I attended BarCamp Birmingham 5 on Saturday, August 6 2011. This was my first time attending an un-conference, also known as a “user conference”. In a BarCamp conference, the sessions are proposed on the morning of the conference by attendees who have a topic they’d like to share. Each topic is recorded on a sticky note, and then a very informal “vote” occurs to select the session list for the day. I was a little skeptical of sacrificing a full day away from my family to attend a conference where I could not review the sessions ahead of time. However, I was very pleased with the sessions, speakers, and attendees. The entire event was great, and I was inspired by many of the speakers who were obviously as passionate about their careers and work in the software field as I am.
There were 111 registrants for the conference. It was held and UAB School of Business and Engineering complex. Every attendee received a BarCamp Birmingham T-shirt, free soft drinks, and and free lunch from Jim-N-Nick’s. The twitter hashtag is #BarCampBham.
Below, I’ve recorded the sessions that were chosen, and have listed the speaker’s name and contact info for the ones that I could reconstruct. I took iPhone photos of the sticky notes that were arranged to lay out the schedule.
If you can help me fill in any of the missing speaker info, please ping me with the information.
Morning Sessions
|
9:30 |
10:10 |
10:50 |
11:30 |
|
| Room 1 | The Hitchhikers Guide to Web Development at Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Chris |
WordPress Optimization for Shared Host Environments.Paul OFlaherty
|
Into to PhoneGap Matt R. |
5 Things You Should Know About PhotoShop Tammy Hart @TammyHart |
| Room 2 | Basics of SEO Cathy Reisenwitz @CathyReisenwitz |
Non-Technical Intro to Google+ Dave Barger @lalunablanca |
Tips From a PM: 4 reasons why programmers should NEVER talk to clients. Daniel Walters |
Group Discussion on Gamification. |
| Room 3 | Start-ups and Screw-ups – How to Beat the Odds Andra Walker @andreafwalker |
Filming, Editing, and Publishing Great Videos on the iPod and iPhone With No $ Chris Davis @chriscreates |
Convergence Trends and Relevancy of the Modern Still Image Josh Self @joshself |
Brief History of Japanese Occupation of Taiwan Jason Chucong |
Afternoon Sessions
|
1:40 |
2:25 |
3:00 |
3:35 |
|
| Room 1 | Discussion Group – How to Grow the Digital Community Chris Davis @chriscreates |
Cutting the Chord – Ways to get rid of cable and Direct TV Kevin Gatgens @kgatgens |
5 “Guidelines” of Improv Capt. Daniel Walters @BlazeDaDragon |
PCI Compliance – Risks and why it’s so hard to achieve Matt Hellinger |
| Room 2 | Open Source – What I’ve learned: – Git – VIM – JavaScript Tom Brander @dartdog |
Conversation about Mobile Design and UX Brian Cauble @briancauble |
There is NO Tablet Market Matt Hellinger |
Critical Thinking 098 – How to start being less sure and more right M. Alvis |
| Room 3 | Discussion – What is AWESOME?
Jason |
CSS – Advanced and Intro Brian Moon |
HTML Email – Design – Strategy – Code Link: Slide DeckJulia Anderson @Blueys |
Idea Driven Design Giovanni DiFeterici @giodif |
Hi Matt,
I did the WordPress Optimization for Shared Hosts talk (@pauloflaherty). Thanks.
I don’t believe we got to talk at Barcamp, we’ll have to catch up at the next one 🙂
Thanks for putting this up. Nice to have the record. Enjoyed seeing everyone.
I did the cutting the cord presentation and my twitter address @kgatgens
Thanks for posting the schedule
I updated your speaker info on the BarCampBham blog post. Thanks.
Thanks, but I did not actually give any talks this year.