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I was disappointed that BarCamp Vancouver did not have any closing ceremony -- perhaps, I thought, a feedback session might have been in the spirit of things. As a result, I cannot exactly say when BarCamp Vancouver ended. All I know is that, at one point, sessions were underway and I was talking with an old acquaintance in the hall. The next time I looked up, the sessions were finished, the Workspace offices were clear of all except a few solitary bloggers, and the cleanup efforts of the organizers signaled that BarCamp Vancouver was over.

Keeping up the tradition

Friday night at BarCamp Vancouver was pleasant enough, but could have been any networking event for people in high-tech. However, I hadn't been at Saturday's presentations very long before I concluded that the experience was at least as intellectually stimulating as LinuxWorld or the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, events I had enjoyed hugely in the past.

Part of the reason for this stimulation was that presentations were mostly limited to half an hour. Any expert talking about his or her specialty can be listened to for that time. It's enough time to satisfy curiosity, and not enough time to leave me with the choice of being bored or being rude by leaving while someone is talking.

BarCamp session in progress - click to view

Another reason is that Vancouver is more connected to worldwide technological communities than many people imagine. Although the region is a tertiary area for high-tech compared to Silicon Valley or Seattle, it has no shortage of people working under the radar. For instance, Alexandra Samuel, one of the local bloggers who presented at BarCamp Vancouver, is widely recognized as an expert on tagging, while Zak Greant works for the Mozilla Corporation and is a committee member working on the drafts for the third version of the GNU General Public License. Many others, while perhaps not in the mainstream of events, are knowledgeable and active in their selected communities.

Really, as Messina notes, "The presentations are really an excuse for the hallway conversations." He was referring specifically to BarCamps, but the remark is true for any conference. I came away from BarCamp Vancouver with as many sites to check out, references to pass along, and potential story leads as I have from any single day of much larger conferences. Moreover, since sessions usually averaged six to 12 people, the discussions often started before we could reach the hallways.

That's not to say that BarCamp Vancouver was perfect. As with any new phenomenon, those involved sometimes have an air of self-congratulation that occasionally grates. All the same, despite this small annoyance, I was happy to participate, and plan to do so again.

Meanwhile, one of the traditions of BarCamp is that participants blog about the event. Since a journalist is only a blogger turned pro, I'm keeping the tradition by writing this article.

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