Over the weekend, skippy flew in to hang out with me at BarCamp Philly. This was not my first unconference, but it was my first official "BarCamp" experience.

I would like to say up front that the BarCamp Philly organizers did a great job at building this event. Of the many free events I've attended over the past few years, this one was the best run of its style. Kudos to them and thanks for the wonderful effort. I want to spend a little time in this post going over not just what I think they did well, but also where I think all events of this type could stand to improve, either by following their example or doing just a little bit more.

Event Promotion

Interestingly, I think this may be the hardest one for me to judge because I'm not a promoter and I've got enough of a tap on our local community that I hear about events easily in advance of them happening. So instead of trying to see how they got people to attend, let's talk about something slightly askew.

It's long been my belief that the people that would benefit most from the BarCamp content are people who would never attend. For example, in the suburbs there are many development groups using only Microsoft products, filled with (ok, a bit pejorative) wage slaves. Wouldn't it be great to take some of the lessons learned from the largely freelance world back to those jobs? Wouldn't it be great if those developers could run sessions introducing the skills and methods they rely on in their daily work?

I can't imagine that these groups are particularly tuned in to the same scene that announces things like BarCamp. Nor do I think that hearing the name "BarCamp" would most of them even sit up and take notice. I don't know what kind of promotional effort, if any, took place to get those folks - and others in unrelated disciplines who would benefit from a foundation in our skills - into the BarCamp, so I can't really rate this category accurately. Let's just give it an average 2 out of 3 points.

Registration

Registration is something often flubbed at these unconferences. I'm not sure why campers think that a wiki might be enough, but when your attendence level starts to get above a certain number, you need more formal registration to allocate space. BarCamp Philly managed to accomplish this well.

Still, I'm not pleased by Eventbrite. It bothers me that I have to go through all of the paces to "buy" a "ticket" that "costs" $0. Makes no sense. I realize that it's easy and (I hope) free, but it's a little odd, don't you think? Plus it doesn't match the branding of the site. The whole experience is a little less than seamless, especially if you want to draw in those users I mentioned, who wouldn't normally come to something with "bar" or "camp" in the name.

Perhaps most of the "blame" here rests on Eventbrite. A no-cost (for attendees), branded version of their product would be an improvement.

BarCamp Philly gets 2 out of 3 points for solving the problem, but not the full 3 points for removing all of the "confusion".

Lead-In

Summarizing what is going to happen at the event is a hard thing to do for an event where you don't even know the answer before it happens. But when you take this into account, this is one of the areas where BarCamp Philly completely kicked butt.

The web site for the event (WordPress? Ok, I won't dock points for that, but hey...) was utterly awesome. Profiles of attendees, update announcements, requests for ideas... It was not only what all of these other events should have done, it was the prime example of what every event should do in the future.

My only comment for improvement would be to move the back-channel communication (the stuff in the google group) out to where its integrated with the site, so that attendees can easily see the planning process and become involved if they chose to. That's just a feed-as-content plugin away.

So for the Lead-In, BarCamp Philly gets the full 3 score for this category.

Venue

BarCamp Philly was presented at the University of the Arts, 211 Broad Street in Philadelphia. The conference convened in classrooms on several floors.

At first I thought it was kind of strange to choose a location where attendees would need to change floors to hit all of the sessions. Having experienced it, this was not an issue. Plenty of elevators, (what, like six?) and stairs made this no trouble.

I've had issues previously with class buildings being used in a conference, especially when regular classes were in session in other rooms at the same time. With the clearly marked locations of all of the active session rooms, this was not an issue at all.

The venue scores BarCamp Philly the full 3 points for this category.

Social Network Usage

Here's another category in which every event I've attended has utterly failed. During the event, how hard is it to let attendees know of basic information about the event via our traditional social media tools, like Twitter? Apparently, it's super-hard. But not for BarCamp Philly organizers.

I think this is one space that Philly just "gets". The event schedule was online and updated all day. It had an iPhone interface. The Twitter feed for the event was chock full of actually useful stuff, not just pointless babble that had often filled that channel in other conferences.

For this category, BarCamp Philly gets full marks, 3 out of 3.

Sessions

Content is king, right? I was a little worried at the beginning of the day. The schedule wasn't filling out very fast. Fortunately, by the end of the day, most if not all of the 70 slots for sessions were filled.

I'm sure that not all of the sessions were fully attended. But one of the things that I had discussed in a session I did attend was that sometimes the most valuable sessions can be the ones where it's just you and one, two, or three other people. The session I attended on shell commands and tips only had 6 or so people, but it was chock full of exactly the kind of information I went to the session to get. It's like looking for the perfect reference book and finding it.

