Last weekend, I attended my first BarCampBoston event. I found it be one of the most invigorating ways to spend a weekend. For those who are unaware, BarCamp is an unconference held in response to O'Reilly's invitation only Foo Camp. Discussions are run by the attendees, and can cover topics from emerging technologies, viral marketing, hiring, to Battlestar Galactica.
When I think about what differentiates the east coast from the west coast (namely Boston and San Francisco), it always comes down to communication. San Francisco definitely has a more of a sense of open collaboration and shared learning. However, I think the intellectual prowess of the Boston area is quite impressive, and events like this are helpful for the community.
What excites me about Boston, and this is a point that both Jay Neely and I agree on, is that Boston has "normal" people. San Francisco is chock full of early adopters and technology enthusiasts. While this is healthy soil to give birth to new technology, it is not the environment for solving long-tail user adoption. If you want to cross the chasm, you need to take a step out of San Francisco to do it.
At least this is what I tell myself, since deep down, I could move to SF in a heartbeat.
I, myself, live among the lakes and trees of central New Hampshire. I endure a 90-minute commute to Boston in order to live somewhere nice enough for the French President to vacation at. I rely on telecommuting and a distributed work environment to allow me such a luxury. It was for this reason I was inspired on Sunday of BarCampBoston to lead a discussion titled "Nowhere! - living/working/hiring remotely". The talk was unprepared and actually the first that I had given in a while. In spite of that, the discussion seemed to draw a decent crowd and go quite well. It was nice to see that I was not the only one passionate about the subject.
I am now eagerly looking forward to BarCampManchester. I hope that all of you north of Boston to come join us, and offer your help to Ian and Kelly who plan the event.
