Write up on Bournemouth Barcamp 2010

Crace and I arrived at Bournemouth Uni all ready to rumble at 0930. We wandered in and found @darkphnx, who got us all checked in and suggested that we set up in Dylans Bar AKA Battletoads bar as we were due to be starting over lunch. So, after an into from Luke the main organizer, we dragged all the kit up to Dylan’s and set everything up in a corner.

Unfortunately this meant we missed the start of session one, but leaving Crace to guard the kit, I wandered off to chat to people and maybe drum up a few interviews. I managed to catch an interesting rant about innovation or the lack thereof in the web design industry but still had to skip out halfway through for sound checks. Turns out I didn’t need to! Silly Lorcian forgot we’re on BST now, and so we actually were starting at 1400h. Good news was this meant we were able to grab some free food (thanks to RedWeb for the noms) before we started.

So the start of the show went pretty well, with brief interviews from @abizern, Niall Fealty and Organizer Luke. Half way through the show however (about the time the grub ran out…), all the Barcamp attendees vanished to be replaced by rugby players. Organizer Luke, who had been hanging around geeking out about the rig we had, suggested we up and move back to ‘All your base’ atrium. What with strange men asking to borrow my phone, rugby players and the bloody football (TV: “GOOOOOAL!” Us: “STFU!”), we uped and left, seting up again in the atrium.

This was a good move: we were rewarded with a much stronger flow of people eating our sweets, oh and five more interviews with @adrianh, @darkphnx, @cbetta, @grimnorth and Organizer Luke again (yet I still missed a photo op with him). Mixed results with these though – Grimnorth gave us a very interesting discussion on the Digital Economy Bill and why it’s Bad, while Cbetta and Luke gave us a run down of what happened during their group chatroulette session…

Overall the show wasn’t nearly as stressful as I was imagining it, mainly because I was expecting some kind of audience. I think because the show lasted three hours, and we didn’t exactly advertise ourselves, we were largely ignored. Also for the most part people weren’t too unwilling to be nabbed by me. With the exception of Organizer Luke, I managed to get photos of everyone we interviewed, which, with a few more additions, are all up on our facebook page.

Unfortunately the end of the show coincided with the end of the talks, so we packed the kit back up, stashed it away and spend some time chatting and chilling. At around 1700 we popped off to Sainsburys with a pile of cash and came back with a pile of beer and munches. Chatting and chilling resumed, as did games of Polarity and Werewolf. At some point we got pizza. Despite all actions to the contrary I finally crashed around 0300, Sunday, so Dark and I headed up to room 236, the UNIX lab, and we slept reasonably well, considering it was a computer lab…

Later on Sunday, around 0800, we woke and after some faffing in the atrium (more polarity, geeking etc) we went to breakfast at 0900 (sponsored by ourselves, @squizzleapp and @bcsypg). It was a truly excellent breakfast, so good I had to go up for more. After Breakfast, I headed to Rick-roll room for a talk by @lallyd about British Sign Language, which was very informative, if resulting a little childish insulting between @lostprocess and myself Sitting around chatting with @lallyd and others meant I missed the start of the #debill debate, so I sat around with the BUNIX crew and watched them play teeworlds and chatted through lunch. Then talks began again so I took myself off to the rickroll room to a talk about ‘Getting inspiration for photography’. Maybe I was early or something but the talker didn’t turn up so I went on to ceiling cat room for a talk entitled ‘Hodge for president’. That turned into a rant/ call to action for more geeks to get involved in politics and how the current system is shite. Again his talk kinda ran on so I sneaked out and ran into @darkliquid and the BUNIX crew who were going to some talk I wasn’t especially interested in, but as I couldn’t really find anything I did want to listen to I sat in with them. Turned out the lightning talks (talks that last no more the five minutes) were secheduled for the same room, so we hung on after the previous talk and watched those. By far my favourites of those were @darkphnx’s ‘How to make presentation slides from scratch in five minutes using LATEX’, some dude’s talk about how he mapped the metro system in his local area, and how it’s resulted in a possible work contract for him, and some others dudes very condensed talk about logical fallacies. After that, we had the closing talk and awards ceremony, where @darkliquid won ‘best facial hair’. Then it was all over and time to back up. I grabbed our kit, and helped tidy for a bit before @lostprocess’s mum came to pick us up.

All in all it was very enjoyable, something I’d love to go to again, and maybe have a hand in organizing next years. It was less professional than Oggcamp, the only other barcamp I’ve been to, but then it seemed a little more friendly because of that I think. The organizers did a wonderful job, and I hope most of them will be on the organizing team next year (Luke already admitted he’s buggering off to parts unknown), and obviously we want to add to the thanks being piled on the sponsors.

So, cheers guys, see y’all next year!

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