BarCampZurich – And Swiss are not "bünzlis"

It is over. The first Swiss BarCamp is history. No more meetings at the big coffee chain with Gabor, no more Wiki-addiction.
And I have to say, we are very, very happy how everything turned out. Almost 100 people showed up (according to the badges, we had 99 participants. Neither Berlin nor Vienna had so much). I can only explain that with the mass-mailing we sent out a week before the actual event. We wrote an email everybody and asked to remove themselves if they can not attend. And with only 14 (out of 113, that’s 10%) not showing up, the little extra work was definitely worth it!

The people showed up on time, Gabor and I, we could start with the introduction on time and offer the first apero. During that, the schedule was set up. Pretty quick and final, it seems to me. In general, the timing worked very good.

The sessions were interesting, a great mix of topics:

• various AJAX presentations and AJAX-problems
• Usability methods (better do a 30 minutes test than no test at all)
• Microformats
• Artificial life
  Organizing email
• BarCampRhine
• Funding and founding your company

And many, many, many, many more.

After the event and the second apero, we met at Niederdorf for a beer (or two) and more discussion. And I have to say, I had a lot and great discussions. Sorry to everybody I missed, I hope to see you at the next event or we can email.

We had no problems with the concept, it is very appreciated and a few already asked for another BarCamp (BarCampZurich2007 anyone?). I hope so, I would love to do it again. And I hope Gabor will have some time too ;-).

A big thanks from me to all our participants – coming from all over, Geneva, Basel, Paris, Strasbourg and Germany, our volunteers (great job) and our sponsors (local.ch, Manroof, Google). Thanks for the “yummi” food (which I haven’t tried, spoken to to many people ;-)) and the time spent with out. We’ll see us at the next event (BarCamp Blogosphere, maybe?).

PS: Parking in Zurich is either complicated or expensive:
My first ticket since I drive