Two very common questions asked by people who have never heard of Barcamps. Fortunately, both are fairly easy to answer.
The barcamp.org website says a Barcamp is
an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event.
while the Wikipedia entry describes one as
an international network of user generated conferences – open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants.
What does all that mean?
Simple.
Invite a whole bunch of people (which includes you) to meet, and tell each of them that everybody else is there to learn what he/she knows.
Who is it for?
Well, that’s an even easier question to answer.
It’s for you.
Ok, so what kind of topics will there be?
Excellent question. There will be topics on whatever people (you) want to talk about.
Barcamps, because of its origins, are often tech related but by no means are restricted to that. Considering the wide variety of talents and interests in the Charleston area (particularly in the arts), there’s a good probability that BarcampCHS will have a broad range of topics. We’re looking for talks, presentations, workshops, demonstrations on pretty much anything you want to do.
So, if you want to give a workshop on belly dancing, great! Sign up and propose a Belly Dancing 101 workshop, or even a series of workshops! Want to learn how to knit? Suggest it as a topic you’d like to see and see if someone picks it up. Or even better, find a friend who knits and have them sign up to lead a session! Just got a fancy new DSLR camera and have no idea what to do with it? Suggest a Photography 101 session. Want to try out that new fangled Linux operating system? Want to give a session on blogging or offer a social media board certification course? Pottery? Advanced systems administration?
Ruby/Python/PHP/Perl/Haskell/Lisp/(Obj)C(++|#)? How to run a small business? Glass blowing? Blacksmithing? Sign it up!
Hopefully you’re starting to get the picture now.
If you want to give a talk or demonstration on something, you’ll be able to post it on the BarcampCHS website (coming soon). You can also just show up the day of BarcamCHS and write down your presentation topic on the scheduling grid.
If there’s a particular topic or item you want to know more about, you’ll be able to suggest it and maybe someone will step up and give a talk or demo on it.
BarcampCHS will be completely free to attend. Just bring yourself and whatever you might need to put on your talk/demo. Come prepared to have a good time, learn something knew and show other people something new (to them). Register now!
We’re also looking for sponsors. If you’re interested in sponsoring BarcampCHS or know someone who might be interested in a sponsorship opportunity, contact us!
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The bellydancing thing was for my benefit, wasn’t it? 😉
(Really, I’m not actually that self-involved, but it did make me chuckle.)
On a more serious note, how will we know that anyone will actually care to learn what we’re teaching?
oh yes, totally 🙂
When people propose topics on the website that they want to lead or would like to see, there’s going to be a “Like” button that others can click on which can be used to gauge interest.
For things that haven’t been posted to the website in advance, we’ll have a big scheduling board where people can post their talk/demo. It’s bound to be busy around the board, so there will be plenty of people seeing it and opportunities for you to promote it. The details on how the scheduling board is going to work are still being worked out, but that’s the general idea.
You’re also more than welcome to drag along any friends to stock/seed your audience with 🙂
Ha! Hilarious.
Well, cool then. I’ll start thinking of things I’d be interested in teaching. How long are the blocks? One hour? Half and hour?
Time slots are still being worked out. We might go with 30 minute slots across the board so if people want to go for an hour, they’ll just sign up for two slots. Might also go with a mix of 30/60 minute slots for some rooms too. Still up in the air at the moment.
There are a variety of rooms we have access to, and some types of presentations might be better suited for one room vs another. Some of the larger rooms may end up having multiple things going on at the same time, but the plan is to have movable dividers for the larger spaces so that if one session needs a lot of space it’ll be easy to reconfigure.