by Michael Dorausch, DC

I went camping this past weekend in downtown Los Angeles at an event called Barcamp. Actually, there was a dog related emergency I had to attend to Saturday night which resulted in missing the sleep over sessions and Sundays pizza (darn). Either way, Saturday was great and I got to see lots of fellow techies from around the state of California (and some that drove in from Vegas).

One of the coolest things for me with events like Barcamp is the commonalities we have that brings us all together. I spent much of Saturday morning sharing some Ubuntu install tweaks with a few folks that needed assistance. Most everyone had their laptops and I brought along my newest toy plus my ubuntu powered dell. I was planning to talk about local search but found myself more having one-on-one discussions and attending other peoples sessions.

Thanks to the event, I’m now producing a film with Stephen Colbert, along with about 60,000 other people. I thought the idea for the 1 Second Film was very cool.

There were a number of folks from July’s 2007 Wordcamp and it was great to see everyone again. While the Swedish hall had some fancy chairs, the venue at Barcamp rocked, what a great location!

It was also great to have so many people taking photos at the event. Thanks to Declan, who’s got a bunch of photos on his blog, and to Dan Tentler and Lisa. It looks like the San Diego folks took the best photos.

Crystal Williams and Jason Cosper did spectacular jobs making sure everything was running along smoothly and that the event turned out to be a huge success.

Great to see everyone, already looking forward to the next meet up!