Barcamp Atlanta Followup

Following Barcamp I slept 15 hours (after having been up for over 30!!) and then jumped straight to working on projects, and I haven't yet had a chance to post a followup until tonight!

My overall impression is that this is exactly the type of event we need to see more of in Atlanta! This was a very different group from what I've seen at past events focused on social media in Atlanta where there's traditionally been more of a business community presence. (It's Atlanta. We do things a bit differently here.) This event was totally geek, and seemed to draw from diverse range of interests and expertise! We definitely need more of this. We need more of this, and often.

Among the highlights (if anyone knows the names of people I mention in these bullet points, let me know so I can link them!):

• Dinner on the top of the ATDC parking deck. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous, especially with how the sunlight reflected off of nearby skyscrapers in downtown.
  
• Someone brought an XO Laptop (one laptop per child project laptop). As far as I'm concerned, no Barcamp is complete without one!
• Talks on space travel, venture capital, and the energy politics. All by Stephen Fleming! He's one smart dude, and reminds me of some of my favorite people in places like Boston. ;)
  
• Playing a board game and finally giving up because no one could harvest enough resources to build enough buildings to get enough points to build a society to end the game.
• Lots of discussions about the Facebook platform.
• Creating ad-hoc presentations/discussions with people who's names I hadn't even learned yet.
• Blow darts!
• Wiimote music!! This was seriously awesome! (Srsly, If anyone knows this guys contact info, let me know.)
• Staying up till odd hours of the morning with smart people talking about gis technology, politics, linux, and art!
• Dave Coustan had the absolute coolest Google Reader shirt! I wants it. It will be mine one way or another.

My sessions went great. The first was the discussion on the open social graph/social network portability that Toby Ho and I hacked together the night before. A number of people joined us, and I thought there was some good discussion.

My second session was the one I sensationalistically entited "The Future of Democracy: Social Software, Law, Gaming, UI design, and You." Unfortunately, half an hour isn't enough time to make these connections and then shift to discussion and Q&A. By the time I got to stopping point, the time was up! The feedback afterwards was very positive though, and I can't wait until I work out my thoughts and examples enough to actually give a more formal presentation! David Cohen blogged a great summary of my session.

The third session was one on coworking attended by Sam Shenkman-Moore and... myself. Both of us are interested in coworking, know a bunch of people who are also interested in coworking, and so we talked about the steps to creating a coworking community. And I may have a plan. Stay tuned for that.

What would I like to see at the next BarCamp? Definitely more time per session. More freedom for guided discussion that only a schedule stickler can provide. Not necessarily someone herding people to sessions, but at least making people aware of when sessions start and stop and what's going on. I paradoxically found the chaos a little restrictive. Lastly, more closure at the end. That's how I like my storybooks, and this was definitely a geek story book weekend!

Kudos to Jeff Haynie and everyone else who had a hand in organizing the event and making it the wonderful experience it was. And because I haven't mentioned them in this post yet, here's a shoutout to Michael Mealing, Lance Weatherby, Jesse Newland, Chris Martin, Michael Ivey, Selah Abrams, and Brian Pitts!