On April 25th, the Paris-based organization Travailleurs du Web will be holding TDWCamp, a barcamp for web workers here in Paris. Why not organize one in your city?
If you don’t know what a barcamp (or unconference) is, don’t feel bad. The name certainly doesn’t provide any clues if you don’t know the history. Barcamps are like structured brainstorming sessions with crowd-sourced agendas and organic, bottom-up organization. It’s a great format for generating ideas, energy and momentum that can be used by any special interest group, professional or otherwise. I’ll explain.
Somebody decides to have a barcamp. Anyone interested in the subject of the barcamp can sign up. Some participants offer to talk to the group about a topic in which they have expertise. Others indicate what topics they’re interested in hearing about/discussing. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year when I make my yearly geek pilgrimage to Austin for SXSW, I struggle with how much time to spend at BarCampAustin vs. SXSW, because they usually overlap. I love attending SXSW, but I am also a BarCamp fan, so the choice is always a difficult one. This year, like most past years, I chose to skip SXSW to spend a day at BarCamp.
Previously on WebWorkerDaily, I talked about the differences in they way that the community conferences are organized and posted an interview with Audrey Eschright, a BarCamp and unconference organizer. This time I was interested in differences in content between traditional conferences and community-organized events.
Since anyone can propose a session at BarCamp, you tend to get more crazy ideas and niche sessions with great information that would never have an audience broad enough to justify a session at most traditional commercial conferences. You also get some terrible sessions and ideas that just don’t make much sense, but the beauty of BarCamp is that you can wander in and out of sessions pretty easily.
Some examples of interesting sessions at BarCampAustin included: How to start an online bacon business in a month, half-baked entrepreneurial theater (where people come up with crazy business ideas), air ships and more. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by Selena Marie
In previous posts, I’ve talked about attending local events and meetups or scheduling new ones if you can’t find any that meet your needs. In this post, I wanted to talk about something bigger than the typical meetup: community-organized events. BarCamps, unconferences, and similar events have been popping up all over the world in increasing frequency. I’m an organizer for the local BarCamp in Portland, and I have attended many of these types of events. I’m planning to attend BarCampAustin this weekend, which is running in parallel with SXSW.
The organization of these events is very different from typical commercial events. While commercial events tend to be organized by professional organizers who are being paid to produce the conference, community organized events are often organized by unpaid volunteers from the community who are passionate about the topic. Both types of events have their strengths and weaknesses and their place in the industry, but both are also very different in both organization and attendance.
Attendance
I have noticed that many organizers and a high percentage of attendees of BarCamps tend to be web workers. Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
