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Yes! The O'reilly team have finally got it going on in Europe. Last year's Web 2.0 Expo somewhat sucked, but for the wrong reasons. The venue was terrible , I mean worst that anywhere else I've been. They placed the expo in the middle of this huge lifeless exhibition centre and the staff made everyone feel like a alien. Some people say the Excel Centre can feel like that sometimes but honestly you have no idea how lifeless thing really can get till you see this place.

Anyway those days are forgotten now, the BCC is right in the middle of town and a short walk from Alexandplatz which meant more Sbahn riding for me that last time but it was worth it. 3 Levels, lots of space and helpful staff made already good conference really very good. So to get all the moans out of the way first and to be fair to the barcampberlin post I just wrote.

The programme for the conference was a little scatty, so yes there were interesting talks but it seemed like sometimes you had to choose between 3 really good sessions and sometimes settle for one. The quality of the speakers were variable sometimes too, but I think thats mainly down to language that anything. For example I was in the OAuth talk and by the time the presenter had explained a typical Oauth transaction as such, I was getting bored and started falling a sleep. It was about 15mins too long. The transaction could have been explained in less that 5mins I felt, specially because most people in room already knew how permissions and OpenID worked. That certainly reminds me that next time I should put a presentation in about something.

Food wasn't bad, a little basic but filling enough. I found the Wifi actually not bad but they seemed to be blocking ports, so Jabber didn't work which meant no Jaiku, Yammer, etc access while at the conference without going to the webpages. The web access was very slow but twitter perfectly usable. I wouldn't have wanted to upload any pictures while there because that was very slow.

Tim Oreilly came out and gave a keynote pretty much about what he had said in New York a while back. It was all about the downturn and what this means for web 2.0. Tim's been talking about it for a while anyway. This was also picked up by many other speakers so there was a sense of doom and gloom surround the conference but people were also telling us to do something meaningful. Great stuff but then again, there was 2 fireside chats with one Yossi Vardi and second Martin Varsavsky

Both talked about how they started and sold there startups. Which seemed very strange when you got all this doom and gloom happening. I guess it was all planned that way to break up the doom and gloom? Maybe? Anyway, I attended a lot of sessions and although being pretty tired from overdoing it on the night. What I found interesting was the amount of value you got for the 13 euro expo only pass. The obvious stuff like the talks, parties and food/drink were not included but most other things were fine (even the keynotes were included) On the Startup Ignite front, I liked aka-aki, Amazee and Soundcloud. But really didn't see the point of the others, specially iDesktopTV in the face of things like Boxee. The Berlin Girl Geekdinner was a blast and really started off the web 2.0 expo in the best of ways. I believe that night I stayed out with a small group of people including Nicole till 4am. I also did get into a conversation with Stephennie Booth about the subject of quotas or as I wanted to call it affirmative action. She had some really interesting things to say about it which I'd hoped to catch at the session Suw and Steph ran later but it didn't quite happen. Actually I have the recording of that session which need to upload I've uploaded to Blip.tv (mp3) (ogg). Rather that turn this entry into a massive long one, I'll end it by saying it was a really good conference. Everyone knew it and felt a lot happier about it that last year. I think next year, there should be a attempt to bring back web 2.0 open again (that worked well from last year) but in the same space of the berlin congress centre. Good Work Oreilly and Techweb, see you next year.

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Finally on a flight back to the UK, unfortunately I got the GMT times mixed up and so ended up missing the only flight back to Liverpool and it would seem the north of england. Because of this I had to buy a another airplane ticket and go to London Luton instead. This means a very long journey back to Manchester tonight. If it wasn't for the head conference, i would have just waited till tomorrows flight to Liverpool or stayed over in London with some friends. Oh well…

So BarCampBerlin3 was massive, I think the list was meant for 600 people and about 500 showed up through-out the two days. Two days you say? Yep two days no sleepover and worst than that, kicked out at 6pm so no chance to even attempt a game of werewolf. The venue was at Tmobile which is like/equivilant to BT in the UK (funny enough BarCampLondon2 was in BT). Right so were in a huge venue and there are only 8 rooms and every session is 45mins long. I mean holy crap think about the maths behind this.

