Barcamp Vancouver 2009 + Photowalk

Saturday the 3rd of October  marked the second time I’ve attended a Barcamp here in Vancouver. What exactly is a Barcamp? Well it is an unconference. What is an unconference? From my observation there isn’t really anything scheduled during the day and the first part of a Barcamp is for people to give a brief overview (within 30seconds) of what they would like to talk about and then their talk gets scheduled into an available slot during the course of the day. There were a lot of topics being discussed but only a couple that I attended.

One aspect I do like about Barcamp is that there is also something to do in regards to Photography. So I definitely hit up the photography photowalk and then the work flow session afterward.

The photowalk was the first session I attended and a good sized group of people showed up to do it as well. Typically photowalks for myself last hours and hours, but since this was part of Barcamp and there were other talk sessions, this photowalk was only about 40 minutes. Though that can be enough time to capture a few images anyway.

Yes, that bottom photo is of Peter laying down near a Mercedes, though I never did see what sort of photo he took from that position.

After the photowalk I attended Raul’s (aka Hummingbird604) talk on how Freelancing is not Free and a lot of valid points came up. If you do freelancing, try not to do work free even if it’s a passion of yours (like web design/development and even photography are mine) but to barter, or look for compensation in other ways. Like John mentioned, a bottle of whiskey can go a long way! Well perhaps for him haha!

Then was lunch, where I just talked with Peter about various photography things. I’m always looking to learn more about photography and the industry surrounds it. Then it was off to the Photography work flow session with John Biehler and Scott Prince. They went over ways they could use tools such as Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom to organize and process your photos after you take them. I learned a couple new tricks via Scott as he uses Lightroom. It seemed the majority of the users during that session were using Apple’s iPhoto though, which according to John is a not as technical as Aperture but offers some similar features and functions. Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom will run you about $199 CDN.

Overall it was a really good Barcamp and I look forward to attending the next one. The venue was easier to get around to this time as last year it was on Granville Island and the venues were much further apart. People had to rush around between buildings last year, this year you could just wonder from room to room and up a couple floors if needed.

Did you attent this year’s Barcamp Vancouver? What did you like or dislike about it? If you haven’t gone to one, you should!