Today is the day. BarCampBirmingham kicks off around 9am as campers start arriving at Innovation Depot in Downtown Birmingham. We are expecting over 100 people from all over Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia for what will be the biggest BarCamp event ever in Birmingham.
Can’t make it this year? We have setup a lifestream page with our twitter feed, search results for “#barcampbham” on twitter, and our flickr group feed. We have also talked about trying to stream some of the event on Ustream. If that actually happens, we will post the link.
Thanks again to all of our great sponsors. This event couldn’t have happened without their support!
We have over 100 people registered for BarCampBirmingham this year. We are guessing that there are quite a few people who have never attended a BarCamp event and are quite unsure what to expect. I can hear your minds racing now: “No preset schedule? Everyone has to participate!? Do I have to get up in front of strangers and talk about something?”
We are here to put your minds at ease with a few suggestions for the rookies among us. BarCamp is really just a gathering of technology-minded people design to promote sharing, collaboration and community. The participation principle is really just a way to say “don’t come in, sit in a corner, and not interact with others.” Ask questions! Start conversations!
Here are a few things you might want to bring with you:
Business Cards. Don’t force them on people, but they are a great way to let folks remember your contact info and build your network of connections. If you don’t have any business cards, it is easy to print some up using Word and some templates from Office Max. Also make sure that you send out an email afterwards just to follow up.
Power Strips. We have a great sponsor that will be providing A/V support as well as extension cords and power strips, but you can never have too many power outlets. If you do bring anything of your personal equipment, make sure it is labeled with your name and maybe an email so you can be contacted if you forget anything.
Take Notes. There will be a lot of topics discussed and you head will be full of ideas. Make sure you get them down so you can reference them later. We will also be asking presenters to upload any slides they have to SlideShare, but those usually only tell half of the story.
Mix It Up. Don’t try to attend every session. Take a break and just hang out in the hall. We will have a breakout room available for anything that might just come up out of the blue.
BarCamp is a great event and an awesome time to be around some amazing people. Don’t sweat the small stuff and have a great time.
Local developer and BarCampBirmingaham veteran Harris Reynolds announced today that he is going to build a new web application in 1 week, from concept to code to completion, and launch the project at BarCampBirmingham. He will give a session where he will discuss his experience with the project.
The application will essentially be a community portal that will represent how newspapers should have responded to Craigslist years ago (for an example of what not to do see al.com). It will allow users within a metro area to buy and sell things like Clist (i.e. an online classified site), but will do so with a more of a community feel to it by including information on local events/reviews/information etc. In addition it will eventually have a modern user experience that includes a richer, more attractive interface than what is provided by Clist [1]. Version 1.0 will be targeted only at the Birmingham, AL market and will be relatively simple.
This year, BarCampBirmingham is holding a food drive.
We will be accepting canned goods and non-perishable items as you arrive at BarCampBirmingham. This food drive will go to benefit the Grace Church food pantry in nearby Woodlawn.
At the end of the day, we will load up all the donated food items and deliver them to the church. If you can’t make it to the main event but still want to contribute to the food drive, email us at info@barcampbirmingham.org.
The response from the local business community here in Birmingham has been great. When we started planning our 3rd BarCamp, we made a conscious effort to try and get support from local companies. We have an awesome group of sponsors that have contributed money, time, and resources to make this event happen.
We will be accepting sponsors through this weekend and will cut off our sponsorship drive Monday morning when we prep the artwork for the BarCampBirmingham t-shirts. If you have been on the fence about sponsoring our event, now is the time to jump over it. Especially if you want your logo on the t-shirt.
Contact us at sponsors@barcampbirmingahm.org if you are interested in sponsoring and we can talk to you about the next steps.
Also, a few attendees have contact us about making personal donations to BarCampBirmingham. This is totally unexpected and greatly appreciated. If you would like to do that, contact info@barcampbirmingham.org and we can give you instructions on making that donation.
Again, thanks to our many sponsors!
Look for more announcements as BarCampBirmingahm3 approaches next week!
We added a Media page to the site today. We hope this will help with any media outlets that are interested in covering BarCampBirmingham. It has contact info for our media volunteer, Wade Kwon, as well as a link to our initial press release.
The other reason for the Media page is to show some love to anyone that has blogged about BarCampBirmingham. So, if you have posted something to your blog about BarCampBirmingham, send us a link and we will add it to the page.
When you signed up for BarCampBirmingham, we asked you to let us know what you wanted to learn about and what you wanted to talk about. An overwhelming majority of you answered at least one of those questions, if not both. We have even listed a few of the topics that were submitted. Now it is time to make it official.
We have opened up a Proposed Sessions page here on the site. We have traditionally done this on the Wiki, but we thought we would save you the hassle of having to create ANOTHER account to keep track of. All you have to do is leave a comment on the page with your name and what you want to talk about. The session schedule won’t actually be set until everyone arrives at BarCamp, but this will help give everyone an idea of what they can expect when they attend BarCampBirmingham. It will also help us in planning how many rooms we need to use at Innovation Depot.
So, head on over to the Proposed Sessions page and leave your comment. Let everyone know what you plan to talk about.
Thanks to Ryan Davis over at The G Brand, we will have an awesome poster to help spread the word about BarCampBirmingham. Also, thanks to Precision Graphics, we are getting 250 of them printed for FREE!
If you are considering sponsoring BarCampBirmingham, we have set a cut-off date for Friday, April 18 for the poster. If you want your logo on the poster, you will need to have your sponsorship donation in and the logo sent to sponsors@barcampbirmingham.org.
If you sponsor after April 18, you can still get your logo on the site and the t-shirt.
Once the posters are available, we will announce locations where you can pick them up.
Thanks to Ryan Davis over at 
