Barcamp Milwaukee 3

If you have never been to a Barcamp event, even if you do not consider yourself a "techie," do yourself a favor and go.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Milwaukee Barcamp 3 at Bucketworks. The event consisted of a large number of impromptu sessions ranging across a wide array of topics. While there were some very technical topics such as functional programming basics, Adobe Flex and AIR applications, and detailed looks at digital photo processing, there were also creative sessions on flash fiction, Mike Rohde's sketchbook designs, photo shooting forays, and the mini-planetarium (pictured in this post). Sunday included an extremely entertaining build-a-desk competition.

This was definitely a family friendly event with great food. The attendees, while skewing heavily toward a male population, attracted a variety of people. There must have been 150-200 people present.

Of course, I was there as a recruiter. While there were many sponsors for the event, some of whom were prominent names in the Milwaukee business community, I cannot say that I saw many (any) recruiters there aside from myself. Of course, that's a good thing in my book!

Here are a few tips for attending a Barcamp event where you think you might hire one or more individuals:

• Dress casually and comfortably. This is not even a business casual sort of event. Comfortable jeans and a t-shirt will work great. And because the Barcamp events tend to be heavily skewed toward the open source community, corporate identity shirts will probably make you stick out.
• Propose a session! Unlike the conferences you may be used to, the very nature of the barcamp is to put up impromptu sessions and see who shows up. If you have an interest or an area of experience, just post the session on the wall with a sticky note at a time slot of your choice. I did two sessions on writing IT resumes and had a great turnout on day one and an okay one on day two. The difference? Day one had better attendance and I think I had a better time slot, too.
  
• Like all tech group events, be sure to bring along plenty of business cards. As a sponsor for my company, I brought along a whole box and left a small stack at the registration table.
• If you have a cool give-away, then by all means distribute it! One session I attended on Adobe Flex included a free copy of Adobe Flex 3 and a handbook. Cool swag always goes over big.
• Consider sponsorship. For the Milwaukee Barcamp, sponsors could only contribute a maximum of about $200, which got your logo put up at the registration desk, the web site, and your name on the official uber-collectible t-shirt.