franztoo

Barcamping in Germany – Barcamp Cologne

After the first Barcamp in Berlin in September, Cologne was the second station in Germany on November 25th/26th. I was involved in planning the first Barcamp in China in Shanghai with Kris Krug (KK), Robert Scales and Crystal Williams (the clever, clevergirl), and was so thrilled about this way of sharing that I wanted to help spread the Barcamp idea. As I live close to Cologne, work there and the city is one of the media capitals in Germany I asked some people to help with the planning and they jumped right in.

One of my clients, a big DSL- and VoIP Provider offered us their 10 fully equipped meeting rooms and staff canteen and built an incredible good WLAN-Network, which was a kind of a new paradigm, because they are operating their nationwide network from this building and have highest security standards. WLAN was strictly forbidden so far but the security chief planned and set the network up himself and created such long WLAN-keys which we had to pin to the wall with the addition: No joke!

Sponsors were a bit hard to find in the beginning but one week before it happened, we had enough money to throw a party, provide free breakfast and lunch (which was great), a t-shirt, coffee and drinks during the conference. Some may know plazes and of course O’Reilly (Germany), but there were also local german companies which helped us to make it happen.

We had concerns that we could transfer the “Spirit of Barcamp” because (we thought) we knew our fellow german citizens. We were completely wrong. The attendees were excited and eager, there was no problem to find people who wanted to lead sessions and the schedule for the first day was full after 20 minutes.

As the concept was so new we didn’t want to make it all geeky, or better, we were actively inviting the Creative Commons to explain their license model or setting up a discussion with journalists about new developments in internet and their influence on society and politics. These sessions were full of people.

The real big surprise and the star of this Barcamp was a police officer of the department of interior. When he presented himself the crowd was hooting knee-jerk but when he explained what he wanted to do and what his presentation was about, everybody wanted to see it. He led the most crowded session with about 80 people. No, that is not typical german, this guy is awesome. He was talking about the daily work and the problems of police on the internet. He gave good insights and presented some really shocking examples. The awareness he created is important, everybody agreed. Later I learned that he is a fighter for accessibility and has already won some awards for his work.

We had almost a 100% quota of the 155 persons who had signed up. The 40 who were on the waiting list (we had to close it at 150) and the 20 who regretted they couldn’t come, gave us a good idea for the planning of future camps in Germany. The German scene is kind of scattered and not so connected as in the USA but that will hopefully change.

38 sessions were held, on topics like: Introduction to microformats, misusing web 2.0 for DDos attacks, mass exploitation and malware distribution, Flash Applications vs. Web 2.x, Blogmonitoring, rich internet applications and accessibility, social networks in Asia etc. (full list here, mostly in German, sorry)

The reactions to the Cologne Barcamp were positive throughout, almost everybody loved the Barcamp format. The next one will happen in Nuremberg on Dec. 16/17 and the planning for a second in Frankfurt in spring 2007 has already started as a direct result of Barcamp Cologne.

Oh, and of course: It was was big fun!

Stuff:

• In flickr hot tags (competing with thanksgiving, 10th birthday of Laughing Squid, David Blaine)
• Plaze of the week
• more than 600 photos on flickr

PS: Those, who plan to organize a barcamp should really consider to read the “Ten Steps to Organizing a Barcamp” of Crystal, it is a priceless help.

Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampcologne, barcampshanghai, cleverclevergirl, cologne, köln, kk, scales