strangely entangled

I went to BarCamp Vancouver 2009 on Saturday – my first BarCamp ever. Was it a good time? Yes. Would I go back? Maybe, but I’d really have to think about it.

First, let’s talk about the good:

• The Remote Working session by @sticksallison. Shared lots of good tips on how to work remotely. Plus, dude lives on a BC gulf island and does Drupal development. That’s *my* plan.
• The “I got phished!” roundtable commiseration was fun, although it quickly degenerated into a discussion about how to secure your Facebook account.
• The price. $25 for admission which includes the conference, a t-shirt, food, and a pre-party (apparently there must be a Vancouver bylaw which requires all “tech” events to have an accompanying party.)
• The venue. The Discovery Parks Vancouver Centre is a nice spot. I’m even thinking of getting a co-working workstation for myself there. Yes, it’s not in Gastown, and you know, that’s not necessarily a Bad Thing.
• The smoothness. Props to the BarCamp organizing committee, you guys did a great job. You took a bunch of people, threw them into a room, told them to come up with a schedule, and then ran the conference without a hitch. Nice work.
• Friendly folks. There was no difficulty in striking up a conversation. Taking notes on my Newton Messagepad 2100 made it even easier as people kept asking me “IS THAT A REAL NEWTON?!”  (note: old/retro tech is a great way to spark conversations)

The disappointing:

• The presentation on “Education and Social Media”. One of my main clients is a BC university, so I was interested in hearing how BCIT used social media to facilitate learning. I was even more encouraged when the presenter opened with the statement “Social Media is not Marketing”. The rest of his 45 minute presentation focused on how BCIT uses Social Media to pull in new students and showcase the school. In other words: MARKETING. (note: if the presenter ever reads this post – your presentation was excellent, just not what I expected given the title & intro. You may want to consider that for future presentations)
• Speaking of marketing, I felt as though I was at a marketing convention. There were a lot of people looking to “leverage social media”. Not quite as much talk of “monetization” as there was at the MESH conference in Toronto, but it was still there.
• The guy who made a sneery-face at my Macified Sony Vaio-P, while commenting that his Linux laptop was superior. Dude: 1) that’s just rude, and 2) make sure the person you sneer at isn’t a former embedded Linux developer and sysadmin. Good thing I was in a good mood!
• It felt like the Northern Voice conference, part deux.

I think what really disappointed me was the soft-tech nature of the event. It was less of a tech event and more of a “who let the marketers play with computers?!” kind of deal (oh, now that’s going to generate some comment feedback I’m sure )

Mind you, I wasn’t looking for sessions on proper soldering technique – but the “Education and Social Media” presentation I mentioned earlier is a perfect example of what I didn’t like – the concept of “Social Media” seems inextricably tied into selling a product. While Social Media might be a great marketing tool, there are so many other applications of the technology that are frequently ignored.

The last thing I’d like to mention (and this is the big one for me): How similar the BarCamp Vancouver and Northern Voice conferences feel. That’s not really a surprise when you consider that many of the same people are on the organizing committees for both conferences (update: that was an assumption on my part based on the folks that I assumed were “in charge” at the conference). But is there really a need for both? Northern Voice is a social media conference, whereas BarCamp is supposed to be whatever the attendees make of it. But given the same set of attendees with the same interests, you end up with a lot of duplication between the two conferences.

In the end, for $25 I can’t really complain. I met some interesting people, made a couple contacts and attended two great sessions. Would I go again next year? Yes, but to either Northern Voice or BarCamp Vancouver. Not both – they’re just too similar.

PS: If you’re interested in a more techie conference, BazCampYVR looks pretty interesting.

According to a recent tweet, the Vancouver BC Workspace co-working facility is closing its doors later this month. It’s definitely a blow to the burgeoning tech community in Gastown, but it really doesn’t come as a surprise to me.

I’ve wanted Workspace to succeed ever since I first heard about it. Unfortunately, I never did much to contribute to their success. I’ve always found Workspace’s membership plans to be too pricey for what you actually got. A “Part Time” plan, which gives access 2 business days of the week & after-hours, is $345/month. Full-time 7×24 access is $495/month. Neither of these plans include a dedicated workstation – just access to the shared workspace environment. A full dedicated desk runs $595 a month.

While there are no other dedicated co-working facilities in Vancouver (that I’m aware of), there are other businesses that offer small-office rentals & dedicated workstations for similar pricing. Take The Network Hub for example, where you can get a dedicated desk for $250-$350 a month with access on any business day (not sure about evenings / weekends). Other “office in a box” solutions like Newlook Business Centre offer full offices for $550ish (caveat: I’ve never been to either The Network Hub nor Newlook Business Centre, so I can’t say whether they’re good or not).

Given the state of the economy, it’s no surprise to me that entrepreneurs are skipping out on Workspace rent and choosing instead to avail themselves of free wifi in cafes and libraries around the city. With more and more people doing this, these cafes are becoming places to network with people in your field. I can’t count how many times in the past few months I’ve seen tweets from folks announcing that they’re working at cafe X that afternoon, should anyone else want to drop by & co-work. These are folks that a year or two ago would post similar tweets with Workspace as the destination.

What does surprise me about Workspace’s closure is how it caught the rest of the Vancouver tech community off-guard (at least, those posting to Twitter about it). Did they not see this coming? I love the tech community in this city, but I have to say that it reminds me of the good ol’ pre-dot-com-crash days in Ottawa. Lots of parties & networking events, but not much in the way of substance.

Web 2.0 startups are a dime-a-dozen here, but just how many of them have gone on to be smash successes? It’s been a long time since Vancouver has produced a Flickr-like success story as far as I can tell.

If this post is coming across as negative, well, like I said: maybe I’m just jaded by my experiences in Ottawa. I really do love the community here and I’d love to see more success stories out of Vancouver. I just feel like the community is getting caught up holding CampOfTheWeek and StartupLaunchParty3.0, and not paying enough attention to the little details, like a beloved co-working space falling by the wayside.

Excerpt from a short instant message session w/my friend Scott:

Me: *sigh* One of Nat’s friends just emailed to see if we wanted to go see “that new star wars movie”
Scott: oh dear.
Scott: Is that the one with the photon light sabres?
Me: yeah, and Han Sulu & his sidekick Chekov, the hairy Vulcan.
Scott: HEheee