Do you know what a Barcamp is? If not, then read this wikipedia article.
Now you’re informed. Now you know that Barcamp is an unconference, or a user-driven meeting where the agenda is created by the participants in real time. The best thing about Barcamp is that anyone, anywhere can take on the responsibility of hosting a Barcamp in their own city. (Note that this is not an easy task, and the people that pull off such a labor of love for their community are incredible.) We’re fortunate that the NOLAtech community has talented people like Matthew Tritico, who is, among other things, a selfless community organizer and is probably cringing at the thought of being listed as “the guy” that makes BarcampNOLA a reality. Matt, of course, has an incredible team that backs him, blazes trails for him, and overall ensures that BarcampNOLA happens.
If you didn’t attend BarcampNOLA6 then you might not know about Day 2’s Hack-A-Thon to build a Twitter-powered web property that shows off New Orleans in all of its glory. Four elite teams of designers, developers, and strategists came together to create some very impressive code, especially when you consider it was done basically in one afternoon. I was fortunate enough to be part of the 2nd place team, Colors of New Orleans, which visualizes the conversations happening on Twitter about our most-valued cultural treasures in New Orleans, but does it in a way that encourages engagement between all of these unique bodies by elegantly “mashing” them up into a beautifully colored mosaic of tweets.
The takeaway from BarcampNOLA6 can best be summed up by the attendees that filled out our BarcampNOLA6 Reflections Form. If you attended but haven’t filled out the form, you can do it here and your answers will show up below.