Last Friday, Kate and I were at Scottish Television’s headquarters in Glasgow, checking out an event billed as Glasgow’s first BarCamp. The turn-out was great and the speaker list was impressive.
For those who missed the event, here’s a Twitter summary of the evening.
rohan_21awake (16:32): Hashtag for barcamp glasgow please.
Dlivingstone (16:58): At #barcamp scotland. Lots of people. Not much networking yet.
digitalkatie (17:47): Heading to BarcampGlasgow with @digitalsean (#barcampglasgow? #bcg?? What’s the tag?)
dlivingstone (18:01): Kevin O’Hara wants to hear OUR thoughts at #BarCamp Scotland – first hint of UNconference so far!
rohan_21awake (18:07): This is the least barcamp looking barcamp I have ever seen #”barcamp”.
dlivingston (18:09): Sorry was wrong, no more discussion than in other sessions—but alright talk.
MarcusRomer (18:21): @rohan_21awake why so?
rohan_21awake (18:41): @MarcusRomer feel like the event is missing the energy and self-organising that I so cherish from proper barcamp formats.
rohan_21awake (18:35): The geeks are arriving #barcampscotland.
newmediacorp (18:58): Glasgow’s first BarCamp has 200 folk having a warm but terrific time!
ewanmcintosh (19:18): #barcampscotland is incredibly quiet on Twitter. Ecuador barcamp organising beating it. Just like the world cup all over again.
rohan_21awake (19:21): @ewanmcintosh yes. It’s a bit disappointing #”barcamp”.
ewanmcintosh (19:24): Ah, that’s better. #barcamp in Scotland just got a smidgen more unconferencey 😉 Looks like some great folk for great conversations.
marksutherland (19:31): At #barcampglasgow, distinct “media” emphasis as opposed to “tech”.
Danielnwp (19:45): At Barcamp Glasgow. Some interesting talks, but it’s mostly “new media” stuff. Maybe the Realtime Worlds talk will be geekier?
DunningDesign (20:21): #barcamp @stv this evening – excellent. Particularly liked @whitespacers presentation. Thanks Iain and Kate 🙂
digitalsean (20:14): Anyone fancy a beer/crisps run from 3rd floor lightning talks downstairs? Or anyone downstairs want to bring some up #barcampscotland.
tomrodonnell (20:22): Lack of bar #barcamp @stv is disappointing. However SMS and ivr provider Newstel is doing some good networking.
digitalkatie (22:53): I think next time we get babysitter for an evening, dinner needs to be in the plans somewhere! #veryveryhungry #barcamp.
LillyLyle (23:25): Most enjoyable #BarCamp in Glasgow this evening, GREAT speakers, very inspiring. Many thanks to #STV for lending out their facilities.
IntScotland (10:57, next day): Thanks to all who turned out at Barcamp Glasgow. Fair chuffed with all the great talks and networking going on!! Watch this space for more.
Note: Aaron Bassett has also written up a blog post about the whole Barcamp event.
StartupCafe 
That’s a really interesting insight into how people found the event. Good thinkings!
I’ve written a bit of a follow up.
http://aaronbassett.tumblr.com/post/734635793/anyone-want-a-real-barcamp
(I have to exclude both Tech meetup & web-centric from my little rant as both of those events are great.)
But it seems that sales/marketing have realised that tech is the poodle’s pieces and they’re trying to take-over or re-invent tech events to further their own greedy little needs. Like Barcamp. People attended Barcamp in suits! Seriously? Suits at a Barcamp? It was a travesty!
Anyways, it’s about time they got told to sod off. 😉
Aaron, I agree that calling it “BarCamp” was a real stretch. But I would add that many people genuinely enjoyed the event, despite the misnomer.
Of these, the ones I talked to had never been to a BarCamp before, so assumed it was normal to have a prepared list of speakers and a non-tech focus.
Obviously, that’s not the norm. It sounds like there’s been some follow-up conversations about this with the organisers. My hope is that any subsequent events will be marketed in such a way that everyone has reasonable expectations before they arrive.
Who else attended? How did you find it?
Hi Hilary, I understand your points, and I’ll tweet you my email incase you want to discuss it more, that way we don’t need to treat poor SC’s comment section like IM!
But my point stands, and thankfully it looks like you agree. It was NOT a barcamp, it should not have been called a barcamp. It was misrepresented and disappointing to those of us attending who knew what a barcamp should be.
Sure it might have been a big misunderstanding, but lets put it another way, if I told you that we’re gonna see a Ursus americanus and we actually end up confronted with a Ursus arctos horribili you’re gonna be pretty fucking pissed. Even though the uninitiated may think they’re both the same. 😉
Names matter! And the very least the organisers could have done was research the meaning, ideology and expectations of calling something a ‘barcamp’ before deciding to adopt that moniker. There are plenty other well known terms which could have been used instead without misrepresenting what they aimed to do.
“Circle-jerk” immediately springs to mind.
Oh man sad I had to miss it, BarCamp or not, simply for the banter. Insightful yet hilarious tweeting stream.
Aaron, just left you a note on your blog, but yes definitely support the re-emergence of the real un-conference. Worth connecting with Informatics Ventures to see where they might be able to help (ie. $upport) and we’re of course happy to shout out what’s happening 🙂
Just to let everyone know where I am at with putting together a more tech focused Barcamp. It now has a site over at http://www.barcampglasgow.com and you can follow it on twitter for more updates @barcampglasgow 🙂
Always up for a circle-jerk 😀