Barcamp Scotland is the annual get-together for people working in tech for the past three years. For those of you that don’t know about the event, the definition of BarCamp is:
BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. Programmers, coders, VCs, Angels, investors, marketers, ad people, public service, creatives… all welcome to share and learn from each other.
Briefly, the first ever Scottish Barcamp was ran in 2007, starting with a reception on Friday night, then an all day event on Saturday which was very well attended (over 100+) with lots of food, plus fun and games. The format is simple: there are 3-4 rooms, each with a sign up sheet at the front. You can sign up to speak for a 30min slot, or you can just sit and listen, or mingle with others all day. Topics can range from “the latest development in Flash” to “declining numbers in computer science education”. There’s food as well as free drinks too at the end of the night.
This year, there’s been talk about whether there will be or will not be a Barcamp. For one reason or another, the Scotland event has been slowly declining in numbers for the last year or two, and it’s difficult to figure out why. Some people have talked about event overload, others have talked about it being superceded by an event like Techmeetup. But there seems to be a few people that think it might be worthwhile to run one.
So … if Barcamp is something might sound interesting to you, then we would really appreciate it if you can take a quick survey, getting your opinions and suggestions about previous experiences of barcamp or would-like-to-haves for those of you that haven’t been. Please feel free to email/circulate to others.
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