Barcamp Nashville

So a quick rundown from my experience....

I showed up to barcamp at the exit/in a little before 1 on Saturday and stayed for the rest of the day. Overall it was a good time. The speakers were mostly pretty good or entertaining, though there wasn't much depth. I became aware of the goings-on at Cafe Coco a little too late to join in, but word on the street was that discussions had been more in-depth over there.

I guess the downers for the day were a couple of the speakers that seemed to be doing nothing but self-promotion. I guess that is ok, but people were visibly bored as there was nothing new or interesting being presented. One of the key-note speakers, Penelope Trunk, kinda rubbed me the wrong way with her idealistic musings about the way things are now in a work world (a work world which she doesn't really participate in, just writes as an authority on). She didn't present anything new, and I certainly didn't disagree with everything she said at all, in fact I agreed with most of it to some degree, but I have a difficult time seeing eye-to-eye with someone who presents such a black and white perspective. She seemed to mostly be regurgitating what Tom Peters has been preaching for quite a few years now. I don't mean to dog on Penelope, but her speech is one of the most fresh in my mind. From that perspective, she was probably the most effective speaker.

The best parts of the day were the opportunity to meet so many people and the chance to learn about what other people are doing around town. There are come cool companies around town doing some cool things with technology and the web. There are also some great people that I hope to connect with more in the future. The sponsors were very generous with food, drinks, and cool stuff to take home, and the organizers did a stellar job of putting it together and keeping it rolling. They should be super proud of how things turned out.