I went to Ottawa Barcamp 4 this last weekend. I felt pretty out-nerded at some points. I felt that I should turn in my geek card at the door on the way out. I'm not sure what I expected since it was my first unconference. Overall it was pretty interesting. The most interesting conversations that I was involved in happened outside any of the booked talks.
One of the things that really made me pause was something that Ryan said. He compared where things are with java now wrt to rails and how that's like C++ vs java discussions of memory management. I like java because I don't have to be concerned with the details of memory management. Rails gets rid of like (estimated) 90% of the code I have to write.
So here is the sobering / scary question for myself: have I become "stuck" in my ways after only being out of school for like 5 years? Am I no longer one of the people who "get it"?
Hehe, sorry. :)
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to be on the bleeding edge to make a living, there are still people doing COBOL work. I guess the question is: what would you be happiest doing?
I have to say, I was actually a little disappointed with the amount of technical content at BarCamp4. That video-tagging idea that we watched was about as technical as it got, and for a software community event, I think that's pretty sad.
ReplyDeleteI mean, at least BarCamp2 had a technology demo for Adobe Flex. I really would have liked to see someone from the Microsoft camp give a 'demo/tutorial/lead a discussion' on some of the new stuff around WCF/WPF. I've been digging into WCF for about a month now so it's not like I'd be comfortable demoing it, but it would have been nice to have some sort WebServices-related discussion or to just plain see some 'new' technology as opposed to just product demos..
I agree Peter. Ottawa's BarCamps have started to attract a lot of presentations that are essentially advertisements/demos of new products for sale. New technology made in Ottawa is one thing, but there's a fine line. I don't need to be pitched to, I'd rather go into the common area and socialize.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that I found Luc Levesque's presentation on community building very informative. We need more of those kinds of presentations at BarCamp.
It's funny -- the Ottawa BarCamp format is unlike the original BarCamp's format. BarCamp presentations are supposed to be more interactive and discussion based, instead of one-way like a conference with a Q&A at the end if there's time.
BarCamps are supposed to be an UNconference, remember?