Today was the big day – Edmonton’s first BarCamp! And I think it’s safe to say that BarCampEdmonton1 (BCE1) was a big success! About 100 people attended, and the schedule was packed with three tracks of 20 minute presentations separated by 10 minute breaks.
The event got underway at the World Trade Centre downtown at about 10 AM. We passed around sticky notes for people to write their topics on and then started to build the agenda for the day. After a few quick opening remarks and some thanks to sponsors TEC Edmonton and Nexopia, city councillor Don Iveson read a proclamation for BarCamp Day in Edmonton. The first sessions got going at 11 AM. You can see the schedule we came up with here. There was quite a range of topics – everything from Financing An Idea to Why Are Fundamental Programming Skills Second to Framework Knowledge.
Lunch consisted of sandwiches from Sunterra, and lots of beer from local brewery Alley Kat. The venue was excellent for this kind of event as it offered lots of little areas to break into discussions, and attendees definitely made the most of them. The afternoon’s sessions finished at about 4 PM, after which a bunch of us headed over to Pub 1905.
I presented my talk on Twitter and also presented a session on Wireless in Edmonton with Eric. The wireless for the event was powered by a bunch of Eric’s Open Mesh devices, and for the most part it worked quite well. I think our presentation was very well-received, and I hope it got people excited for wireless in our city.
I know there were a few people taking photos and recording video, so watch for those to appear over the next few days. Check out the tag BarCampYEG at Twitter, Flickr, and Google Blog Search. You can see a partial list of attendees on the wiki – feel free to add yourself if you’re missing.
If you have feedback on today’s event or if you’d like to get involved with upcoming events, please let us know. You can leave a comment here, or on the BarCampEdmonton blog. Or you can email or Twitter or otherwise message us – we’re fairly easy to track down!
Thanks to everyone who attended today, and of course to everyone who volunteered their time and helped to make BCE1 a success. We’ll likely have a few DemoCamps before the next BarCamp, but I’m already looking forward to it!
MasterMaq's Blog 
I was really impressed with BarCamp Edmonton. Lots of interesting topics. The day went by very quickly.
I think my only complaint was that it would have been nice to have more time on each topic. Twenty minutes is barely enough time to introduce it, let alone get into a good discussion. I felt like we were just scratching the surface.
Maybe 50 minutes with a 10 minute break would be better? I don’t know how everyone else feels about that. The downside, of course, is that you can’t cover as much ground. The day could be longer too.
Other than that, I really liked it. I’ll definitely be attending future BarCamps and DemoCamps.