Natalie Downe

I now have suitably recovered from This weekends frivolities at BarCamp, brilliant conference complete with all the bits needed to make it work well … interesting people, some fun and informative talks, a bazaar late night card game, magic tricks and even lots of lovely free food and beer.

One of the highlights for me were watching Simon speak ‘off the cuff’ on Open ID, possibly the least preparation I have seen him do, but at the same time a subject he feels so passionately about that it really came across. After the talk, others in the audience looked really fired up and inspired about the potentials for Open ID.

There were a lot of really good speakers this weekend actually, it was amazing to watch. Both on a technical level because the talks were really good and informative, as well as being inspirational. The free food was nice, masses and masses of it! but I don’t think anyone was complaining. The barcamp formula worked well I think, possibly one two many rooms, I felt like I missed a lot of interesting talks, even so, as everyone was encouraged to give a talk or chair a discussion the emphasis was more on “so what are you talking about” rather than “are you giving a talk”. This encouraged information sharing and made it slightly less intimidating to stand up on stage.

I must find a way to overcome stage fright though, I chaired a discussion on Usability experiences and I still managed to mess it up, struggling to form sentences and remember to breath. I really hope what ‘they’ say is true, that its never as bad as it seams because you are your own worse critic, the fact it was discussion took the pressure off, and it could have been a lot worse. Still, there must be a way to learn not to be embarrassed talking to groups of people without committing professional suicide in the process, just knowing the subject matter doesn’t seam to be enough.

Some other really good talks that I saw (bearing in mind I missed some good ones) include Andy Budd’s talk on User Centered Design, and Matthew Westcott’s on 3D graphics in Javascript, I was also exceedingly impressed by Paul’s Magic tricks! Another highlight … other than werewolf naturally! …was the del.icio.us Pecha Kucha session, 20 slides 20 seconds per slide only this time your slides are your del.ico.us stream which you are not allowed to look at in advance, great fun!