BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

On Saturday, June 20, BarCamp is coming back to Baltimore.

The craziest one I have been to has to be the one going on during SXSW. That one is hardcore and AWESOME. Almost every Barcamp is cool and neat in its own way and Baltimore, my home town, should be no different. David Troy, a savvy entrepreneur, tech evangelist and great guy and is heading things up and it is being hosted at University of Baltimore, my alma mater, which seems to be the place to go for tech events in Baltimore.

It is a great venue with lots of space and rooms to collaborate, free wifi and above all easy to flow in and out of sessions making it a most enjoyable Barcamp event.

I want to interview you:

If you are going to Barcamp and have a great business/startup and want to get some coverage, please find me, Steve Fisher, over at the event. I will have the Flip Camera ready to go and my interviewing hat on.

To find out more

BarCamp Baltimore is free and open to the public, but RSVP is requested. In true Barcamp fashion, Dave has avoided the organized event signup sites and has a very simple Facebook events page. For more information, visit: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=81892091319

You can also follow the event on Twitter @barcampbmore

Wordcamp Logo (credit:Technosailor)

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to visit where I went for my undergraduate degree at the University of Baltimore to attend Wordcamp Mid-Atlantic. It was put on by Aaron Brazell AKA Technosailor who is well known in the wordpress community and in on his previous lives was Director of Technology for B5 Media which was at the time the largest blog network running on Wordpress. He has some serious street cred in the Wordpress community and currently has a consulting practice working with some great firms implementing Wordpress as part of their strategy.

Aaron Brazell (photo by Shashi Bellamkonda)

Opening Remarks

He kicked the morning off with a thank you to sponsors and an introduction to the event as well as integrating in some great Ignite Baltimore presentations to keep things lively and not just Wordpress lectures. Mario Armstrong gave his personal branding presentation to start and we jumped into the first keynote of the day from Anil Dash of Six Apart.  Read on…

Keynote from Anil Dash

Anil Dash (photo by Shashi Bellamkonda)

After Aaron completed his opening remarks Anil Dash, co-founder of Six Apart (yes, that Six Apart) gave the first keynote of the day. He released some earth shattering news – Moveable Type solutions for Wordpress. WOW. That was some serious breaking news and an exclusive for attendees. Our very own Social Media Swami broke the news with a video interview. From Shashi’s previous post:

“The audience at Word Camp Mid-Atlantic drew a deep breath as Anil Dash, one of the co-founders of Six Apart a rival blogging platform delivered the keynote address. During the keynote he made a very sensational announcement. The screen lit up with a URL http://www.sixapart.com/wordpress which is like Microsoft having a place for Apple software on their website.

What Anil announced was that Six Apart is introducing plug-ins that word press and other blogging platform users can use TypePad AntiSpam, Six Apart Media, TypePad Connect, Blogs.com.

They are open source and FREE.

The other unconventional part of this announcement is that Six Apart decided to use a very grassroots Word Press event to make this sensational announcement instead of calling the New York Times, Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. I took the opportunity to catch up with Anil Dash and interviewed him for this blog.”

You can see the video interview HERE.

Sessions Geeky and Not So Geeky

Wordcamp Audience (photo: Jimmy Gardner)

The rest of the day was composed of sessions that went from the design side to the programming side of Wordpress. One of my favorites was the advanced session on the “Thesis” theme that has become so popular. It really opened up the hood for people wondering how this theme is different and more powerful that simple skins.

Jared Goralnick, TechnoTheory, (not to be confused with Technosailor) gave a left of center presentation called “Being a Balanced Blogger”

All of the sessions were great in their own way wrapping up with Dan Zarrella expanding Wordpress functionality with “Twitter, Friendfeed and Social Tools”.