I was so happy that I did not run into the overabundance of WordPress, Twitter, SEO, and "Monetize your Blog" sessions. As a matter of fact, the only session I attended that hit any of those topics was the last, which was my most disappointing sessions. I didn't get clear answers to the questions I asked, and I didn't leave the session believing that the prescribed formula for success would do anything for anyone who didn't already have that million-dollar initial idea.

My favorite session of the day was the discussion session on education; specifically, what topics should be taught in a college course on web development so that graduates are employable. There were 20 people in the room, and only two people in the corner didn't contribute significantly (at all) to the conversation. Great session.

My own session on using open source licenses was reasonably attended (although, most of them were there because they knew me - I'd like to think they were interested in the material), and based on comments from a couple of the attendees I didn't expect, I think it was well-received. At least, I conveyed the specific points I wanted to make known, and was able to change the minds of the people who attended who I knew had incorrect impressions on how these license work.

Still, with 70 session slots, 10 per hour, two timeslots had nothing for me, and there were several during my own session's time slot that I would have liked to attend. I'm sure that this is not the fault of the organizers, but in terms of my experience at BarCamp, I still have to give this category a 2 out of 3. 2 is good, just not excellent.

Media Coverage

Hmm. What happened here? There were 70 sessions and no central place for slides? Did anyone coordinate to obtain those things from session leaders? No video recorded in sessions?

I grant you, there are a ton of photos on Flickr, but that's not the meat of the event. While I agree with anyone who proposes that being at the event is really the value, and that recorded sessions are lifeless and often less than 10% as valuable as actually being there, sometimes it's all you've got. So where is the audio? Where is the video?

Oops. 1 point.

Afterparty

3 points. Philly can throw down.

Lest you think that the party afterward is less important than the actual event, this is finally where you get to decompress with people, strengthen those real connections, and even (if you're a real nerd) talk about what you learned at the camp. While playing Rock Band and drinking free beer.

Post-Conference Upkeep

Time hasn't passed enough to truly evaluate this, but I do see some back-channel things going on talking about more events. I'm not sure we need more events, but keeping in personal touch with the contacts gained at BarCamp would be a good thing.

I've always thought that a big failure of events like these is that there's no mechanical means to track attendee participation, or even to see who else was in a session with you, in case you missed their name or didn't grab a business card, or simply wanted to see what someone else wrote on their blog about a session you missed.

How to Improve the Camp

My last session was one where we talked about what we'd like to see in another BarCamp. Odd that none of the organizers picked up on this, or perhaps there was a better-attended identical sessions at the same time - I'm not sure.

Part of the issue, I think, is that the format is pretty well traveled. It's timed sessions. It's notecards on a tack board. It's impromptu session leaders. No sponsor mentions. No follow-up group session. No forced mixers. And in this case, although many people ate at the same location, nothing was planned to coincide with food.

A lot of the good ideas we had in the session had to do with changing the format altogether. Sometimes we found that the really good sessions could probably last a lot longer than an hour. And the not-great or less feature rich sessions could last less time.

As I said before, "BarCamp" is a name particularly tied to geek culture. It's not very friendly to outside groups, and it's those outside groups we need to bring in to keep our community from being a gigantic echo chamber. Thanks to everyone who wasn't in the "scene" for coming to the event, by the way.

One really great idea was to use the online tools to create tag clouds that represented the "mood" of a session. So if people are talking about a topic, people in the room would (ugh) "Tweet" that topic. An ongoing system would track those terms and let other attendees know the kind of discussions that were going on other sessions. That way, you could better focus your time. I think a lot of the reason that I wouldn't leave a bad session is because I already chose it as the best for that slot, and didn't have any clue what other session might be good. Even just a live ++/-- system for voting on sessions in progress would be great for finding something cool to sit in.

There were a bunch of other good ideas, probably enough to fill out a whole post. It's probably something I'll do after I've let this experience wear itself in a bit. I've still got DrupalCamp to consider this month.

I'm glad that this event happened in Philly. We've gone too long without a major, all-genre event like this. We should definitely have one once a year. That's plenty in frequency.

Once again, congrats to the BarCamp organizing team and all the volunteers for offering a great event this past weekend. I'm already looking forward to being part of next year's event.

I really want to post my impressions of both BlogOrlando and Ohio LinuxFest, but they're taking a long time to concoct, primarily because there was so much that happened. So for now, I would like to pose a question to all the locals and see if anyone's got some good recommendations for me.

This weekend, three of my wife's sisters and their husbands (plus one 1-year-old nephew of mine) are coming to stay for the weekend. This leads to the inevitable question: What will we do to entertain them?

Everyone coming is from out of town, at least 200 miles away, so they are not familiar with the area. It would be nice to take them to places that they would not normally see around home, to maybe give them a sense of the greatness that we experience living around here every day. There are a few nice hyperlocal spots.

