I don’t even know how I came across an invitation to Barcamp 2008 at Oxford House in Quarry Bay on the weekend but I guess it is a measure of grassroots social networking that I did and I enjoyed it a lot.

It was a great opportunity to come and share ideas in an open environment full of keen people wanting to see open source applications take off, both for their livlihoods and for the betterment of others.

Unfortunately, I was late getting there due to commitments with Trailwalker training.

My first thought when I arrived was one of “Oh My God!” when so many people were milling around a board with tiny file cards stuck to it to see if they could find an appropriate session and its correct room. Fortunately I spotted one on Open coursware for education so that was me away!

It turned out to be an open discussion forum so it was great as I was able to contribute and network a little, even if I really did not learn very much. I did pick up very quickly that people were just coming here to share and enjoy and that there were not a lot of hidden agendas.

Next I chose a session on twitter visualisation.  I took some rough notes which I have copied below but I found a better post on this session Another Barcamp bites the dust fromYelotofu.

For what it is worth, here are my notes:

Twitter session.

Napoleon from http://www.webwednesday.hk/ This looks interesting.

Mentioned a tool called flowgram http://www.flowgram.com/ . This seemed to be the tools that he used to do the presentation on.

Showed some good presentation tools for twitter. Twitscoop, tweetclouds twitscoop twitstat twit(url)y, etc.

Some good tools to track what is going on in the world.

Perspectv was a good look visually at what is going on in the world and what people are talking about.

The we feel fine site Cool!

There is lots of info that can be gleaned from this site. Looks great!

My next session was a Drupal session.

I have to say that this one was more on technicalities and less on application so it was not as good for me.

Drupal Session

Started with the groups.drupal pages.

Talk about the Knight Drupal Initiative.

I have seen this and would love to learn more.

This guy has developed themes. They look pretty good. The theme is about a presentation layer.

There is a theme engine. This handles the styles etc.

The final part of the day were the start-up Lightening talks! Each person with a start-up idea had 4 minutes to pitch it to the audience. The winner gets an Xbox 360. I wish I had of put my name down earlier as none were as good (naturally!) as an idea that’s been brewing in my mind for months! I did get some contacts so I may still manage to pull this off!

Finally it was to the pub for some free drinks!

What a great day!

Now if only we could get a successful grass-roots conference idea going for Education in Hong Kong!

There’s a challenge!