13th April 2010
Having been to a few of the 'big' conferences and just returned from SXSW it was quite refreshing to attend a more small scale, local affair. With other barcamp's often being either far away or both far away and starting too soon after work BarCamp Bournemouth made it easy, running over a weekend and being so close!
I must of course say congratulations to the organisers for putting in the effort to provide a free social/conference for up to 100 attendees. No small feat, including organising the venue plus sponsorship for two free meals.
In terms of comparison I would suggest that the small scale nature of the event made it much more of a 'geek social' than a free conference. Which made it a heck of a lot more fun but perhaps less about learning.
I made it to a number of talks including a run through of scala (with some very similar features to .net), a designers do better rant from Rich Quick, partook in a .NET MVC discussion, a number of discussions surrounding the Digital Economy Bill, and an intro to British Sign Language (from Lalita D'Cruze). And yes, I can now sign my name :-)
Off the back of this I looked into what other smallscale events are run in my area:
So will show up to those in due course. I also learnt to play Polarity and Werewolf!
Having not made the trip down to Bournemouth for re:develop 1 or 2 it was great to be in attendance for it's third incarnation.
Making games over a weekend... competitively... and we chose a dead technology... why the hell not!
Hack Days are awesome. How could they not be? you get to make stuff with like minded people with no bosses, no client deadlines, no point but the love of it.
It's been a while since I posted. I'd like to say that's because a lot's been going on. In reality I got lazy and now I just happen to have something to write about that can make it sound like a lot has been going on.