An insight into what could emerge from even a ‘spillover’ event ran loosely based on the Open Space Technology (OST).

The ‘spillover’ event is the BCS BarCamp5 Spillover held on Saturday 28th September at the BCS Office in London.

I was notified of the BarCamp event just two days before the planned event. Before the actual day, it seems to be a momentous event for the BCS as reported in the BCS blog.

Having attended the event and even run a session, I am indeed surprised that the BCS actually held a BarCamp and hoorah for taking the first step to break away from the conventional meetings and talks (which I tend to avoid these days, unless I have nothing else better to do).

By the way, for those interested in the session I run (or loosely facilitated and participated) and want to read what others discussed and got out from the session, please do check out Conrad’s blog conradiator. Also, please check out another blogger, Arjun’s blog gigogeek.

I certainly didn’t expect mobile interfaces and languages to emerge from the very loose question topic (question without buzzy words). Isn’t this exciting?! That’s the power of collaboration and interaction and dialogue. The challenge though is to do this intuitively and with gusto and fun! My own observation is that our abilities to tune in to our basic communication skills have been lost or rather brain washed with tools and technologies. The style (or non style) of BarCamp breaks the conventional rhythm of one person doing all the talk/lecturing and usually relying on using IT tools to communicate IT solutions/problems.

I went to BarCamp because I was curious who will turn up and whether the BCS office will be attractive (fun?) enough for people looking to experience something ‘bar’ and/or ‘camp’ erish. Well lots signed up but only a handful (less than 20) turned up. I am sure there are lots of reasons why people failed to turn up. For those who turned up, I will say to them ‘great showing!’
I am blogging this event here as I am pondering on doing a Camp type event (based on OST) with the overall theme on IT-Law-Fun. Well.. can we make ediscovery/disclosure event fun? One thing for sure, I will certainly learn a bit about myself.

One Comment

  1. Posted September 29, 2008 at 4:58 pm | Permalink

    Just received an e-mail that another blog on the BarCamp event is available at http://robertbrook.com/2008/09/27/barcamplondon5-spillover/

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