We live very near to Marsh Creek State Park, where you can go canoeing/sailing/paddle-boating, but I'm not sure if that's open this time of year, and I'm pretty sure we've taken all of them there once already. We also have taken them on trips to the Philadelphia Zoo and the Franklin Institute, which I don't mind as a return trip, but it would be nice to take this group to somewhere completely new. Longwood Gardens is nearby, but I've had my fill of flowers, really. I think it would be fun to show them a little bit of local life, or even what the city has to offer, but I'm not sure what, specifically.

What I would like to do is have a nice, prepared list of year-round or seasonal activities that happen in this area, and then I can let them pick what they want to do. Of course, I would remove from that list (assuming it's long enough, which I do assume) anything I didn't really want to do.

It would also be neat to have some activities we could do as separate groups. For example, something I had thought about doing was taking the husbands out to some bars in the city, and maybe seeing the city sights at night. That would give the girls some time on their own to do whatever it is that sisters do when they gather in the October night. Yes, I imagine cauldrons, too.

So, there's the question. What do we do? Have any suggestions for the eight of us, plus our three kids? Know of any sites with such a list of "must-see Philly attractions for weekend visitors?"

I've taken the train only a on a few occasions. I realize that this is strange to some more urban denizens, but out the suburbs the train only really seems to go into the city or away into the hinterlands. Even at that, this week holds some landmarks for me in riding the train.

My prior trips included a jaunt to New York City. This trip consisted of getting on an Amtrak train in Downingtown, and riding it the entire way to Penn Station in New York. I didn't have to transfer, and there was only one stop. No mess at all; hardly a train experience.

I later traveled via train to the airport when I left for Paris. This required one transfer at 30th Street Station in Philly, which was only a bit of a challenge, having never switched trains en rout somewhere before. Paris also yielded many metro transfers, which didn't phase me at the time, but seemed like something different. The interesting bit being that I did not use a car to get anywhere for that entire trip.

Yesterday, I took the train into Philly to be in Philly for the first time ever. It was an interesting experience. Planning the times to catch the right train, figuring out the fares -- all challenging in an odd, unfamiliar way. It's like learning how to get somewhere in a car after you first learn how to drive. This is not something that you should feel at my age, I think.

Then, upon realizing that my stop wasn't exactly near the place I was going, I figured out today how to use the Philly subway to get there and back. The Philly subway is the cruddiest I've ever been on. Still, I managed.

I can't say yet whether I prefer the train. It takes the same amount of travel time, and depending where you go, costs about the same. The convenience of the car for going when you want to can't be beat, and waiting in the parking lot for everyone else to file out in front of you is a drag. But not having to actually drive is a pretty nice bonus.

It's liberating to know - and I always assumed I could, but to actually do it is another thing - that I can move in and around the city now via train, whereas I was always driving before. It's really nice to know the option is open.

A new front in the junk mail war has opened.

I struggle from day to day trying to keep loose trash out of my yard. It's not as bad in the new house as in the old, where the wind swept all of the trash into our lawn to roost, but the other yards in our neighborhood are so immaculate that one piece of rubbish in our lawn looks like a bright red boil on the face of a supermodel. That is why I am a bit concerned about this new Bulletin epidemic.

For a reason I don't know, a small Philadelphia newspaper has started delivering issues to my house and leaving them on my driveway and in my grass. They typically deliver the thing even in the rain, and the slight plastic wrapper that they're ensconced in doesn't do the job of keeping the moisture out, ruining the issue anyway. So I frequently get this soggy mess in my lawn or driveway that I don't even realize is there until half my neighbors drive past it on their way to work. Besides the quality of the materials, there are a couple of odd things about the paper delivery itself.

First, I don't recall having ordered this paper. Or any paper for that matter. I do not read the newspaper. I used to deliver newspapers when I was a kid, and the memory of it has turned me off of the whole thing. The smell of the ink and paper (especially when wet) isn't fond for me.

Second, the paper actually has a price listed on it. 25 cents per issue. If I'm not paying for it, then why are they delivering it to me? To boost their circulation numbers? How did they get my address? And why aren't any of my neighbors getting it? (Or perhaps they're more diligent in removing the paper immediately from their lawns, which is entirely probable.)

Third, I live in the suburbs. The Bulletin is a city paper. I don't like newspaper news, generally because they don't cover the topics I want to know about with the depth that I would like (hence my use of the internet, as with all things, for obtaining news). But this is a city paper, so it's even more targeted at Philadelphia news. I don't have the slightest care about who is mayor in Philadelphia. I'm sure it affects me somehow, but I can't see the direct effect, and I have many other things I would rather worry about.

So where is this thing coming from?

I've been on hold waiting for their subscription department the entire time I've been writing this post, hoping to tell someone to stop delivering this junk to my house and littering my lawn. No answer so far. I guess I'm going to have to get up early to catch the delivery person and tell them off.