This is what BarCamp looks like after lunch break. Of course, we aren’t sure it looks like this for everybody, but this is what it looks like for us.

So far the “non-conference” has been great. If you have never organized a conference you would be amazed at how easy it is to mess up. There are hundreds of details that would never occur to a normal person which can absolutely sink a conference. By the time the damn things start, it’s too late to do anything about it.

BarCamp has suffered from none of this, thanks largely to the efforts of Mike Walsh, who has years of experience as an event planner. Everything has happened on schedule, ample stocks of all of the basic geek food groups; urns of good coffee, Krispy Kreme donuts, Pizza and salad, even baskets and baskets of candy bars!

Right now we are in a session on search technology – do we want personalized, predictive search, or more easily modifiable searches. Next we want to find a demo of a new service called Plum.

We appologize for any typos or design errors – by necessity we are learning to use Word Press on the fly….

Chris makes a good point that blogging goes back to pre-Revolution America, and by extension, 17th century London newspapers. Segues into Cat Blogs, Digg and social networking.

The Daily Mashup seems to be a meta-aggregator, and from there into Boing Boing and a discussion of on-line advertising. Also CNET visual news tools. Aggregate video – Secret Pants, Ask a Ninja, Don’t be that Guy. Video blogging, with a good promo for Steve Garfield and Rocketboom .

Hmmm. There must be a way to add links in wordpress easier than writing the whole ahref tag…..

Some of the ideas are fascinating, and hope we can make the connection to the right talk in the right room. One guy is going to show off his on-line poker school. Another guy with a thick Israeli accent says he is going to talk about creating leaders around the world. We think he works for a Bio-tech company.

All the Monster people are in orange.

Lots of the particpants seem to have their own companies (”I work for myself”) and are basically selling same.

The more we look around, the more we realize that a lot of the people here are over cafinated and operating on demanding personal agendas. We feel the energy in the room snapping and crackling, especially when the geeks start talking about money, start-ups, angel investors, etc.

We may need to slip out for some stress medication before it starts to get to us.

Stay tuned….

In a renovated red-brick mega-office mall called The Clock Tower Place, reminiscent for us of the University of Texas Clock Tower where Charles Whitman gunned down a dozen strollers on the UT Mall a few years before we arrived, in a space provided by Monster.com, a bunch of geeks are reveling in each other, their geekiness, and all things technological.

The Dowbrigade feels somewhat out of place, as we don’t really have the smarts to be a true geek, but since we like hanging out and listening to smart people, we are trying to fit in.

Actually, after enganging in a couple of painfully polite random comversations we have rebuffed the friendly people and retired to a solitary table near a power outlet to hide behind the screen of our iBook (no mean feat, it’s just an old 12-inch) and blog away.

This is a screwy kind of “non-conference” conference, with an agenda made up as it goes along. So far only a few session discriptions are up on the wall, and a lot of the topics are highly technical, ie the Dowbrigade would understand as much as an escatalogical discourse in Swahili, but a few look accessible.

The Wi-Fi seems to be working well. I will try to post additional notes later.