Jimmy Gardner captured some of the presentations which are already on Slideshare:

• Brad Williams – Advanced Thesis Techniques and Tricks
• Brandon Savage – Wordpress Caching

Closing Keynote from Mark Jaquith on “State of Wordpress”

Mark Jaquith (photo by Dawn Casey)

Mark Jaquith, who I first met at Gnomedex 2007 when I was writing for B5 Media, is a great guy and a sharp developer. I think he gets annoyed when I tell him that he looks like Corin Nemec (Stargate SG-1, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose) but wouldn’t you want to be told you look like TV/Movie star? I digress, but his presentation was a nice wrap up of the day and he talked about the improvements to Wordpress 2.7, the epic FAIL of Wordpress 1.5 and what is coming up in Wordpress 2.8.

All I can say is that I am excited about detailed theme and widget control.

You can see the whole thing in Slideshare:

Mark Jaquith – State of the Word

It was a great event and Aaron along with support from Jimmy Gardner was a huge success. I see this to be even bigger next year.

Other coverage of the announcement and Word Camp Mid-Atlantic:
Leena Rao, Tech Crunch
Doug Coleman on ReadWriteWeb.com
Jimmy Gardner EastCoastBlogging.com
Joe Corbett Isteconnects.com
Mike Paetzold wptutorial.com
Ted Mann on TurkeyMonkey.com

It is based at the Emerging Technology Center (ETC) which is a large funky office space in Canton, a very hip area of Baltimore City, next to historic Fells Point. There are many great companies in the ETC including R2Integrated and Social Solutions.

Here is a short video of the Beehive Baltimore space and a quick interview with the founder and Director of Beehive Baltimore, Dave Troy. You might have heard of Dave from his Toad.Net days (he was CEO) and his fame with the creation of TwitterVision.

As you can see, it is in the early stages and Dave said that they are moving to a bigger space in the ETC. I signed up for a one-day a week plan so I can finally get away from the noise of the coffee shops and spend my Friday’s in a great collaborative workspace. You can spend from $25/day if you are a vistor all the way up to $275 to be a full time resident. For more details on pricing, check out their pricing page.

They also are publishing an event calendar and looking to host events that show off the space and attract people to become future customers. This seems to be the beginning of something great for Baltimore.

For more information, check out their web site at www.behivebaltimore.org and on Twitter.

Here is who is scheduled to speak (including Shashi):

Mike Subelsky, www.otherinbox.com: Mike will present a case study on how he personally used social media to promote the successful Baltimore event, Ignite Baltimore and his company, OtherInbox.

Jared Goralnick, www.awayfind.com: Jared’s case study will discuss – when was the last time you emailed a blogger? And ten other lessons learned in online relationship-building.

Dave Troy, www.beehivebaltimore.com: Dave will provide a case study on how he launched socialdevcamp east, a successful barcamp/unconference that drew crowds of developers and techies from Boston to DC.

Shashi Bellamkonda, blog.networksolutions.com: Shashi will present a case study on how he has changed the face of information sharing at one of the largest organizations – Network Solutions.  And how he utilizes social media on a daily basis to help provide real time feedback to Network Solutions.

Greg Cangialosi, www.blueskyfactory.com: Greg will present a case study on lead generation using social media and ways that he has used content for marketing, and social media participation to increase branding and lead generation with his company, Blue Sky Factory.

Peter Corbett, www.istrategylabs.com: Peter will present a case study on how he has utilized video for companies like Geico to help virally spread the word and brand of their organization.

Page Sands / Matt Goddard, www.r2integrated.com: So you know that Twitter, Facebook, Del.icio.us, and all of these other social networking tools exist. But what next? Marketing professionals are struggling to understand which tools are best for them, and how to utilize them in a way that makes the most sense. We have put together a strategic framework for building your social marketing plan. The framework allows you to go through a step by step process to figuring out which tools are appropriate for your goals, the best ways to use them, and tips for measuring their success.

Catherine Pancake, www.webadvantage.net: Social Media is all the rage, but some companies end up alienating customers, wasting money, and end up giving us a pretty good chuckle .  Catherine will present the Top Five Worst Social Media Campaigns and other examples of how companies or individuals got it wrong.

Marci DeVries, www.imrecommunications.com: Social media is one of the hottest topics today.  If you¹re like many, you¹ve got looming questions: What should I be doing now? How do I maintain it? Can I draw a straight line from social media to sales?  From grassroots to nationwide outreach, learn how to tap Web channels to lead,  join or further the conversation on issues most important to your organization and its constituents. Engage and connect using tools best targeted to your audiences.

