BarCamp EVN '10 impressions and pics

My geekiest weekend of the year is over. It felt like a different reality to me. I was surrounded mainly by like-minded people who were so nice and geeky :)

I was enjoying seeing familiar faces, friends and getting to know new people. Of course, there were some people who were making me to seek the "report spammer" link, but i was trying to be tolerant :D

BarCamp is all about learning and networking (as most of the conferences), but what is good here, it's that there are no strict rules and the atmosphere is relaxed and pleasant.

thanks to photobzik for pics :)

The biggest shortcoming of this format for me is that because of parallel tracks - presentations taking places in different rooms at the same time - you have to make choices on what to hear and what to miss all the time.

Being a curious personality made me find an interesting topic in every half-hour track so in the end i was very exhausted.

While last year I was just a participant, this year I decided to present something myself. It's a great opportunity to train the public speaking and presentation skills. I'm so thankful for all the people that approached me with a feedback. It's invaluable!

photo by Sedrak Mkrtchyan / PanARMENIAN Photo

On the first day me and my friend Yervand made a presentation entitled "Geolocation Fun" that was about geolocation in general and Foursquare in particular. (find the PPT link below)

The room was very crowded and I was excited that some people actually downloaded the app right there and started to use Foursquare :). And also many people, whom i didn't know were approaching and saying that they liked my presentation :))) It felt great!

That night, when i was unable to sleep, I was planning my next presentation on Sunday. Right before the sleep i got the idea that I should present my "thing" on internal communication in companies and newsletters. I had a very few time to prepare, however I was feeling confident still everything was already in my head and i had already written a detailed blog post about it.

Even though I didn't have much time to prepare, it was good too :)

While I did my first presentation as @arpik, the second one was by Arpiné Grigoryan / PanARMENIAN Media (this is how it was written in the schedule). I was pleasantly surprised hearing that people came to hear a presentation because it was PanARMENIAN involved :) some even thought it was just about PanARMENIAN.Net :D

I really encourage all IT-related people to attend BarCamps since there's always lots of learning and networking. Not only you see meaningful faces of promising young people, you can actually watch for potential employees.

I really can't understand how anybody in IT wouldn't go there or thing that it's "useless". First of all it's a great platform to showcase new projects/services. Besides it's a great place to train presentation skills :)

Here are the links to my presentations:

• Geolocation Fun
• Newsletter as an internal communication tool

Presentations will be soon put on the barcamp.am website together with the links to articles and blog posts about BarCamp and photoalbums.

More pics below.

thanks to Gaspar for these two

I played with this toddler a little. cute pics by Sonia

BarCamp afterparty at Lovers Park

PanARMENIAN Photo was also there to cover the event and I even appeared on the report on website :D

Here are some more images by Sedrak Mkrtchyan / PanARMENIAN Photo ©.

the organizing team and friends

the organizing team in a more organized picture :))