So an African walks into a Bar(Camp)
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Last week I was introduced to the concept behind the BarCamp movement.
Don’t look at me like that – just because I hadn’t heard of it before doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. Anyway, once Justin and Stii had explained BarCamp to me I was pretty excited –I figured I’d blow the whole year’s marketing budget sponsoring BarCamp events all over the continent. I mean, here we have groups of people gathering to discuss and learn in an open environment – what’s not to love about this! And since we’re Africa’s best social media aggregator, it makes perfect sense for us to come on board as a sponsor, right? The problem, it seems is that this group is often microscopically small. In some cases, it’s not so much people meeting as it is one person there. Or at least that’s what it looks like. Right now it’s 5 days before the BarCamp Dakar event, and there’s not one attendee registered. Bummer.
From a business perspective, it won’t make any sense for us to sponsor this event, so even though we’d love to get on board and help, we’re a little tied down by the fact that there will be no-one there to wear our cool t-shirts. Now, it could be that Dakar is an isolated incident and that there are other BarCamps in Africa going on all the time that are packed to the rafters – I don’t know. Are there?
BarCamp Johannesburg’s Wiki shows that there were 26 attendees registered for the event – not a bad result. But my suspicion is that there were probably more people on the day who didn’t register for the event. Did any readers out there make it to this event? How did it go? Please let us know, or better yet – write a blog post about your BarCamp experience for all of Africa to see.
So now the question rattling around in my brain is this – how can we help to raise awareness around the BarCamp events BEFORE they take place, rather than simply taking up space on a t-shirt once the 3 people registered get there? I’m sure that between all the smart folks here at Afrigator (that would be you) we can think of a way to get these amazing events the support they deserve.
What do you think?
Darb said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 17:01
There are still early plans for hosting *camp, a similar un-conference idea. See http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Star_Camp/Cape_Town_2008
There was one last year (see http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Star_Camp/Cape_Town_2007)
Conrad Strydom said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 17:05
Yeah, this is a problem. I think a lot of the organisers underestimate how much work it is to spread the word. In an environment where there is no real twitterbase or muti clone to fallback on you have to do the hardwork yourself.
Back in 2006 I compiled a list of bloggers and professionals that I thought would be interested and basically spammed them the good news.
I sent mail out to different industry mailing lists and eventually caught some traction.
Because BarCamp depends on a participation formula people would constantly ask what they could do for me to secure their spot, and I would always say: “Blog, and spread the word dude”.
Give yourself a good couple months to gain traction, minimum 3.
Simone Puterman said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 17:16
Don’t forget traditional media
Make use of Bizcommunity.com’s event calendar - http://marketing.bizcommunity.com/Calendar/196/11.html - events are mentioned in the relevant newsletters.
Carl Spies said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 17:17
Barcamp was great
Managed to get Blaine Cook (former architect of Twitter) and Evan “Rabble” from Yahoo (developing FireEagle : http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/) to present as well as some super smart people like Paul Cook (Theoretical Physicist back in SA after his CalTech stint for a PhD in string theory).
Tweets here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=barcampjozi
and a list of blog posts as they happen at the bottom of the page on: http://barcamp.org/BarCampJohannesburg like http://langabi.name/blog/2008/10/12/barcampjozi-08-day-1
You’re welcome to pop by the Cerebra offices for an Akoha.com starter deck too - we’re equal opportunity do-gooders
Oz said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 19:37
Interesting. I have observed this too. There is a very simple solution here. Get one non techie marketing guy on board. I have tried giving free advise to some of this guys myself but if felt like once you cant throw all the techie terms in the air, you do not have much of a listening ear.
philippe said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 19:41
Au Sénégal on parle sans doute beaucoup français. Does Barcamp speak french? Does Afrigator speak French?
Armand du Plessis said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 20:38
Barcamp rocked. <40 people is the ideal size for Barcamp. Even with the relatively small number of people we didn’t get through all the talks. Breaking it up would make it too hard too choose, so many people on so many diverse but incredibly interesting topics.
Where else would you have talks ranging from hacking your tastebuds with miracle fruit to string theory to beyond REST/HTTP in one intense weekend
Justin Hartman said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 21:36
@Carl - the problem I have with BarCamp Jozi is I only found out about via looking at the BarCamp website. I think the point Lester raises here is an interesting one. On the one had we have BarCamps to create awareness however carrying the message is not always that simple or clear. I’d like to know how we can all help in creating the awareness because BarCamps are a necessary event in promoting brand “Africa”.
Maybe guys like Oz and others can share their advice and if they like, can even contact us directly (dudes@afrigator.com) with their thoughts. I’d love to associate ourselves with causes like this (and we have with BarCamp Africa).
PS. @phillippe - we are planning better cross-language support for Afrigator. It’s been too long that Afrigator hasn’t supported languages other than English.
Justin Hartman said,
Wrote on October 13, 2008 @ 21:41
PPS - A cool blog post on BarCamp Jozi via @prieurdp on Twitter.