Lets suggest Saturday you have 14 hours of time and Sunday 9 hours. 16hours then you throw out all the time for lunch and breaks, your now down to 10 hours and 6 hours which is 16hours or 960 minutes. Right split that up into 45mins slots, which is roughly 21 slots. Then times that by 8 equals 168 slots. Geez even if you cut that down to 30min slots thats 32 times 8 equals 256 slots.

My point is that half the people in the room will never get a chance to present or run a session. I personally find this distasteful and the opposite of a unconference like barcamp. What made things even worst was the choice to put 30min breaks between every single 45min session. So most of the event was spent walking back to the board and then waiting for the next session to start. Someone explained to me, this is the socialising part of the barcamp and a lot of people want this. I say fine I may even understand but its painful for someone from outside germany. Ok not quite finished with schedule yet. On top of the scheuling, people would leave gaps..Further making it difficult for people to give a talk. In the end I actually gave 3 talks because I'd change a empty spot to one of my talks. On Sunday I got there late and I walked in when people were writing down the talks and added my “death to the ipod” talk to the last empty space before even taking off my coat. There seemed to be a strange system where you say out loud to everyone what your session is about. Nicole told me later its to work out which space to put the session into. Maybe but this strikes me as dead bate for anyone whos terrified of public speaking. Plus in my mind it indicates to people that your talk should be popular and that seems anti-barcamp in mind.

The layout of the rooms were another problem. There were about 5 rooms which were seperated by thin 2m high partitions. This meant you could easily hear both speaker next door. When people are talking in a non-native language this is painful to follow. I have no idea what it must be like for those who understood very little English. Maybe that was the reason why some speakers just opted for German.

Other noticable things were the lack of food (drink was ok, but nice to have more choice that water, jolt cola or apple/orange juice). stupid amount of sponsors, distance to toilets, talks advertising products and general lack of interesting talks.

Ok I've been pretty negative about the whole event, but I don't want to be. The twitter screen was wicked. The venue was great, and could have been setup much better to better show it off but good stuff. Some talks specially on the second day were good, the power and wifi were all good through out the days and there was a buzz about the whole event from start to end. I don't want to weigh in on what a barcamp is or isn't but this was well on its way towards a conference. I still can't understand whats the point of having so many sponsors if you can't cover the basic things like food for everyone? I think there is something which was started with BarCampLondon5, dual or even triple barcamps on the same day. So rather that have one huge barcamp of 500+ people, why not have two smaller ones. This also would fit because you can have one which is 2 standard days with sleepover and the other one a one or two dayer with no sleepover. Those up for the sleepover go to one and those not so bothered can go to that one instead.  How did BazCampLondon1 go by the way people?

I got a feeling the BarCamp and BazCamp concept seem to fit around major events like FOWA, Web 2.0 Expo, etc. So maybe the next big London BarCamp I might get somewhat involved in…

As you may have seen already my pacemaker talk went down really well, with a full room of about 70 people (almost none I actually knew) and my boxee/xbmc talk went down well too. Well enough to attract the attention of the famous hardware hacker Fabienne Serriere. Shes written for Hackaday, Engadget and worked directly with people like Jason Calacanis while at Netscape and AOL.

The best talk I attended, I got to say was from Candid Wuest who worked at Norton (one of the sponsors). The talk was centred around the changes in threat writing to a professional self organised system all about making the most amount of money from people as possible. Its all stuff we know but its good to hear it at a barcamp. I've been wanting to run a session about things I've learned about computer security and networking but never done it. I really need to upload the rest of my photos of the event.

Generally it was worth going to and I met a few new people during the day. Looking forward to what changes there might be in the next one. Maybe same time next year.

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