360DigitalInfluence

Recently Susan Mernit wrote a post about user-generated conferences coinciding with my past weekend’s experience at Washington DC Barcamp. Just as there has been a shift from main stream media to user-generated media conference go-ers have turned to a practice where the attendees provide the programming. The idea behind this genuinely interests me, a trend of open-sourcing and sharing ideas on the world wide web is translating to community based gatherings that attract people looking to connect and learn in a casual atmosphere with their industry peers.

Being that Barcamp DC was my first “unconference” I wasn’t sure what to expect. The organizers facilitated pre-conference planning via PB Wiki and Twitter. This planning included getting an idea of interest, recruiting sponsorship, finding a venue and loosely facilitating session ideas. Based on the pre-Barcamp hype online I presumed there would be a decent turnout with a mild structure and perhaps a little chaos. Upon arriving I was pleasantly presented with a very organized, well sponsored event that had an overwhelmingly passionate turnout.

Over 110 web professionals gathered on a Saturday morning to decide for themselves what they wanted to get out of Barcamp DC. With Twitter alerts letting participants know what was going on when, sessions ran throughout the day on topics ranging from the Mobile web to Typography. With such enthusiastic participation there was never a shortage of interesting discussion.

Assuring that the collaboration continues far beyond the local community participants are encouraged to document their experience on the web and tag it. Having said that I am not going to attempt to recap the details of the entire event, rather point you in the direction of other blogs who already have on technorati, exposing you to a much wider range of vantage points than I could in just this one blog post.

The concept of the “unconference” successfully illustrated at Barcamp DC makes me think differently about the future of user generated content and the platforms where it can be utilized. Hopefully we can see this format translate to other scenarios such as the Un-University or Un-Workplace; collaborative meetings that take place in real life but utilize the internet to spread the ideas that are hatched from them.

Twitter is my deepest darkest guilty internet pleasure. Described by wikipedia as a social-networking and micro-blogging service, I was first introduced to my addiction while attending SXSW Interactive this past March. I was fairly convinced that Twitter was just the flavor of the conference, it’s main purpose for members to be able to post 140 character “tweets” about what they are doing at any time. Capable of being synced with phone text messaging and instant messaging, Twitter makes it accessible to provide updates to your friends all the time.

While knowing every waking move of all my friends and colleagues at a fast paced interactive conference was incredibly useful, the more significant staying power of such a web app for day to day activities was a bit unclear. I mean seriously, do I need a text message to my phone indicating when a buddy is leaving for work.. eating lunch… watching TV?

With no conference it’s relevance in my life diminished and my account fell into a black-hole of useless web oblivion. Then one day I saw a short Twitter pod on current.tv and decided to revisit my old buds. With a short friends list of other web professionals I found a tiny community of tips, ideas and relatable anecdotes. A repository of random ideas. I began to contribute with short accounts of my experiences and interesting weblinks. Since then Twitter has become my diary… an online sketch journal where I can just scribble when I need to. Like a dreamscape of mind waste, some of the stuff floating by can be remarkable and inspirational, other things are just flying purple cows… seriously awesome with no significance.

Though a lot of hype has surrounded Twitter, it has yet to catch on in the main-stream social networking scene. I think a lot of people’s reluctance to join is the misconception that it is a mobile social software similar to Dodgeball. Others are confused to its purpose in general, and how it would benefit their daily schedule. Though there is seamless integration now with other web apps such as Netvibes and Facebook, Twitter still holds a connotation of being less socially acceptable than Myspace or Facebook. In my opinion, Twitter is what you make of it. I love Twitter.