Floozy Speak!

So yesterday I checked out BarCampOhio at OCLC.  Afterall it is our first BarCamp in cowtown, had to go to it.  To my normal friends, they thought I was going to martiniCamp or letsgetDrunkFEST, most of them don't know what a BarCamp is, understandably so.  Its kind of a west - east coast thing and not much of mid-west thing.  Until now! 

So what is it?  Its an unconference.  The basic gist of the idea.  People meet, toss ideas on a wall of what they want to talk/learn about, crowd votes or decides what to talk about, go off into your groups discuss it.  The idea is to have no set agenda on what you want to talk about, and discussions occur out of the ether of life.  This can be good and bad based on how the session is facilitated. 

Personally I think folks are hungry for some leadership, a dash of setting expectations is nice really.  Makes me warm inside when I get a little win from "oh yeah, i'm ready" vs the "oh crap, what the hell are we doing".  But thats just me.

Unconference purists would see my damning words and call me a... ummm.. something.  But anyways here's how BarCampOhio went down.

1. It was really more like LibraryCamp.  It had a strong overtones of library needs and or focus.  Most of the PR that got the people there were all from the library side of life.  Sa'll good, just call it LibraryCamp next time, I'll still go.  Some of the conversations in my head just didnt apply to the library theme, so that was an expectation that didn't work out. 

2. Kicking off an unconference sucks.  That first hour of people gathering, introductions and waiting for the "rules or faciliator to address people" sucks.  It was too loose.  Not enough clarity.  I wrote down "dying on a vine".  I would like to go around the room and people just say what ya do.  Get that out in the air.

3. Sometimes instead of ideas up on a wall, maybe we should frame them into- theme and problem.  What is the theme of this event, a huge highlevel thing like "create" or "mobile" or whatever, and then present the next level- what are the problems.  I guess this could be too much structure for an unconference.  But I for one, had trouble figuring out what I could talk about with various groups that formed up.  I ended up in the social media pool mainly cause I felt I could contribute there.  But if we threw up ideas as problems, odds are I could of referenced the idea better in my head and then address anyones table chiming in on solutions based on my neck of the woods experience.

4. All my technology died.  Side note really.  My laptop, dead.  Chumby no wanna work.  Iphone, gets wifi but cant get out to access anything.  Sucked.  Jody, however reminded me it was probably good cause I talked alot more.

5. I started to think about the kinds of people at unconferences:

seeders, submit ideas

butterflies, like to visit everyone table, get a taste of everything

bulls, authority magnets, this is how stuff works, period

bandwagons, kinda like butterflies but more eager to agree at whatever the energy is pointing at

6.  Once we got into groups, that was good, good conversation occured.

7.  More pen, colorful postits, and whiteboards required.

8. Sponsors should get some kind of pre-sponsor pack that helps tee them up for success at an unconference.  TMobile gave us lunch and it was good, but I felt like they did this defacto standard pitch to us as if they came to your house or company and wanted you to buy thier service.  To be more successful, sponsors should be teed up for what kinds of approaches could be good to ask unconference attendies.  I need more thought on this idea but I think they could of got alot more out of their sponsor bit then to just talk to us about rate plans and what not.  They could of used that moment to pull some insights out of us, get a vibe for how we feel etc. 

9. I was really suprised that the library folks I talked to didn't know about Bishop Hartley Highschool and their digital revolution of the classroom there.  They are a massive case study unfolding daily in town.

10. Some big ideas?  Well the usual, why blog, why not, fears over blogging, corp PR vs individual, talk twitter, etc.  One idea I liked was the library listening post- a big 30" LCD that aggerated current searches in blogs, twitter, youtube, etc all around "library like" key words.  This was mainly an immersive tool for the staff of the organization to see and witness what was currently going on in the web.  Rather than to beat them into submission, blog or else, they see the affects of how users search the web use library terms, related language and then they can decide on whether or not they want to be a part of the scene basically.  I like this idea cause it can inform many folks in a passive way thats not threating.  There was a lot of talk around why should I blog, why do I need to be there and they're really correct, without proof or any evidence to toss at them, you're trying to swim up creek, you'll lose eventually.  So rather than cornering them and telling this is why, show them why, see if they can see what you see and then perhaps they'll start think the web differently. 

11. Take aways.  When closed for the day I brought the issue up of take aways.  I think BarCamp events need solid take aways from folks, expressed on paper, camera, don't care but I think you need to walk out of the building as if you acomplished something, express it, tell me what you acomplished.  That data helps everyone see what we need to rally in and celebrate and what we need to fix next time around.

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