Barcamping for noobs
From Sweden Social Web Camp
There was a sub-title of "Practical Advice for the Clueless about unconferences"
What was spoken about:
Review of the History of BarCamps and how they relate to unconferences.
Emma Persky's Slides were used as a basis for the talk.
The points are:
1. Be Prepared - Make your session notes before hand, read-up on stuff
2. Go alone - or if you are in a small group, *split up!*
3. Arrive Early - Organisers have a ton of small tasks that they would like help with, and if nothing else you can find out where the toilets/bar/food are
4. Be prepared for change - Nature of unconferences is that things change (sometimes very rapidly!), so learn to go with it.
5. Don't be afraid - you are surrounded by similar people (they all came to this event, so you have at least one thing in common!), and the default state for most people is "nice". If you are shy, just start the session, the "noisey" ones will be happy to continue it.
6. Make few plans - just about the worst thing you can do is read the Wiki beforehand and think "that session sounds *AWSOME*, can't miss that" as it is almost always not as good as you thought it would be, then you are disappointed. Also, if you hear about a cool event (fireside chat, sauna etc) you are free to join.
7. Bring Cards - or better yet stickers! @vincic had a good idea, event specific moo cards. In the modern hyper-connected world this one might be getting a bit redundant.
8. Keep in contact - Follow up with the people you met, also the people you did not get a chance to meet, but now in the cold light of post-event come-down seems like you should have.
9. Have fun - these things normally seem to happen at the weekend, as the old joke goes "if it hurts, stop doing it"
10. Organise your own camp - it really is not as hard as you think. Find a place, pick a date and announce, remember to ask for help when needed.
My Personal notes/thoughts on the session
Initially it seemed no-one was interested, but a there was a couple of people left over in the tent, so I went ahead.
I have given something similar once before at the start of BarCampHelsinki III, and it went over well then so i thought it would be good to do again.
My expereince is that although there is a metric ass-load of information out there on the Intardwebs, people just don't read it, so a session that quickly goes over some of the main points can be worth the time or is appriciated.
The question of sponsorship was brought up, and while the original BarCamp suggested no individual large sponsors that having two main sponsors works better. My personal opinion is that this is something that changes from event to event and it is one of the choices of the person/team organising the event to make, but you need to be aware that how the sponsorship is devided can affect the "feel" of the event.
Here are some links to articles i have read over the years:
The Wikipedia Unconference entery
The main BarCamp site lots of useful stuff in the navigation links under "The Basics" and "Getting Involved"
