BarCamp Dublin took place yesterday. It was my first BarCamp but certainly won’t be my last. It was a lot of fun and there was a great turnout. The venue in the Digital Exchange building, part of the Digital Hub in Dublin, was a good one but there were persistent internet connectivity problems throughout the day. The upside of that though was that there didn’t seem to be too many people spending all their time on Twitter¹ :-).

I had thought about writing an overview of each of the sessions I went to but there was just so much good stuff talked about that this post would have been far too long. Suffice to say that among the highlights was Conor Halpin’s talk about pricing models for SaaS, illustrated by his use of a straightjacket. He recommended a mixed model of subscription and per-usage charges. Darren Barefoot from Capulet had a session on social media marketing with some great tips on how to increase the audience for blogs and how to use bloggers for marketing products. Eoghan McCabe’s talk on web usability generated a great deal of audience discussion, surprisingly around a specific case: the way online banking sites ask for a customer’s PIN. Later Paul Campbell (pictured left), a member of the Ruby Ireland user group and along with Eoghan part of the new Patchwork team, gave a typically enthusiastic introduction to Rails, pulling off his first ever presentation really well.

After lunch there was a panel discussion on some general Web 2.0 issues with Tom Raftery, Sean O’Sullivan from Rococosoft who had earlier talked about Voice 2.0, Darren Barefoot and tech journalist Karlin Lillington. Among the questions the panel covered were how to make money from web 2.0 (advertising and a premium rate model like Flickr) and getting more readers for your blog (quality is more important than frequency; sincerity and originality is vital). There was also an interesting discussion on the recent death threats made to Kathy Sierra and the subsequent O’Reilly code of conduct kerfuffle. Darren Barefoot made an interesting observation about how the barrier of entry to fame has been lowered. The long tail effect is probably coming into play – it’s possible to become famous among a smaller niche group. Notoriety in any form tends to bring undesirable attention and that’s something that bloggers need to be aware of.

The final session I went to was a bit rushed unfortunately because previous sessions had overrun. There were also very few people at it which was a pity because Krishna De had some interesting things to say about using blogging to build buzz about your business. I look forward to being able to hear her speak again under better circumstances.

Afterwards it was down to the Lord Edward in Christchurch for a few free pints courtesy of Diageo. Overall the event was excellently organised, well supported by the various sponsors and attended by a group of interesting, passionate individuals. Hopefully next time internet connectivity will be sorted out.

– Fintan