I had a great time at WordCamp Boston today. It was the first conference I've been to at the Microsoft NERD Center.
Parking was a unique experience, both entering and leaving. Entering, I turned in (3) cans of food and got a free parking pass in return.
Leaving was another story all together. The electronic gate read CLOSED when we all tried to leave. Anyone parked in the garage had to wait 30 minutes for the gate to be opened for us. I know there's a photo of the WordCamp staff holding up the gate so we could all get out. Thanks for that.
Upon entering the conference area, you could tell the organizers spent a lot of time planning for everything. Very impressive set up.
Microsoft has done a great thing for the Boston tech community to allow events to take place at the NERD Center. Thanks for that.
There were a few fancy ways to get coffee in the morning, but I think it would have worked better to have a bunch of jugs of Dunkin Donuts coffee to make things run quicker. Also, when we got lunch, I saw we all got a banana. I would have liked to get that at the start of the day. I would have been happy to pay for a bagel, but there was no food to start the day.
Prior to getting involved in video production and editing, I used to be a web developer, programmer and data base designer and teacher. So many times I like to sit in technical sessions to see what people are talking about. I sat in a number of coding sessions and was impressed by the presentations and people presenting the material. Really smart folks.
The lunch line was more chaotic than it needed to be. When I was in line there were only four of us, but we were being rushed through to take whatever and move along. Calm down people.
I had a blast presenting my session on web video. Glad that people got a lot out of it. A few people told me that they didn't appreciate getting yelled at to leave the area immediately after I finished to make way for the Sumo Wrestling setup. Again, calm down people.
Scott Kirsner's talk with David Weinberger and Doc Searls was great. We got a lot of laughs from it.
I loved the Ignite WordCamp Boston sessions.
All in all, a very good experience. I was happy to be able to meet a lot of new people.
Thanks to all the organizers of WordCamp Boston.