A Tale of Two BarCamps
I just arrived back from BarCamp Orlando and for the most part, it was really good. Here's how it stacked up to BarCamp Chicago which I attended exactly 3 months ago today:
Venue: Taste was a bit small and signing up for a presentation meant hovering over the speaker in the big room. The walkway between the two rooms was about 3 feet wide not counting the dozen or so people lining the wall. And once you found a seat, once the desired presentation was over, you would wonder if you should sit through or give up the seat knowing it might be hard to find another.
+1 for Chicago
Food: I blogged previously about the abundance of potato pizza in Chicago. The food in Orlando was a bit more palatable. The dinner, although nice, was salad, some sort of crustini[fancy word for sliced French bread], pasta, and more pasta. You can't really complain about a free dinner but a protein would have been nice.
+1 for Orlando
The Alcohol/snack situation: Being a restaurant, outside food was not encouraged... nor outside drink. Soft drinks were free. Free alcohol as in Chicago would have been nice. Or even just random cookies and chips.
+1 for Chicago
Diversity of the crowd: Orlando was a more diverse crowd than Chicago. I was not the "one" black guy. Not that I obsess about that or anything. There were at least a dozen or two women as well, up from the 3-4 in Chicago.
+1 for Orlando
Cool things: The live flickr feed of BarCamp photos playing on a flat screen TV in the main room. It's standard for a BarCamp to settle on a tag for photos but I haven't heard of any others presenting the photos in that manner. It felt like serious photojournalism. It was genius.
+1 for Orlando
Final tally: Orlando 3, Chicago 2.
Seriously, Orlando was a good start. I think it would be more fun next time in a bigger venture with a bit more time per presentation. Twenty minutes felt a little rushed for some presentations...especially those with some extreme technical difficulties, myself included. It was a good test run for my talk on Groovy and Swing coming up on Tuesday at the Tampa JUG.