Today I attended BarCampMiami, a free “un-conference” organized by local industry contributors and sponsoring companies, which was also the first BarCamp I’ve attended. This post will be a review ofamy my first impression and some feedback for the organizers, two of whom I personally know, Brian Breslin and Alex de Carvalho.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a BarCamp is, the blurb on Wikipedia explains it best:

An international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.

Venue
The venue for this year’s BarCampMiami was at the Anokha Indian restaurant and the beautiful Mayfair Hotel in the heart of Coconut Grove, Miami. The two locations were located across the street from eachother, offering multiple rooms for the various presentations that went on throughout the day; three rooms at Anokha, two rooms at the Mayfair.

Unfortunately there were two small issues that may have caused some confusion with the BarCampMiami attendees:

First, the original location was set for the Adrienne Arsht Cente in Downtown Miami, where Future of Web Applications Miami 2009 (FOWA) was being held the following day. Many of the attendees that flew in for the event may have set that original location as their base, reserving rooms at a hotel around it without much need for transportation during their stay.

As funding proved difficult for this year’s BarCampMiami (again, a free event that relies on sponsors and other financial contributions), the venue was moved to its final location 2 weeks before the event. Still, Miami has a wide array of public transportation via taxis and light rail, so any logistical issues should have remained as mere minor inconveniences.

Second, Anokha moved their location recently, yet their Google Maps location remained in their old location. The BarCampMiami organizers sent out an e-mail the previous day with the location and address, but of course, in any event where attendees are walking by foot, and with the prevalance of iPhones and integrated Google Maps, there were a number of attendees going to an old location. An organizer later made an announcement on Twitter informing attendees of this and left a sign at the old location.

Communication
The communication was as one would expect from a local tech event: Twitter hash tags #bcm09 and #barcampmiami were used before, during and after the event, where any attendee (or the audience that couldn’t attend but wanted to stay up to date) could post updates and monitor. E-mail newsletters and user groups on Facebook and other social networks also contributed to the high level of communication that made staying updated as effortless as possible. 

Presentations
BarCampMiami featured a lot of presenters that covered a wide array of topics that ranged from web application development to business development and iPhone applications. WordCamp, a WordPress-focused gathering, was also held at BarCampMiami. I attended WordCamp for the most part.

Unfortunately, here’s my one complaint with the format of BarCamp. Because of the multitude of presentations for the event, there’s a very strict, restricted timeframe… only 20 minutes per presentation (with Q+A included) and 10 minutes to give the attendees time to travel between rooms before the following presentation started. Not only did this cause for every presenter to go over their time limit, causing the following presentation to start late, but it also caused for a very concentrated presentation style. Just when the presentation was starting to get to the meat of the topic, it was time to wrap it up.

Also, in reflection of one of the presentations I saw today, I’ve created what I’ve jokingly called “The 11th Commandment” -

Thou shall not compress a 45-minute presentation into 20 minutes.

- In fact, I don’t think any presenter can actually prepare for a 20-minute presentation, including question and answers, and be able to deliver any substantial information that doesn’t appear as anything other than “just rushing through it.” I hope the next BarCampMiami can allow for more time, or have a selection of voted-by-majority presentations.

With that said, there were two stand-out presentations I found interesting:

• BuddyPress
  • BuddyPress is a free framework that enhances an existing WordPress MU installation and adds social features that allows anyone to “roll their own” social network. While it doesn’t aim to replace the need or use of Facebook or MySpace (since it imports social actions performed on those sites), it may prove useful for organizations that are looking for a custom social network without using a heavier community platform.
• WP Framework
  • WP Framework is a bare bones WordPress theme that gives you everything you need to get started on building your next WordPress powered project. WP Framework comes with all the standard WordPress theme logic so you can jump right into building your project specific features.

Wrapping Up
In the end, BarCampMiami was certainly an enjoyable experience that provided me with a good array of information in a single venue and allowed me to reconnect with a few former colleagues and students from The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in addition to finally meeting local Twitter users in person that I’ve only talked to online before now. I’ll definitely attend the next BarCampMiami as not only a visitor but a volunteer/contributor as well.

Special thanks to all of those who made this year’s BarCampMiami possible. For more information, visit BarCampMiami.org and RefreshMiami.org