Its been 2 weeks since BarCampMediaCity and it feels like only yesterday…
We had over 200 people come through the doors. Although not everything went to plan the BarCamp team pulled together and pulled off something very impressive if I do say so myself.
Right from the start (at the welcome talk) I pointed to the 5 years of trying to get the barcamp off the ground at the BBC. Right from BarCampLondon at Yahoo HQ’s (are they still there?) in Convert Garden, me and Ben Metcalfe (who was a BBC member of staff at the time) suggested BarCamp would be amazing at the BBC. We weren’t wrong…
The response has been outstanding…
So many people’s very first BarCamp and they loved what they were part of. I don’t have the numbers to hand but there’s no doubt in my mind the amount of newbies and the percentage of women was incredible. Part of this comes down to the excellent work the girl geek dinners and other related organisation out into informing their community. Right from the start we wanted a diverse turnout and pushed the tickets into many different communities.
The talks people gave were simply top draw stuff. I can’t even begin to pick out a few of the best because there were so many.
We’ve asked everyone who attended to please put there talk online somewhere then link to it from Lanyrd. 21 people so far have and I’m sure there’s plenty more which just need linking to. If you’re aware a talk just needs a link, please jump right in and do it. Remember BarCamp is all about collaboration.
There’s also a quite a bit of coverage about BarCampMediaCity in different places… From the Guardian and the BBC right through to a whole ton of tweets and blog posts. Once again rather than explicitly pointing to any one over another, there all on the coverage part of Lanyrd.
Many people have asked me and others in the team about BarCampMediaCity2? All I can say is, it may happen next year but I’m certainly ending my BarCamp career here. Like the London BarCamps, I’m hoping this will spur a whole lot of people to give it a try for themselves. There’s already BarCampLeeds, BarCampSheffield, BarCampBlackpool, BarCampLiverpool, BarCampNottingham, BarCampNorthEast (Newcastle), etc, etc… All these BarCamps need your support to make them even better than anything else. In actual fact I’ll see you at BarCampBlackpool if your lucky enough to have got a ticket.
This will probably be the last blog post from BarCampMediaCity…
But just before I go I’d like to finish up by thanking the sponsors Teksystems, Bytemark & BigV, Open Labs at Liverpool John Moores, Techsmith, Indigo for the excellent Tshirts and Nexus Networks for there flawless wireless solution. Massive thanks to the Geeks of London who are almost at double figures with BarCampLondon9 later this year. Thanks to all the BBC staff who either turned up or helped out with the organisation of the event.
And lastly massive thanks to everyone who attended and collaborated to make the event something very special. Ok we didn’t get to ride the Segway but we dodged the Football fans and everyone got home safely.
Till the next time… when ever that will be…