This was my first BarCamp so I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I dove in and hosted a session, which I wrote about on the GRD Blog.  This post will be about the overall experience and the sessions I attended.

My son tagged along for the morning and had a good time, everyone was incredibly nice to him, and people that I knew from Twitter and other means, all reached out and said hi to him, which he thought was cool. 

I tip my hat to Ben from Refactr and everyone else who put this together, including the sponsors.  Things went very smoothly, the coffee and food were plentiful first thing in the morning.  I ran into @compujeramey and @rickmahn early in the day, as well as John Roberts from New Counsel, my terrific lawyer for my other company, TexoDev. 

The event was held at Coffman Union at the U of M.  The space worked well, and I appreciate the use of it.  However, I will say that the biggest disappointment was the spotty wifi and lousy projectors.  I’m not saying that to be a complainer but rather, if anyone from U of M sees this, to take this to heart.  If you want to attract talented people either for college or to work with you in partnerships later, certain things are considered table stakes, and 20-somethings are not thrilled about projectors that only show 800×600, or that have to pay for wifi, and even after that have spotty coverage.

Okay, I got that out of the way.  Ben did a very brief kickoff focused on logistics, after that I had from 9am to 6pm to attend whatever sessions I wanted…

- Ben talked at the 9am session I went to about small teams and their successes.  He had a great presentation, and there was good dialogue amongst the audience
- I attended the somewhat impromptu Twitter session put on by @rickmahn and @pfhyper and found it to be a lively session and though I’ve been on Twitter since last summer, still find myself learning things when groups like this get together
- I attended the Beyond Twitter session that @dydimustk sprung up, which again, was lively and a lot of fun
- Jeramey Jannene gave a great talk on Blogging for Benjamins, where he gave a ton of great tips for people looking to make some money on their blogging.  He had a great crowd that asked questions and chimed in, and I think everyone got quite a bit of value out of the session.
- the last session of the day for me was the session on e-democracy…the guys who put this site together did an amazing job last year when the 35w bridge went down, and I wanted to hear them talk about the site

Afterwards there was a social with free beer which is always nice.  Like most things that I attend like this nowadays, the value isn’t so much in meeting new friends, re-connecting with old ones, and sharing information across a spectrum of personalities.  I HIGHLY recommend the MinneBar conference for anyone in the development community, interactive marketing, design, multimedia etc.

I arrived early to get some work done next door at Caribou Coffee (we met at Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis).  While working I had Twitterific up and saw Stephanie tweet that she had arrived early and was hanging out outside.  I have to tell you, there is something really fun about walking somewhere and seeing people whom you recognize via their twitter profiles (one more lesson on using a real picture).

We headed in to Brit’s and soon we had seven people upstairs.  Over the course of the evening we probably had 15 people there, as Kristi said, some old, some new.   I think I was the oldest by age (out of Tom, Stephanie and I, I was the only one who didn’t get carded), but as new as anyone in terms of attendance.

Garrick twittered that we strayed off topic completely but I prefer to think that we had micro-discussions about the user experience and usability, rather than a round-robin big group.  Both have their merits but it was a little loud to have 15 people in a large circle.  I had some great discussions with Kristi, Karen, Garrick, Stephanie, Laurie, Tom, and others over the course of the night, telling stories of our experiences on projects, Laurie’s love of MS Access, or how we all perceive where our niches fit in UEX design.  But mainly, I met a lot of really nice people who had interesting stuff to say.

I have to say,  it’s only been the last couple months that I’ve made a real strong effort to get involved in the Twin Cities developer/user experience community, and it has been terrific.  As someone who works from home, I enjoy the camaraderie of meeting up with others in my profession.  And everyone is very giving in terms of openness and willingness to discuss ideas or opportunities.

I’m looking forward to the next get-together with this crew.  If you are on the fence about these meet-ups, give them a try.  Worst case, you have an evening where you have some drinks, meet some people, and get harassed into trying Twitter.

See some of you at the Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast part deux next Friday.