Barcamp is winding down in Denver as I write this post. It’s been a fun event and I met several cool and interesting people among the attendees. I also met many people in person that I previously had only known online. Even had there been no sessions, it was worth attending for the chance to meet and interact with some great people.
But of course there were lots of great sessions. The highlights for me personally were the following moments.
Stan James did a great job of showing off Lijit.com. Following his presentation, there was a very lively discussion about trust and how trust based systems can be “gamed”. Dave Taylor and Alex King made some very interesting and constructive comments about how users might perceive Lijit. They raised questions about how trust might be compromised for the benefit of “evil corporations.” I think Lijit is a well intentioned system and has the potential to be a truly useful service. I think Stan was listening.
There was also a great discussion about viral marketing. Quickly, the discussion turned to viral videos as a marketing tool. We got to see a preview of a new video for id345’s PocketFuzz service, which I posted about previously. It was made by a new Denver firm called ViralNewMedia. The group spent some time thinking about successful viral videos like the Smirnoff TeaPartay which has been viewed nearly a million times on YouTube, and trying to grock just what the factors that lead to success might actually be. Basically, it boils down to giving people something interesting to talk about, and hoping they’re bored enough to share it in hopes of being “in the know” early on something cool and different.
I also enjoyed the smaller break out sessions about the state of mobile technology and getting the latest info on JavaScript/AJAX toolkits.
Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the discussions. And thanks to all of the sponsors who helped make this happen. It was a good day.
