and not just stupidly browse around. (There is a Word … wilfing or so for it … don’t have time to find it out now)

So these were my first experiences/impressions, Lunch is ready. Also another experience now after writing this Blog entry in a little bit of a “hurry” you find out that Blog Posts can be written fast. They don’t have to be perfect, better a not perfect Post than no Post.
My Session is at 2 pm in the yellow room, I’m looking forward to it 🙂