Barcamp Orlando 07 Planning Party
On June 24th 2007 I went to a Barcamp planning party that I had heard about from Gregg Pollack who had signed up for our Web Entrepreneur Meetup and then posted on our message board. At this party I met some very interesting people who told me about some of the groups that they were very passionate about. I met Gregg Pollack Officially and then immediately after Robert Dempsey. I quickly found myself in a heated Windows (me) verses Mac (them) debate. Lucky for them, people were arriving (just kidding)!
After Gregg Pollack greeted his guests he gave me more information Barcamp and I asked him if he ever thought about taking it farther and doing more with it and since this was the planning of Barcamp that maybe we should entertain the idea of something more. After some reflection realized I was just another one of those crazy people with passion trying to convince people that we should be doing something other than what we were meeting for in the first place. My mistake Gregg, I apologize.
Gregg told me about a person that was on his way that had the same ideals that I had and that maybe I would interested in joining up with him on it. So, I got an earful of passion from people on rails, w3c standards and other things. Of which I gave these same people the same earful. Larry Diehl was nice enough to listen as well as a couple of other people that I do not remember as they only listened for a minute and moved on, then the person that had the same similar idea as me, walked in the door. This was Michael Giouard (Mikeg) who I found out was an instructor at Full Sail at the time and head of the PHP User Group. Mikeg wanted to reunite Refresh Orlando. I thought this was a great idea, except I thought it would be more adventurous to start from scratch and make a new name for ourselves rather than just latching onto yet another nationwide movement that may limit our growth. Mikeg also wanted the more W3c standard stuff to be involved and I wanted more then just that. For the record, I know he wanted more than just the w3c standard side of it and that there is more to the Refresh Orlando concept then just w3c standards, but again I found myself pushing for more than what the purpose of Refresh Orlando was about. Now in retrospect, my mistake Mikeg, I apologize.
Realizing that I had talked way to much and not listened enough, I found a young videographer Jason Hawkins that told me about his passion for video as well as how his girlfriend (Meagan Fisher) and him were trying to get a web design company off the ground. Well since I had been building website for 10 years I started telling him a bunch of ways to get business on the internet. This was my attempt to give back and stop being so selfish but he was busy, he had some filming to do. I may have given him an earful on my Stan the Devil project, I do not remember.
Days later I sent in my sponsor check for the Barcamp Orlando event and went into the WIKI and added a bunch of non programming presentation requests. (I just read on the Barcamp wiki recently April 2008, that it was geared towards programmers, sorry) Not getting the Barcamp concepts but yet in the end, really getting the point of what Barcamp is about (this can be a separate argument for later discussion). The point here, I was moved! I had a new passion and I was getting involved.
1 Trackback(s)