AmyFOX

Over the weekend, my brother and I attended Bar Camp Milwaukee at Bucketworks.

First of all, if you've never been to Bucketworks, I suggest you check it out. It's a pretty cool place with a lot of space for gatherings and co-working environments. (and the bubble wrap floor in the entry was probably my favorite part!)

I do have to say, I was both surprised and not surprised to see how many women were in attendance. I would guess maybe 10 percent of the attendees were women. And the benefit in that, ladies, is that there was never a wait for the women's restroom. That NEVER happens! :)

We got there during the introductory session... where everyone introduced themselves and the whole concept of a bar camp was discussed.

I bet you're wondering what a barcamp is... here's the wikipedia definition:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Basically, it's a conference, but not a conference. All the sessions are led by people attending the event, and you can roam between sessions without getting *that* look - you know, the look of "how dare you get up while I'm talking" look! :)

I caught a few sessions Saturday, including Start-ups, Why Your IT Resume Sucks, Wordpress on Steroids and part of the Sketchnotes presentation. I missed some sessions I was pretty interested in... including a photowalk and one on social media networks.

I would have loved to stay longer, but we had to get back to our parents' house to watch the Brewers game... and then Sunday I was sooooooooo sick (still am) and slept most of the day before coming in to work.

I look forward to the next BarCamp so I can meet some more people with similar interests and learn more about this ever-changing technology industry. Maybe I'll even lead a session next time!

I think I might even start attending Web414 Meetings (held monthly at Bucketworks).

If you'd like to see some pictures from the event, many of the attendees posted them to a group on flickr.