Last Saturday I participated in the BarCampTurin. Bru and I spoke about CouchSurfing as an example of “Sharing as a modality of economic production”. Well, I wanted to speak about this concept while Bru wanted to speak about hidden profits, we probably didn’t coordinate very well. ;-)
Anyway the slides are on slideshare in case you are interested.
It was my first BarCamp and, reading on the wiki there were more than 200 registered people, I was very afraid to burn my first experience of BarCamp. Overall, I think it went well (thanks Vittorio!) given the fact more than 250 people shown up.
Anyway, I would be very curios to run a poll asking to participants of BarCampTurin:
Did you read the RulesOfBarCamp on the wiki?
YES | NO
(Of course there is no critical mass of readers in this blog so I solicit some more popular blogger to post the poll, if she finds the question interesting).
My impression is that 70% of the participants would say “NO, I didn’t read the RulesOfBarCamp”.
The fact we didn’t even bother to translate the rules on the BarCampTurin wiki page might be an indicator. Of course the critique is first for myself and so in a pure free-wiki-doacracy-philosophy today I took some time to translate TheRulesOfBarCamp (English) in LeRegoleDelBarCamp (Italian). The translations is attached below but you better read them on the BarCamp wiki itself. And of course the translation is not perfect at all, but hey, it is a wiki, isn’t it? Go ahead and improve it.
BarCampTurin was the second BarCamp in Italy (the first was BzaarCamp in Milan) and there are already more BarCamps in preparation, I know of RomeCamp and MarCamp (in Marche region).
It is self-evident that in order to run successful BarCamps we should at least be aware of the rules (and discuss them).
The important rule I think we should try to stick with is
NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS
or according to my translation in Italian
NIENTE SPETTATORI, SOLO PARTECIPANTI
even if I probably liked more “NIENTE SPETTATORI, SOLO ATTORI”.