Here are the specific time and location details:

January 27, 2009
Time: 8:30 am – 11:30 am
Location: Emerging Technology Center, 2400 Boston St. 3rd Floor
Baltimore, MD 21224
Format: Small Breakout sessions that are chosen by registered attendees
Costs: GBTC Members – $45, Non-Members – $55
Sponsors: Contact Steve Kozak for information

We would love to see you out there

Last we heard there are about 100 people registered so it should be a great event. So get registered and come on out. We will be blogging the event and would love to meet you.

We have many web companies in the DC metro area (Baltimore, DC and Northern VA) that are thriving and building a strong community. It is well known that this area has always been strong for IT because of the Federal Government and contractors.  Over the last 10 years we have been building a strong web community that serves the government clients and the private sector. I think this gives us a balance and helped us when the bubble burst eight years ago to not feel the impact as sharply as Silicon Valley felt and is feeling again today with the economic downturn really impacting these web 2.0 companies.

Still, innovation must continue and companies must grow or die. SocialDevCamp was designed to help them grow and I am glad I didn’t miss this one (I missed the first one).

On November 1st, a few hundred of the East Coast’s finest social technologists gathered at the University of Baltimore for a day of exchange and creation, relationship and application building alike. The event was organized by Dave Troy of Twittervision fame and Ann Bernard, CEO of Yut Media and WhyGoSolo. Topics included but were not limited to iPhone app development, Google Analytics, Raising VC funding, Location Based Services and even “Finding a Job in Social Media” given by Shashi.

I even got to give an impromptu session on “Rules for Entrepreneurs” which was a list of lessons I have learned over the years running two businesses and making LOTS of mistakes. It was very successful and I was motivated to turn this into a written series that will start in 2009.

Here are other blogs covering the event:

• Ahson Wardak
• Alex Hillman
• Chris Busse
• Lindy Dreyer
• Maddie Grant
• Dave Troy
• Mike Subelsky
• Lotame
• Akshay Java
• Apps for Democracy
• DC Piazza
• Mark Scrimshire aka ekivemark
• Maxine Teller aka mixtmedia

SocialDevCamp East is the Unconference for Thought Leaders of the Future Social Web.

Following up on the successful premiere of SocialDevCampEastSpring2008, held in Baltimore in May, SocialDevCamp East Fall 2008 once again invites east coast developers and technology business leaders to come together for a thoughtful discussion of the ideas and technologies that will drive the future of the social web.

Because of the central location, the event draws from Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston — the emerging “Amtrak Corridor” technology scene.

Where is the social web going? It’s going mobile, to geocentric services, and to open platforms. Join a community of like minded developers, social media gurus and thought leaders for an unconference to discuss the future of the social web.

We’re looking for thought leaders from DC to Boston to meet, forge relationships, and envision the future.

SocialDevCamp East is convenient to the entire east coast corridor via Amtrak. Just travel to Baltimore’s Penn Station — University of Baltimore is two blocks south.

On Facebook

Feel free to use the Facebook event page to learn more and invite others!

On Twitter

Follow socialdevcamp to stay abreast of developments

On LinkedIn

Join SocialDevCamp East on LinkedIn if you’re a developer or business professional who wants to be part of the East Coast social media ecosystem.

Event details

When
November 1, 2008
8:30AM – 6PM
6PM-10PM party

We recommend you get there as early as possible to maximize your input into the session selection process; similarly, stay as late as you like, there will be an afterparty gathering a short walk down the street. If you are going to have trouble getting there by 8:30 (because of train schedules or whatever), show up when you can.

Where
University of Baltimore
Thumel Business Center Building (site #4)
Mt. Royal and Charles Streets
Baltimore, MD

Cost
Free.

Event details

For more information including the ever evolving agenda and attendee list check out the site here. Hope to see you there next month. Everyone tells me that it was a great event last year. I am sorry I missed it. I won’t this year.