Yesterday was BarCampBradford. It was my first BarCamp so I didn’t have any set expectations of how it would be or what I would get out of it. I certainly had a sense of anticipation and excitement when I arrived at WowHub yesterday morning.

I was struck by the buzz in the room when I walked in and as I started talking to the folks there what struck me was the distance some people had travelled to attend the BarCamp. One of the first people I spoke to was David Batty who had travelled over from Lancashire at some early hour of the morning.

Ian Green was the organiser of the event and opened the unconference around 10am. There was then a mad dash for the white board to put your name up for a presentation. As it was my first BarCamp I hadn’t written a presentation, so decided that I would be an active participant instead.

The topics people started writing up varied greatly in themes – from Second Life to Internet Round Table to Goal Setting to Legal Challenges of Web 2.0. I wasn’t sure what I had expected from the themes of the presentations, but the wide variety of topics certainly exceeded my expectations.

The first presentation I went to was by Ian Smith. His inspiring presentation was about ‘Rethinking the Presentation‘. Which was a light hearted but serious presentation about how we all spend time in presentations which are neither worthwhile or engaging. His tips on how to improve presentations or event not use ppt were warmly welcomed.

I knew as I walked in the room that I recognised Ian – and after a few minutes pondering , I realised that we had worked on the ASDA Internet Shopping project some 12 years ago!

The next session was an internet marketing round table discussion. This one for me was slightly disappointing, and I left early to go to John Mclear‘s Google’s Hidden Gems presentation. Certainly an insight into Google’s Acquisition Map opened my eyes to the fact that no UK company had been acquired by Google

Lunch was a healthy dose of pizza and chips – with a glass or two of cola 🙂

I left at lunchtime as I had family commitments in the afternoon, so I know I missed some great presentations that I would loved to have stayed for.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next Leeds and Bradford Bar Camps.

Congrats to Ian on a superb event!

If I were to choose some words which summed up the day I would go for; energy, buzzing, enthusiasm, eagerness, collaboration, eclectic, diverse, engaging, insightful and rewarding.

What words would you use to reflect on the day?