KiwiFoo 09 - Unconference Experience

Respecting the "What goes on Foo camp, stays on Foo camp" mantra, this blog will detail some of my experiences at KiwiFoo 2009. As more experiences, blogs, comments etc come out about KiwiFoo 09, I'll add links as comments on this post. If your after more info now you can check out the #KiwiFoo feed on Twitter.

I've now had the honour of being invited to a few of these events (Barcamp Auckland 2, and the TelecomOne Innovation Unconference). For those who aren't sure, an Unconference has no pre-set agenda; it gets decided, by the participants, just after the greeting talk.

Firstly registration, where I got a very nice T-Shirt to remember the event, a drink bottle, pens , pads and everything else he could get my hands on. Then on to the normal meeting of people you've known from previous meetings and then getting herded into a hall for the pre-conference greeting talk. At the end of the greeting talk, Nat (who ran the event) opened the agenda board where there was the normal rush to post topics that people thought were interesting in the best time slots.

Some of the sessions I personally attended ranged from Advertising and Business issues/ideas, through what’s new on the Technical side of IT, and even a low level session on Android - Google’s Mobile phone platform. My main issue was that there is only one of me and I couldn't go to all of the sessions, all of the time. I'd like to pass on my personal, congratulations to the people who offered the topics - they were all very good. There were start-ups who were getting different perspectives, established companies looking to connect with the technical community and independent people just interested in interesting things.

It wasn't only the sessions that were interesting; the "Hall Conversations" were hugely valuable as well. I solved one of the things on our TODO list for our SMS / Txt Shopping Mall Service - it took about 15 minutes with 3 really smart people. We all then turned our heads to another attendees issue and we offered different solutions from angles - hopefully they will come off.

The key things to take away from this style of conference isn't the T-shirt, pads, pens etc, it's the personal contacts, the new ideas that get generated and the new vigour for trying things outside my normal way of doing things. My head has been spinning all weekend with ideas that could be implemented and luckily, I now have a whole range of people that I can call on to help or partner with.

At the closing gathering, the floor was opened up and the suggestions of different ways to improve Foo camps were offered including a ScienceFoo, MediaFoo etc - if anyone is interested contact Nat.

A Special thanks has to go to the sponsors, who allowed the attendees to pay nothing for the whole weekend; Nat for organising and fronting the event; and as the song says, "behind every great man is a great woman" - Jenine who looked after the running of the event (and kept Nat to only inviting 160ish people).

A great weekend was had by all. Lots of contacts made and ideas generated!

Nice work everyone!! We are looking forward to hearing more about other peoples’ experiences!!

Simon