So what is an unconference anyway?
This is how I understand it - An unconference tries to take away all the painful, bad things that you might associate with usual corporate conferences that your employer might pay for you to attend. There is no endless string of PowerPoint presentations given by speakers that should know what they’re talking about. There is no exhibition to accompany it, so you are not forced to run the gauntlet of stands, fearing that you might have your face melted by sales pitches or just board to tears by the lacklustre looking folks that have been standing/sitting in the same spot for three days. An unconference takes away the need for all this and aims to let everyone learn/talk/hear about whatever they want. Or if you don’t believe me, wikipedia has this to say on unconferences.
On Saturday, the first ever Tweetcamp was held at GumTree HQ in Richmond, organised and hosted by @farhan, @cyberdees and @JohnIn60seconds.
With an experimental format, Tweetcamp aimed to allow tweeters to meet up in real life and get a little closer. The organisers were fantastic about keeping us informed of plans for the day on the Tweetcamp blog. Their car-parking advice and directions couldn’t have been better!
All the attendees were clearly head-over-heels in love with twitter and the effect it has had on their lives. Why would they want to attend a Tweetcamp otherwise? It gave the day a real sense of passion and camaraderie that I had never felt at any other event.
I very much enjoyed a discussion on Twetiquette with the fabulous @cupcate, @adders, @rachelclarke, @neilcrosby and @yelp_london. The key points were very kindly documented live (as we moaned and bitched) by @cupcate.
In the afternoon I found myself in a poetry workshop, hosted by @theEducatedfool, a spoken word artist (new to twitter – so do find and follow him). I’m no poet and had no intention of ending up in the session, but as it happened it was very nice to spend some time using twitter rather than just talking about it! @theEducatedfool was on a mission on behalf of BBC Poetry to bring poetry to the Glastonbury festival. All poetry tweeted using the hashtag #glastopoem was projected into a tent at the festival.
I’d like to finish by saying a big “Thank you” to the organisers for bringing so many twitter users together in one place so that we could all put more faces and names to the avatars and twitter-handles. If nothing else, I have made a heap of new twitter-friends and caught up with some I already had!
There also needs to be a shout out to the fantastic sponsors. We were all looked after in the most incredible surroundings, fed, watered and entertained for free because of them. Thank you to Gumtree, PayPal, Start Up Essentials, Addlestones Cider, My Muesli and Yelp London.
Read accounts from other attendees:
Claire Thompson - @Claireatwaves,
The event was also captured on camera by @BenjaminEllis - take a look at his pictures over on Flickr.
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It was great to see you there! Glad you survived your first unconference(ish) event unscathed :).