I had the pleasure to travel to visit to Lugano and participate at the first BarCamp-like event in Souther Switzerland and the first event for eTourism.
And this time it was another premiere: Our first BarCamp event at a big exhibition. I can see many advantages but many disadvantages as well and can not decide if this is something I like or not. Here is a list of some points I have noted:
Pro
- Sponsors are more likely to give money if you are part of something bigger.
- You can benefit from the infrastructure. No need to organize own food delivers and clean up crew.
- Media are present at the exhibition.
- eTourCamp was feature on information materials and the homepage.
Contra
- You are stuck inside the exhibition halls all day.
- The exhibition opened at 11:00, not a minute before and you had to line up. That was no fun!
- Exhibition visitors thought the eTourCamp was just another booth. They walked in and around and left again.
- Organizers stood by the entrance and told visitors this was a conference. No chance for them to participate.
- Marco Faré had to be at the entrance and give out coupons for a free ticket.
Another thing that was surprising: The introduction was schedule for 30 minutes, but took less than 5 minutes. No word was lost about how it works, how the schedule was setup. And some slots have already been filled before the first participants arrived.
Anyhow, I enjoyed my trip to Lugano and had even some time in the morning to walk around the Città and take some photos. Some sessions were pretty cool – I like the eTreasure idea a lot – but because I am not working in tourism anymore other topics were less interesting and the basics of blogging I’ve heard often enough 😉
You can find some impressions on Flickr or search for blog posts. Not much for now…
Update 18:24 I forgot to mention: The percentage of female participants was very, very high. I would say close to 50% if not over that. That something I really like and hope to see more often at other *Camps.
And a little note on the numbers of no-shows: 102 people have signed up, from those 35 didn’t show (around 34% no-shows) but there were around 20 people dropping in and attending without pre-registering. So the number of no-shows was at around 28% or 14%, depends how you calculate). That is in the usual and expected range. But we have to work on that.