The last two weekends, I’ve made it to both the SocialDevCamp and BarCamp Chicago. I’ve stayed away from these events in the past, becasue I always assumed they were only for developers – and I haven’t touched code in over 4 years. And they are, but it was an interesting event nonethless and gave me the chance to meet some interesting folks.
SocialDevCamp was focused on social networking technology and busiensses and was less relevant for me but I did get a chance to meet some very friendly guys who had some great ideas on how to get the wireless presentation remote project that Ash and I have been working on manufactured and prototyped. These contacts alone made it worth the trip, as was a funny presentation by Ron May of the May Report on the lack of transparency in venture funding. Ron’s a fixture at these events and didn’t fail to entertain at the BarCamp either.
BarCampChicago was this past weekend and I could only make it for part of the day on sunday. The presentations that I did see were quite interesting including one session on unpublished API for CTABustracker.com. I also got to meet some great folks at this event including one guy who showed me Fotoviewr – a great looking application for viewing the photos which are already stored online at places like Flickr. The application that he has written does a much better job of visualizing your photos and can be embedded onto personal web pages.
I also got to see barcompany’s final presentation on their startup in 24 hour project called moworking – a way to gather mobile workers at a common location like Starbucks. Interesting concept and talented guys – a good combination for any startup. Good luck.
So in summary – good events but definitely wouldn’t spend more than half a day at each of these.
Musings about innovation 