Barcamp Philly
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend Barcamp Philly. It was my first Barcamp and it was an enjoyable experience. I met up with some old friends, Owen and Skippy, both of which I have not seen in the past 2-3 years. Technically, that’s not true, I saw Owen three weeks prior at CPOSC.
There were some good discussions and thankfully it wasn’t all “social media” topics like I’ve heard rumors of from other Barcamps. Most of the discussions I went to were good, and as usual, there were a few I wish I had skipped and a few I wish I had attended. The big one I missed was the discussion by Comcast Interactive Media where they discussed the web technologies and back end hardware used to power comcast.net.
One of my other favorites was “Building Better Web Developers – What Should Colleges be Teaching?” by Jason Wertz. Jason is a teacher at Montgomery County Community College and was looking to rebuild his cirriculum. There were a lot of bright minds at this and a lot of good ideas thrown around. Topics discussed included how to develop skill sets, what subject matter can be skipped as well as what subject matter isn’t being taught, but should be reqiured. It was interesting to see people there with very different backgrounds too. Some had just graduated, some had graduated 20 years ago. Come people had Computer Science degrees, and others had degrees nowhere relating to Computer Science.
Overall it was a good experience and I hope to go back if it is ever held again. Unfortunately I live in central Pennsylvania and there aren’t as many tech related conferences and thriving meetups in the area. Philadelphia has plenty going on, but it’s a 2 hour drive for me which is a bit too long to make on a regular basis.
