BarCamp Boston starts at 9am tomorrow. 150 geeks and geek-o-philes from all around Boston will arrive at Monster Worldwide in Maynard and have an unconference, all topics TBD, from 9am Saturday until 5pm Sunday. Some will stay overnight. All will actively participate.My role in BarCamp has been as an organizer. I initially suggested to some friends at Monster that they could provide a venue. I organized the wiki pages. I wrote about BarCamp to my friends and all the local tech groups I know about or coordinate. I went nearly hoarse pimping BarCamp to every living soul at the Web Innovators Group.  I ran the bank for sponsors. And I’ve been driving around for the past 2 days with about 400 servings of soda and water in my trunk.

This was a lot of work, more than I expected; but I’m just one of many people who’ve gotten BarCamp into great shape. Devon Biondi and her colleagues at Monster have gracefully handled the gazillion details that come with hosting a dynamic and overnight unconference. “The” Mike Walsh and his graphic designer, Eric Gagnon, made badges, printed sponsor logos, ordered T-shirts, structured the general schedule, and provided oodles of valuable guidance. Several others helped promote the event, answer questions, and more.  And our many sponsors made it possible to do this all at no cost to the participants.
After all that work it was really gratifying to see things come together last night. Devon, Mike, Ray Deck, and I gathered at Monster to prepare the venue, including

  • setting up tables for registration,
  • creating the agenda wall:
    • covering a section of wall with brown paper,
    • posting the grid of rooms and time slots for Saturday,
    • posting time slots for a “rooms TBD” draft of Sunday,
    • and printing and posting about 12 sponsor logos;
  • unloading drinks from my car,
  • pasting little footprint stickers on the floor to guide people throughout the vast venue,
  • printing registration stuff: maps/info sheets, waivers, etc.,
  • trying without success to turn on the lights in the cafeteria,
  • and whatever other little things came up for immediate resolution.

Seeing this list on my screen doesn’t come close to the feeling of being in a big, empty space with 4 people but knowing that just hours later it will be teeming with crowds of people somehow making sense of their teeming crowdness to talk, learn, and have fun together.  I feel like we could be very lucky or very unlucky; maybe that’s the nature of unconferences, although I think I’d be much more stressed if people were counting on the organizers to make this event perfect.  So far we’re lucky: it looks rainy this weekend so we won’t be losing partipants to dismal, lonely activities like playing frisbee or hiking in the woods.  But will people show up?  Will the sessions be good?  Will there be painful verbal brawls?  Brilliant new inventions?  Order?  Chaos?  And how will my session go?