Today was day 1 of BarCampBlock in Palo Alto. It was an amazing experience that allowed attendees to be submerged in Silicon Valley tech culture. I learned an insane amount, and I don’t just mean “knowledge”. There was an energy that seemed to be flowing around (not the wifi) and it was very enlightening to take part in that. And it’s not too late if you want to experience it yourself, because tomorrow it is all happening again, from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM. But if you can’t make it, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of the atmosphere and happenings of the day by doing a couple of things. First, make sure and visit BarCampBlock Session Notes. You will be able to see notes on the informal sessions that occurred throughout the day (There are only three sessions’ notes on the wiki right now, but I’m sure this will change soon). Next, go to flicker to get some pictures of the event. If stills don’t do the trick, you can see a few video clips on Ustream and you should be able to watch the live stream tomorrow. Also, there will likely be more blogging about the event and I will post links as they surface.
My take on the day:
I showed up at about 9:30 AM, by myself and not knowing a single soul. That changed quickly though as everyone was, for the most part, extremely social and friendly. So if that is what is stopping you from attending tomorrow, I wouldn’t worry about it. The first session I attended was called “What Are Widgets”, led by Shawn from Clearspring. Clearspring makes sharing and tracking widgets easier. The discussion was about widgets in general and what Clearspring can offer to widget developers. The next session I attended was called “The Big Crash of Web 2.0” aka “web 2 points uh oh”. This was my favorite session by far as there was a lot of passionate audience interaction. The discussion was focused on looking at where we are in web 2.0, in regards to three aspects: investment, technologies, and adoption. The next two sessions I attended were lead by KRS Murthy, who is a venture capitalist with expertise in mergers and acquisitions and is an extremely intelligent person. In his first session, he talked about the need to change the way venture capital is raised, to allow for the funding of companies that are not in close geographic proximity to a vc. Murthy’s next session was about mergers/acquisitions and roll up plans for social networking websites. The last session I attended was called “Why Companies Fear Bloggers”, led by Paul Joyce of SimplifyMedia. This was more of an open discussion, where we talked about many aspects of blogging, including writing about competitors, interacting with customers, and the damage that blogs can do to companies.
It really was an amazing day and I want to thank all the people and sponsors that made the experience what it was. And if you’re attending tomorrow, I’ll see you there.
Links:
-Brian Solis wrote an excellent post about BarCampBlock at bub.blicio.us
-Robert Scoble, who is on a blog break, came out and wrote about his late visit to BarCampBlock.
-iPhone Software Unlock Company iPhoneSIMFree Has Been Acquired
-Infotropism has a nice roundup of links to blogs about BarCampBlock.
-Don’t forget to visit the BarCamp wiki to see the list of blog posts about BarCampBlock