BarCampCanberra 2010 (BCC2010) community technology & social innovation conference in Canberra

We kicked off the organisation and coordination work for next year’s BarCamp in Canberra this week with a meeting down at the pub with Pascal, Ruth, Rae, Rohan, Craig, Lauren and myself.

A good productive meeting, talking about sponsorship, venue, date (mid-February) and some practical things like presentation scheduling, registrations, the blog and BarCampCanberra Twitter account.

Three months out might seems early to start organising a BarCamp considering the first ever BarCamp in the US was organised in a week but we want to make it as attractive and convenient as a grassroots community conference can be to draw in people who might not normally come to such an event.

We will attempting to diverge from the tech focus of previous BarCamps by combining the BarCamp format with Trampoline-style sessions of idea sharing and collaboration. We haven’t decided whether we’ll run the morning as a BarCamp and the afternoon as a Trampoline or parallel tracks or just mix it all in together.

So if you have any sort of idea you want to discuss with other smart people then make sure you come along. You won’t have to do any sort of preparation – the less baked the idea the better. Obviously for the more traditional BarCamp-style presentations we’ll be expecting you put a little bit of effort in before hand, but slideshows are not required; we’ve had people use whiteboards or just sit on a table and talk.

So until the blog is revamped and the event registration page set up I suggest you follow the BarCampCanberra on Twitter for updates and information. Interstate visitors are welcome and we will do our best to assist with finding you free accommodation. BarCamp itself is also of course free to attend; all expenses will be paid for by our awesome sponsors. In fact we already have a sponsor on-board for BarCampCanberra 2010, SitePoint.

If you are interesting in sponsoring BarCampCanberra then please contact myself or any of the other organisers. Donations of cash, merchandise, prizes and giveaways, bar tab, dinner afterwards, drinks etc are all welcome and appreciated.

I would also like to thank our sponsors for the previous two BarCamps in Canberra: acidlabs, Five Senses Coffee, UX Australia, Keith Lang, Australian Anthill, Electric Shadows Bookshop, Web Directions, SMS Management &Technology, AussieHQ, Microsoft, Indigo Pacific, Maadmob, Kate Carruthers and more.