BarCampChicago Sign-up!

BarCampChicago sign-up begins less than one week after MinneBar -- register today to make sure you get a spot reserved for this great tech event!

Although everyone who showed up for BarCampChicago 2006 was able to participate, the 2007 event may be a different story. If the TECH cocktail event attendees decide they're interested in BarCampChicago, Jason may have to put a limit on how many people can sign up for barcamp. Hard to say what will happen, so be sure to sign up this weekend. Jason just put a note out today that registration is open, and already there are 26 people signed up.

It will be interesting to see how the weekend plays out for this barcamp. Jason is going hard-core, with a Friday night set-up and probable social event, Saturday noon start to the main event, and things carrying straight on (for some people) through until the wee hours of Sunday night.

For all those passionate about video, please consider participating in BarCampChicago 2007 and helping put together a video record of the event. Having a video clip of the event is a great way to explain to others what the event is about, a good tool to help sponsors decide if they want to support the event the following year, and a fantastic propaganda piece to get others excited about participating in barcamps or starting their own event. If you don't do video but know others who do, please send them a note suggesting they consider participating in BarCampChicago. For examples of barcamp videos, watch the San Francisco or Austin videos linked on BarCampChicago, or watch the Seattle Mind Camp 1.0 or Seattle Mind Camp 2.0 videos.

Another suggestion is to get people participating in the event who build tech stuff. Seeing technology that you can hold in your hands or put your hands on is a good change of pace from seeing or talking about code or doing stuff online. At MinneBar we had a great session by William Gurstelle, author of "Whoosh Boom Splat" and other books. He showed us one of his spud guns, although his demonstrations were fairly tame. Maybe we could talk him into coming down to Chicago and do a more lively session... There was also a MinneBar session about robots, but the ones discussed and demonstrated were pretty small -- it would be cool to have some of the larger ones such as those made by iRobot or others. How cool would it be to have a RobotWebcam going from session to session at BarCampChicago to show others around the world what the event was like. Maybe even give remote control to web visitors, letting each one control the unit for two minutes.

Lots of possibilities, lots of time to prepare for this next midwest tech unconference.

See you in the Windy City...

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