Barcamp Bradford

Bradford's first ever Barcamp event was held on 14th November 2009 at the WOW Academy and the National Media Museum in the heart of the city.

I thought this was a very interesting Barcamp, due to two main things in particular. First point was the amount of first timers, people who had never been to Barcamps before, around 80% of the attendees which meant a lot of new content and ideas were discussed making it very refreshing.

Second point, this Barcamp was held over two different venues, which split the day up nicely. The morning was held in the WOW academy and after lunch it was moved over to the National Media Museum about 10 minutes walk from the starting point.

Sessions I attended during the day were:

Rethinking the Presentation (Stop the killing): This talk was given by Ian Smith. Ian talked about how to stop death by Powerpoint, and how we should think and plan presentations through using mind maps etc. before even reaching for the computer. He also gave some top tips on how to present and use presentations without boring people, and why we shouldn't use Powerpoint for everything which we present on. Ian's slide deck for this talk can be found on here.

Visual trends in web design since 1996: Monica Tailor gave this presentation showing various different design trends which we have seen throughout the years in web design and how we sometimes still use them. Monica showed examples of Frames, Drop Shadows, Tiled background images, Tables Of Contents, Flash intros, Tabbed navigation, Candy buttons and Blog designs. She then talked about current trends such as Transparency, Font replacement, Hand drawn fonts, large fonts and that we have to accept the users of Internet Explorer 6 will have to expect something slightly different with it being an older browser with older technologies.

Google's Hidden Gems: John Mclear, gave a run down of Google projects including Google Android, Analytics, Webmaster tools, Adwords and Adsense etc. and the hidden gems we can find within them.

Photography is not a crime - Know your rights as a UK photographer: I presented this session following on from the response I received at Barcamp London 7, and I was interested to get a general concensus of views within Bradford around this topic. I talked about what rights you have as a photographer in the UK. I also showed a short video which was filmed in London, again about photographers rights, but it also brought up some important points about photography in public, security cameras and the Big Brother state. An open discussion was held at the end of the session and some important points/subjects/ideas were raised by the attendees.

The ultimate to do list - 101 goals in 1001 days: Alex Wolf gave a very interesting presentation on a project she is working on called '101 of a Wolf' which involves completing 101 goals in 1001 days. More information about her project can be found over at the blog.

Free Software: This was a round circle discussion led by John Leach regarding the ins and outs of free software and how people can use it and contribute to free software projects.

Barcamp Bradford are hoping to hold another event around May 2010 next year, however I may have to visit earlier than that due to the fact that I didn't have a walk round the National Media Museum whilst I was there which looked amazing.

A big thank you should go to Ian Green for organising the event and to the following sponsers: Screen Yorkshire, Yorkshire Forward, National Media Museum, Panoetic, Frogtrade, Shipley College, BMedia, GREEN Communications, University of Bradford and Challenge CLC.