Well, here I am at BarCamp Vancouver. After some difficulties getting wireless access here at Workspace, (great spot, in Vancouver’s Gastown) we are now live to the world. First I quickly uploaded some shots to flickr, and then I got busy writing. I feel like I’m back in my days as a reporter, taking pictures like crazy and jotting notes to later file my story, except that now the process is instantanious.

(Back of BarCamp Vancouver T-shirt)

It is 11:30, and my friend Nathan is doing a presentation on Ruby on Rails. I’ll give him the attention he deserves and update again in a bit.

And…publish.

12:00 lunchtime, and I’m typing away quickly so I can get up and meet some more people.

A few notes about last night: There was a BBQ at bryght, where I finally met Kris Krug, end enjoyed some free beer courtesy of Adhack. (Thanks James) The count so far: Free beer, free wireless, free t-shirt, free food and free open source presentations from very informed people. Not bad for a suggested donation of $20…

12:30- Back on again. I met Kate! Her blog, mynameiskate.ca is also on the Top 20 WOM blogs in Canada. I thanked her for the link, and she thanked me for the click-throughs she got from mine! (then we joked about how we’re both addicted to our site stats) It’s cool to say thanks for that kind of thing in person, and put a face to the blog.

1:00- SEO and the Long Tail. This is the stuff! Didn’t get his name, but he was preaching the idea of publishing fresh content to access the “long tail” of internet search. In short: blog, and thou shalt be found. Sound familiar?

2:30- Back-to-back-to-back presentations, loved the “Tagging for World Domination” chat. Picked up some great social bookmarking tips, and got a quick demo of ma.gnolia.

Update: At about 4 pm, I started to feel a bit tuckered out, so packed up and headed for home. Wireless was intermittent, and I am only just finishing this post now.

(me at BarCamp, taken by Nathaniel Brown with my camera)
It was great day, and I can’t wait for the next one. Learned too much to be able to process it all, and met come cool “internet folks” like Andre Charland (who was sitting behind me when I saw a picture of him come up in kk+’s feed. That was good for a laugh. Also met Roland Tanglao (whose pics of the event are many), Darren Barefoot and James Sherrett, among others. I have had quick email exchanges with them all, and read “behind the scenes” in the Google Group for the event organizers, so it was neat to introduce myself to the people behind the blogs, the pictures, etc.

(Roland Tanglao photo)

I’m hooked. When is CaseCamp again?