Stepping up to the Bar Camp

In breaking news, Elastic Path joins an all-star roster of Vancouver-based social/web/tech stalwarts including Bryght, nitobi, Capulet Communications, Workspace (I am sure I missed some here) as sponsors of Bar Camp Vancouver. Bar Camps are “un”conferences held all over the world to geek out on technology-related topics.

Before you start thinking that this is a simply a drinking junket, I’ll tell ya that it’s all about the collaboration and peer-learning as this (borrowed) description says,

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference 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.

All attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.”

Well “anyone” who registers on the wiki fast enough that is. The event will be held at Bryght’s new Van-groovy style office space in the funkiest building around but attendance is limited to the first 90 folks (though there are rumours of expanding to 110).

The roster is an eclectic list of savvy veterans and eager newbies from many industries including many folks whose pods/blogs I enjoy so should be a neat (all night) pow wow.

I’ve been to Mindcamp and Gnomedex but this is my first Bar Camp and I’ll be heading over along with VP Marketing Jason Billingsley who is a first-time attendee as well.  In the spirit of participation, I’ll likely do my “start your own podcast in an hour or less” spiel and let you know how it turns out.