BarCamp San Diego was a blast « Crystal Williams

At the wrap-up dinner after BarCampLA-3, on a hunch, I polled the table with “Has anyone here NEVER accidentally electrocuted themselves while doing some crazy project?” No hands, great stories.

So when several members of that same crew took on organizing BarCamp San Diego, I knew it was going to be a good time, even by BarCamp standards. Not only was it exceedingly good, geeky fun, it was a really, really smoothly run camp. It was obvious a lot of planning went into this, so big ups to:

Patrick Crowley – Project Management, Budget
Dan Tentler – Sponsor Wrangler
Lindsey LaShell – Public Relations
Alex Kawas – Budget
Billy Marsh – Awesomest screenprinting rig ever
Phelan Riessen – Shirts
Harry Slaughter – Venue Procurement
Ryan Felton – Misc.
Lisa Brewster – Blog

I met a lot of really fun, wickedly smart people this weekend and attended some great talks on search engine optimization, data visualization, dating, SecondLife, zombies, and network security. I gave a talk on pimping out your WordPress blog and an ongoing informal demonstration of why most people should be paying a bit more attention to their physical security (aka – lockpicking). I’ll be posting up my notes for that talk on here soon. I’ll also be linking to the Belkin site where they’ve graciously agreed (again) to host all of the recorded audio files from BarCamp San Diego sessions.

Just wanted to give some highlights here:
This was so unbelievably cool, a bit more MAKE Magazine or SRL than your typical BarCamp fare, but I think everyone was all for it. Metal Fabricator Billy Marsh MADE a custom screenpress for BarcampSD and they used it to print all the shirts, which came out looking great. (Photos by Lisa Brewster, click to go to her flickr stream)

I just couldn’t resist doing this. This is my 15′x17′ tent. In a classroom.

This still cracks me up. Man, twitter is great for unconferences.

And lastly, I’m not quite sure how this got started, but we dubbed it ninjacamp. Yes, that’s me. And yes, I have been doing a lot of yoga lately.

Thanks again to everyone who made this camp so much fun, I look forward to staying in touch with you all and hope to be back down for the next one in November. Congrats again to the organizers, you all did a fantastic job.

Lastly, thanks to the these companies for supporting the very first San Diego BarCamp. Sponsors make free, public BarCamps possible, so if you can, show your support for these companies: