Tom Cheredar

We now return you to your regularly scheduled journalist…

As the story goes, it took six days to create the earth and God rested on the seventh. In my recent experience moving to Nashville, I feel I can relate on at least some level except on the sixth night I crashed into a state of slumber. It is entirely possible that I may have underestimated the length of this moving process by about two weeks. But with that said I’m all finished and I am happy to announce my return to digital life.

Bar Not Required

Last week I met with the folks who are planning Nashville Barcamp 2 and sat in on the regular meeting. I’ll admit I’m not very familiar with the whole “unconference” event (or is it non event). When I first began searching for Nashville groups on twitter I disregarded BCN as a music meet up group due to the insanely cool looking guitar logo (as shown). It was probably a month or so later when I realized its value in the technology community. During the meeting someone commented that they often had to explain to people that it had nothing to do with a bar, which I found funny but could sympathize with. The truth is that most Nashvillians, who would be interested in attending a “barcamp,” don’t know what it is.

So, what is a barcamp and why would you want to attend one in Nashville?

It’s a group of people who come together for workshops, discussions, and Networking on the basis of a few common subjects — more often than not — having to do with technology. They have speakers for the event but those who lead the discussion aren’t on a ticket that is intended to draw a crowd the way you would with a traditional conference. The topics for discussion are determined completely by those who sign up to attend and anyone can suggest an idea or volunteer to speak. [A wiki page will be set up for this purpose soon] It’s also worth mentioning that the entire event is free and open to the public via dedicated organizers (or non-organizers?) donating time or local businesses dedicating resources in return for sponsorship. The idea is very similar to an open-source version of a conference.

Most of what the Nashville barcamp group talked about last week was about the basic logistics: who, what, when, where, etc. and a little bit of pre-planning that was intended to spread the word about Barcamp Nashville 2. I threw my name into the hat to offer content and will likely update the blog with progress as it happens. Increasingly journalists are being submerged into technology and I think events like this are great in this new world of bloggers scooping big media. [NOTE: That was NOT a slight against anyone in the area who is employed by big media! -  Journalist = Friend]

Give me a shout if you’d like to help out. We’ll be brainstorming all next week.

-t.c.

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