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The highlight of this weekend was “BarCampGrandRapids”:http://barcamp.org/BarCampGrandRapids. To briefly describe: BarCamps are technology conferences that take place worldwide, from Austin, Texas to Perth, Australia. Most professional conferences are expensive events, and you often end up listening to a lot of marketing pitches from companies, rather than learning something.

h3. Introduction

BarCamp conferences typically do not cost any money. The conferences run very lean and can usually take advantage of corporate sponsorships to cover the minimal costs.

The only cost is that all attendees are asked to give at least one presentation. Consequently the content of the conference is determined by the attendees themselves, and the schedule created at the conference. After a welcoming session, all attendees are directed to a schedule wall where they can pick what time slot and room they want to post their presentation.

We started on Friday evening, after work. After several opening sessions we went out to Grand Rapids Brewing Company, courtesy of “Envoi Solutions”:http://www.envoisolutions.com/ and enjoyed several rounds of drinks (I had a Jones Soda). We ended up staying from 9 until midnight, as conversations ranged over a wide variety of tech topics. Five of us spent the night (”Calvin College”:http://www.calvin.edu generously provided us with the venue); the conference picked up again at 10 AM the next morning and ran until 5 PM.

My expectations for BarCamp were: to learn, to talk shop with others interested in technology, and to have fun.

h3. Learning

Something that worked really well for our BarCamp was the length of a session. Each session was about 1/2 hour, which was enough time to get an introduction to a topic but not enough time to bore. It kept things interesting and moving at a good pace. Since the conference crams everything into 24 hours, keeping things moving was crucial to capturing interest.

It also meant things were pretty intense–topics hopped from the latest in mapping (the potential for cameras with built-in GPS to add geographical data to your photos, making it easy to plot your photos on an online map) to e-commerce to fighting e-mail spam. I quite enjoyed the ride.

h3. Talking With Others

The social aspect of BarCamp was another surprise: it was like being in college again and participating in those late-night conversations than ran for hours and were thoroughly engaging.

We swapped our favorite tips, software, horror stories, and web sites. Many of those sites had social aspects: for example, discussions prompted several people to join “LinkedIn”:http://www.linkedin.com/ (a professional networking site) while existing members connected to each other. Real-world relationships were flipped to online relationships on sites such as “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/ and “Meebo”:http://www.meebo.com/.

h3. Having Fun

I came home exhausted; the two cans of “Rockstar”:http://www.bevnet.com/reviews/rockstar/ were beginning to wear off. “Gordon Food Service”:http://www.gfs.com/ provided an outstanding smorgasboard of food to keep us fueled, so I had a stomach full of junk food. I met a number of new friends, got to hang out with some old ones, and learned a ton of interesting stuff. Yeah, I had fun.

h3. Further Reading

* Check “photos from the event”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampgrandrapids/
* See “what others are blogging about the event”:http://technorati.com/tag/barcampgrandrapids
* Visit “sites that came up during discussions”:http://del.icio.us/tag/barcampgrandrapids

written by Kyle