Barcamp Ottawa Was a Roaring Success
Barcamp Ottawa wrapped up yesterday, with a lot of smiles and a what looked like a unanimous vote to do it again. Cool!
We had 90 people turn out, exceeding even our own expectations. There were probably a dozen folks from out of town, including several groups who drove up from Toronto. There was also a broad range of ages, including a couple of enthusiastic grade 8 students from Glashan Elementary in the Glebe. We had press from CTV, the Ottawa Citizen, and National Capital Scan. Most importantly, though, we had a solid agenda of 20 or so sessions, with content ranging from legal issues surrounding open source programming, to product demos, blogging, AJAX, and more.
The Barcamp Ottawa Wiki has a number of write-ups of various sessions.
In addition, you can find other blog posts about Barcamp Ottawa by searching Technorati with the tag Barcamp Ottawa. You can also find photos from the event on Flickr, tagged BarCampOttawa. There area also 30 blog entries to be found on Google using the search term Barcamp Ottawa.
At the end of the day yesterday, I promised to set up a Google Group for BarCamp Ottawa discussions. It’s called BarCamp Ottawa, and it’s open to any and all to join. The URL is http://groups.google.ca/group/BarCamp-Ottawa. I also offered to host Ottawa’s first DemoCamp at iotum’s office. Stay tuned for the date.
Many thanks to all our sponsors: Gowlings, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Macadamian, Royal Bank, bitheads, iotum, devshop, jaded pixel, KAYVIUM, InGenius, wendykennedy.com, inmedia, and Axionic. Without your generous support, this event wouldn’t have been possible.
Lastly, I want to say thanks to the folks who helped organize the event. Late in November last year, I went to the Torcamp event organized by David Crow. I was completely taken by the event, and blogged about it. Peter Childs contacted me shortly after, and wanted to help organize an event in Ottawa. A couple months later I had coffee with Ross McLeod, who was also enthusiastic. Shortly after that, David Keys and Craig Fitzpatrick expressed interest in helping out too. Although I expressed interest in seeing an event in Ottawa, and have been the most visible promoter of the idea, it was really Peter, Ross, David and Craig who made it happen. Thank you!
Stay tuned! We’re going to have more events like this.
