Does that make Daniel or Jason “Sid”?

Daniel – I attended your session and it was one of the better ones in my opinion. I do agree about the idea of a longer presentation, one I attended felt so rushed I didn’t enjoy it and my attention span slipped. Your presentation was a good example of 101 and how to deal with it. While some of your plugins were very 101, some were not. I walked away looking at a few plugins and what they could offer me. I also found your chat room attendance to be very helpful after your session. Perhaps there’s a key in there – a chat room set up for post-session chat with the presenter?

Rick – The 101-ness was a bit of a negative for me, but I definitely see the need for it. With so many agents at so many different skill levels on so many different topics – you will never be able to make a session that is perfect for all. I do think it’s something that needs to be considered, but I don’t think it will ever be “solved” 100%. Perhaps a well written description of each event, so you’re not just heading into a room based on its title, would help out.

Erin – Agree with you on the thought that there are so many agents out their thirsting for knowledge about things involving tech, that it can make it a little harder. Interesting comparison on the real estate vs. Silicon Valley style barcamps. Having that thought in my head gives me a slightly different perspective on how hard it must be to arrange the REbarcamp conversations, when everyone wants to be the expert these days.

Bob – I think the hybrid idea will win out in the end. Yes, we do need 101 conversations…they are actually crucial I think in getting more of the industry involved and working to move us forward to new and better ideas and practices. Of course, if you stay at the 101 level, you’ll have the 102s leaving at an alarming rate. It’s the same problem teachers face everyday – how to teach the basics without boring the kid who’s already at that level.

Jim – As I said in my email to you, I think you all did an amazing job keeping it running. Even when things were going wrong, you all handled it with calm and a sense of humor. All in all, a success in my opinion. I’ve read your post about it all and will more than likely comment more over there (how can I not, you did mention me after all). A few notes:

Chat room – anything that can be done to make it more readable would be better. The banner across the top took up a lot of screen real estate (no pun intended) so even with a high resolution (although smaller monitor – 15 inch laptop), I was unable to see much more than 3 to 4 comments at a time without scrolling. To stay within the conversation took a lot of back and forth. The more comments available at a given time, the better in my opinion. I also think that based on the 45 minute time schedule, a possible “private” chat room for each room would be good – this would allow the speaker to stay around in the room and answer questions and interact with the audience a bit more. As I noted to Daniel – he did an excellent job with this in the chat room.

Presenters – Knowing how you had to select the presenters makes it hard for me to see a way around much. You could never vet each and every presenter without making this a full time gig for yourself. Perhaps a better set of guidelines might encourage them to do better, but I can’t be sure of that as who knows if they would pay attention to that.

Socialization – I think between the hashtag on Twitter and the chat room, there was plenty of socialization going on during the event. I think this will improve as you do it more and more. People will start to “get” what the hashtag and chat are for and begin pushing to utilize it even more to generate that “social” feel that many feared would be missing from a virtual event.

Chris – You would have enjoyed it knowing you. It went well I think and now that they’ve announced another one, I’m looking forward to seeing that as well.

Mike – I have to say that I’d like to see more topics, but as I suggested before, perhaps some hours could revolve around specific topics and run from 101 to advanced – each level running concurrently in a different room.

Andrew – Unfortunately I use the word “awesome” a little too often. Sorry about that in advance. Hmmmm…I don’t know which I would pick, perhaps Malcolm.

Tony – Do you think having your live-session helped you get more out of it with discussion and interaction? I would have liked to have experienced that to see how that worked.

Susie – As a first run, this actually exceeded my expectations. I had a bad feeling it was going to be more of a technical nightmare than anything they had expected. Even with them practicing breaking it as Jim said they did, I was fearful – technology has a way of getting in the way of your best laid plans sometimes.

Doug – I do think this may have been a good way for people who don’t understand what a REBarcamp is all about. It will be interesting to see if this sparks more interest in the events or not.

Jim – Thanks for letting us know. I’ll comment over there when I have a moment.

Conversations can get off on tangents and that is the risk of volunteer events… but, as they say, you can vote with your feet and change classrooms.

What I didn’t like? Sessions could have been longer; there was too much advertising.

Forbid boring Power Point presentations.