May 28, 2008

BarCamp Northeast in Newcastle, England through the eyes of a new Barcamper

Last weekend the Yahoo Developer Network sponsored the Barcamp NorthEast in Newcastle, England and we sent Cathy Ma as our reporter on the ground. It was Cathy's first BarCamp and here are her impressions:

Thanks to Christian who kindly allowed me to represent him at BarCamp NorthEast, I went all the way to Newcastle's The Arts Works Galleries. Sunny weather, beautiful landscape, a bunch of geeks surrounded by inspirational artworks, plus lots of nice rum - what's more you can ask for? Well, maybe a ginger hair wig so that I might be able to pull off as Chris.

(photo courtesy: sheilaellen)

Barcamp NorthEast was definitely upbeat and energetic and most importantly it felt natural and very grass-root compared to other events. It was intriguing to see it starting with Ian demonstrating his brilliant Diablo skills, which woke us up and got us ready for more at about the right time in the morning.

One hot topic discussed at the BarCamp was if One Laptop per Child was more effective than One Desktop per Child. There is of course no perfect solution to this debate, but it was very interesting to hear the different ideas.

My talk was about Wikipedia's social taxonomy and how trust bridged and bonded the community. I managed to back up my ideas with various case studies which was interesting for the audience as they hadn't had any insight on this level into the workings of Wikipedia before.

One surprising thing about the Newcastle BarCamp was that we had a 'strong' female presence as opposed to other geek events I've been to (instead of 98% men this one was roughly 70%). In fact, we girls kind of led the second half of the day with Tara's session on Mind Hacks, and Emma-led discussion on 'being a female geek'. The two key takeaways from these sessions were:

1. Memory Hack

Best memory aid: try pairing up what you are studying with a special scent! One other mind hack tip entailed one of us hacking the meaning of life, well, probably that solicits a pint instead of a blog post for elaboration. (Seems to - Ed.)

2. Social Linguistic Programming

Sheila blew our mind when she introduced the concept of social linguistic programming, that men were more prone to interrupting women's conversations and women were less likely to do so. Tom Morris in response posted related links on his blog. Definitely check out 'HOWTO engage women in Linux'. Brilliant follow-up, Tom! The day progressed with all male geeks being super respectful and blushed after they interrupted any one of us - the sudden self-consciousness really made the session quirkily fun, but of course they were already nice and cool to begin with.

The second day tailed off with some cool lightning talks (such as how to let photographers take good photo of you) and a session on 'baking banana cake'. Big thanks to Gareth and Alistair for organising this amazing event, running around and bringing us loads of cheese and crackers and cookies...

Cathy Ma
EU Community Manager, Yahoo

Posted at May 28, 2008 8:42 AM

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