BarCamp Philly 2 + BeerCamp

About the time of my last post here, I had this gchat convo with Roz Duffy:

stellarfluff: kelani12:38 PM me: wuzzup?stellarfluff: are you still into barcamp this year or you all fired up on other projects?

That’s all it took to get a game-changing weekend’s culmination of awesomeness rolling for me.  The inaugural BarCamp Philly completely shifted my perception of the power of community, especially the one growing here in Philadelphia.  I didn’t hesitate for a second to get involved when Roz and JP approached me towards the end of the summer.  Working with them last year was a blast, and illuminated for me where my skills are strong(or not), where I work well on a team, and how damn good it feels to facilitate community-driven innovation.

This year was a new experience for me, as I played a more active role in bring together a community of HomeBrewers through BeerCamp.

The combination of my beer-tastic partner-in-crime @howdiz and the city’s favorite beer drinkers, Dave and Johnny of TGOB made it easy to reach a loosely connected group of people who brew beer.   By doing what we do best – drinking great beer with great people – we were able to rally enough excitement around the event to get people to commit to brewing and bringing their beer to IndyHall – donating their time and money – to make it happen.

I love that my efforts could facilitate sharing of a passion that is strong enough to elicit that level of involvement.  Since most of the homebrewer connections came out of the tech/co-working community, it was relatively natural to organize brewers digitally.  A key to the event’s success, for sure.  I find this interesting.

The connections the brewers made that night as they served their beer to an ecstatic SOLD OUT crowd eager to taste their handy-work were lasting.  In the few weeks since the event, the group has voiced new ideas for an improved event, eagerness for a follow-up happy hour, and a chance to taste each other’s homegrown brews again soon.

BeerCamp’s raging success set the tone for the next day in more ways than one, with some people dubbing this year’s BarCamp ‘Hangover Camp’.

My head was whirling a mile a minute, and the 7am-10am set-up & schedule was the fastest three hours of my life.  Setup was a breeze with the droves of awesome volunteers that came to lend a hand, powered by the always-awesomesauce Kara LaFleur. The bagel and coffee deliveries came right on time, some amazing spreads started coming together.

The space that Uarts donated for this year’s event was magnificent. The lobby spaced work out extremely well for registration.  The registration table setup was nothing short of spectacular in the beautiful marble lobby of the 16th floor of the Terra Building. We used a shared Google Spreadsheet to check-in attendees, which allowed multiple people to edit simultaneously, and gave us a good quick way to get everyone checked off the list and on to t-shirts and lanyards.

As a critical mass of people came together, the Black Box was all a buzz.  The schedule board filled-up nicely, the view was great, there was comfortable seating for over 100 people, and everyone seemed to be in good spirits as organic collaboration, mingling and noming started off the day.

At 10am we herded everyone into the main auditorium on the 17th floor for a welcome.  I had a shit-eating grin all over my face as I watched the crowd come together.  It was truly incredible seeing our efforts pay-off in the form of so many eager knowledge-sharers from all over Philadelphia (and from outside the city too!)  I was humbled and elated and a million other emotions as BarCamp Philly 2 was officially underway.

Image by Kevin Monko http://monkophoto.com/

Room for Improvement

We were a bit disorganized in our welcome, I suppose we simply hadn’t processed the sheer growth from our humble beginnings last year which started with a quick hello as the day began.  The numbers this year required a bit more info sharing – some quick ‘hand raise’ polls showed that a HUGE amount of attendees had never been to a BarCamp, and so needed some guidance about what to expect throughout the day.

We also had a greater number of sponsors to thank, volunteers to shout-out, and things to mention to make sure everyone got the most out of their experience this year.  This is one of the things i’d like to focus on improving next year.  With a more cohesive welcome we can get logistics out of the way faster, in a more entertaining way, and also focus on helping to really set the tone of collaboration, sharing, and learning that the event is all about.

As the day progressed I was a bit of a scattered mess – this is another thing I am determined to do better next year.  In my role at the first BarCamp, I was simply behind-the-scenes support, so didn’t have the responsibility of making sure the well-oiled machine kept its pace throughout the day.  This year, in my mind I took too much responsibility for this, even though it was really NOT necessary at all because of the great volunteer force we had going.  As a result, I was running circles, over-checking status, compulsively cleaning, etc.   This was a bit of a FAIL for me.

I feel the same about the BeerCamp event the night before – I guess with the months of planning, and the frenzied few weeks to the finish line, I was in that mode, and after everything was over and the dust had settled, I was really kicking myself for not taking a step back, a deep breath, and just ENJOYING the fruits of all my efforts during the events.  It is my personal goal to improve this, and one of the big takeaways about myself from this powerhouse of a weekend.

Highlights

Despite my whirlwind personal experience of the day, I did manage to make my way into some fucking incredible sessions.  Two that really stood out for me were Geoff and Alex’s session ‘We’re Not Done Yet’ and Tim Chilcott’s session called ‘Potatoes’.

Image by Kevin Monko http://monkophoto.com/

Roz, being the rockin’ visually-driven superstar that she is, had the foresight to get a professional photographer on-board for the event.  Kevin Monko of Monko Photos  produced an impressive visual record of the event.  I was so moved flipping through his photos, the story they tell is one that I want the world to hear.

I feel strongly that finding some way to collaboratively author a story about the ‘meat’ of the day, using his photos as a visual anchor, and all our shared experiences as the content would be a lasting inspirational piece that speaks not only the awesomeness of BarCamp, but more broadly to the time-and-time-again professionally exceuted, powerful, amazing, thing that is happening here in Philadelphia.  I am looking into good ways to pull this off…

A HUGE personal highlight for me was the abundance of genuine ‘Thank yous’ that people threw my way all day long, and after the event too.  BarCamp Philly 2 + BeerCamp really was a full-time job for me, on top of my full-time job, for a good solid three months.  I made many sacrifices during that time, and relied very heavily on the support of @howdiz.  It is incredible to me how rewarding a good hearty ‘Thank you’ really is when you are doing something so involved for no other reason than to create the chance for an amazing experience for a huge mass of people.

I am so grateful to Roz and JP for bringing me along for the ride.  Thanks to them, I’ve had the great good fortune of feeling the true nature of appreciation, a chance to fully experience the mind-boggling power of community, and a cause to revel in an overwhelming sense of collaborative achievement.

Image by Kevin Monko http://monkophoto.com/

I’m looking forward to BarCamp Philly being bigger and better than ever next year.