Today I went to the first edition of BarCamp FCT, not actually the first BarCamp to ever take place in Portuguese soil since there were already two promoted by WeBreakStuff in Coimbra.
Having participated in the last year's BarCamp and realized that the organization of this one was not quite the same, nor the previous seemed to be able to attend I was a bit skeptical about what would this turn out to be.
Truth is, some of my predictions turned out to be true, some don't.
First, I have to say, Monte Da Caparica doesn't loose to Coimbra, both places are equally calm and beautiful, so there's plenty of "BarCamp tranquility and informal feeling" in the air, which is crucial but doesn't make the thing by itself. So what could be better was not the place nor the people attending, it was the plan, somehow with equally fault being shared by the organization and the "pseudo-participants".
Fact is, there were 78 people registered in the wiki, and I hardly doubt the 50-people mark was ever broke. So, at the beginning, we can excuse the organization for supposing that people would eventually come. So the presentations started with the people attending (perhaps 30), which in my opinion was a mistake. A simple informal talk outside for knowing each other could have been really beneficial to break the ice, which somehow was only achieved after-lunch with HalfBaked.
The presentations in the morning went well with FireHOL, which could have been done latter, swapped by the informal talk I just referred above, and Techniques for giving presentations, which I, as Vítor Domingos did, thought went a bit longer than it should be.
So, lunch, excellent, fast, good food are the best words to describe it. The method used for lunch (like a big coffee break) made possible discussions that otherwise wouldn't happen due to the division of people for tables (something I noticed in Coimbra).
Then we did HalfBaked which is allways so much fun anywhere it is done, with some really cool (and unexpected) ideas coming out of two apparent non-sensical words. Ok, most of them were also non-sense ideas, but in the middle of it there is always the feasible one that makes you think.
After, Ignite was fine too, it's a great way to have more diversity in the presentations which otherwise wouldn't be possible - there aren't much persons with 45 minutes presentations to give. Also, 7 minutes talks are really focusing ones, there is no time to loose attention. What I criticize a bit is our portuguese sense of having to copy at the smallest detail the rules to this kind of activities from other countries. In there it might work, but in Portugal I think it's a bit stupid having the 15 seconds per slide thing. If the objective is fast presentations make it like that, the slide time is irrelevant, it would still be fast by having just a global time limit, like 7 minutes or so.
Well, Ignite took it till the end, in part thanks to Wiizi (I think there was too much time spent in the conversation that surged after the Entrepreneurship talk, but some might have learnt with it, I don't know).
In a nutshell, this blog post may seem a little too critic but it was intentional because I had a great day and will be certainly there next year, the organization just needs to ear the feedback and improve it, which I'm sure they certainly will. Also, I have to say that I based all the post in my experience in BarCamp 07, which is not really fair, since it's a two-day event.
My thanks to all involved.
P.S.: it was great to discover the guy behind MenuIST twitter bot.
Having participated in the last year's BarCamp and realized that the organization of this one was not quite the same, nor the previous seemed to be able to attend I was a bit skeptical about what would this turn out to be.
Truth is, some of my predictions turned out to be true, some don't.
First, I have to say, Monte Da Caparica doesn't loose to Coimbra, both places are equally calm and beautiful, so there's plenty of "BarCamp tranquility and informal feeling" in the air, which is crucial but doesn't make the thing by itself. So what could be better was not the place nor the people attending, it was the plan, somehow with equally fault being shared by the organization and the "pseudo-participants".
Fact is, there were 78 people registered in the wiki, and I hardly doubt the 50-people mark was ever broke. So, at the beginning, we can excuse the organization for supposing that people would eventually come. So the presentations started with the people attending (perhaps 30), which in my opinion was a mistake. A simple informal talk outside for knowing each other could have been really beneficial to break the ice, which somehow was only achieved after-lunch with HalfBaked.
The presentations in the morning went well with FireHOL, which could have been done latter, swapped by the informal talk I just referred above, and Techniques for giving presentations, which I, as Vítor Domingos did, thought went a bit longer than it should be.
So, lunch, excellent, fast, good food are the best words to describe it. The method used for lunch (like a big coffee break) made possible discussions that otherwise wouldn't happen due to the division of people for tables (something I noticed in Coimbra).
Then we did HalfBaked which is allways so much fun anywhere it is done, with some really cool (and unexpected) ideas coming out of two apparent non-sensical words. Ok, most of them were also non-sense ideas, but in the middle of it there is always the feasible one that makes you think.
After, Ignite was fine too, it's a great way to have more diversity in the presentations which otherwise wouldn't be possible - there aren't much persons with 45 minutes presentations to give. Also, 7 minutes talks are really focusing ones, there is no time to loose attention. What I criticize a bit is our portuguese sense of having to copy at the smallest detail the rules to this kind of activities from other countries. In there it might work, but in Portugal I think it's a bit stupid having the 15 seconds per slide thing. If the objective is fast presentations make it like that, the slide time is irrelevant, it would still be fast by having just a global time limit, like 7 minutes or so.
Well, Ignite took it till the end, in part thanks to Wiizi (I think there was too much time spent in the conversation that surged after the Entrepreneurship talk, but some might have learnt with it, I don't know).
In a nutshell, this blog post may seem a little too critic but it was intentional because I had a great day and will be certainly there next year, the organization just needs to ear the feedback and improve it, which I'm sure they certainly will. Also, I have to say that I based all the post in my experience in BarCamp 07, which is not really fair, since it's a two-day event.
My thanks to all involved.
P.S.: it was great to discover the guy behind MenuIST twitter bot.