Barcamp: MinneBar

Though I had another commitment so left a bit early, I attended 60% of today’s Barcamp:Minnebar. Our fearless facilitators are shown at left: Ben Edwards, Dan Grigsby and Luke Francl locally here in Minnesota. This unconference drew >350 signups and I don’t know how many people ended up attending…but it was more than I’ve ever seen at a Minnesota geekfest.

Thankfully there were great sponsors including Dow Jones Online, SplitRock Partners, Electric Pulp, IconNicholson and New Counsel, with reasonably speedy Wifi provided by ipHouse. It made this a seamless event with all needs met and, with our fearless facilitators Luke, Dan and Ben scrambling to ensure it ran smoothly, I was stunned it flowed as well as it did.

The event kicked off with William Gurstelle who I originally saw on TechTV’s The Screen Savers with his backyard potato gun project.  Here he is showing it off:

The people I met, the ideas being kicked around, the energy and enthusiasm in the room was palpable. I couldn’t help but wonder, “What is going to emerge? Who will build the next great ________?”

Minnesota needs to have people who “get it” and people who deeply desire to….have an opportunity to be together around the concepts, tools, approaches and needs of a community already in the game building stuff and those who intend to do so.

NOTE: Here is my Flickr photoset (only 11 photos).

2 Comments

  1. Ben Edwards on April 22, 2007 at 9:16 pm

    These are great photos and videos – nice recap! You should also try to tag this post and your flickr photos with the single word “minnebar” to be included in that tag group. Glad you found the event to be interesting.



  2. Steve Borsch on April 22, 2007 at 9:22 pm

    Thanks Ben. This post *is* tagged with the Technorati tag “minnebar” as are the Flickr photos (with “barcamp” and “minnebar”). Great event…



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About Steve Borsch

Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.

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Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.