BarCampLA 8 update – (postponed)

>кухниate to do this, and more so are sorry about the late notice, but BarCampLA 8 is going to be postponed a couple months.

We’re looking at the possibility of January, we’re just making sure we can find a date with the least amount of conflicts that makes sense.
But I’m sure what you’d all really like to know is, “Why is BarCamp postponed?”

There are a lot of reasons, the big ones currently being resources, economy, and time. When it comes to us, the organizers, it’s been an
interesting time of year. I myself have been slaving away on work and projects to pay my bills. In addition, im currently in the middle of
moving to a new place, which has taken time from BarCamp planning. Similarly, our own Jeremy Kitchen recently just closed on/bought a
brand new home, and has been handling that craziness and moving with his busy work schedule being a kick ass network jedi of sorts for the
fine folks over at Dreamhost. In addition, Bronwyn has been focused on going back to school while working full time as well, big props to
her on that! We brought on Alex, who’s done a great job at our planning meetings as well as managing some of the flow of things we
needed to do, and Shannon is still our resident food-ninja, and is quite the ace at it.

As crazy as our schedules were, we had some great momentum in making this happen, but in the end, lack of being able to grab a decent venue
was what did us in. We contacted many prospective venues, but each time got responses of either ‘we’re not interested right now, check
back in the future’, responses involving not wanting to do it due to economical/financial reasons, it not being the particular venue’s
‘conference season’ and this not being available, or that weekend already being set aside for something or booked already for that venue.

So what does this mean?

Some really great things, actually. It means you, the attendees and BarCampLA community, will be getting a much better BarCamp experience
than what we would have been able to provide you with the original November dates. Our respective schedules and free time should be
rebounding soon, and we are dedicated to making this BarCampLA better than any previous BarCampLA to date. Bigger, better venue than before, more spaces and options, and other bits of feedback we’ve gotten from all of you on the BarCampLA mailing list, are all in the works.
There’s also one big change happening we wanted to let everyone know about..

Starting with the next one, we will be switching BarCampLA back to being once a year. The first BarCampLA was put together with the intent of being once a year, much like most BarCamp’s across the US, and the world. Part of the initial organizers from the first one decided ‘hey, this is awesome, I want to do another one, let’s get started now!’, and thus they created BarCampLA2, 6 months later.There’s a lot that goes into organizing BarCampLA, and a 6 month schedule invites burnout all too easily, not just for the organizers, but the attendees as well sometimes, which makes it harder for everyone to get excited for it and keep that passion. Switching to the normal once a year schedule will allow us to make the conference bigger, better, and more valuable to everyone and bring more excitement to it.

We would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on everything, including the new changes. Post on the mailing list,
@reply us on twitter, or just comment here on the blog. We’re here for you, our BarCampLA community, with open ears.

Thanks for your support, everyone!

-Chris, Kitchen, Bronwyn, Alex, Shannon, Your BarCampLA Team

http://www.barcampla.org
http://www.twitter.com/barcampla
http://groups.google.com/group/barcampla

http://artlung.com/ Joe Crawford

Very disappointing.

There are hundreds of BarCampLA-ers. Perhaps it’s time to put out the call for more help organizing.

Chris “rocknrollgeek” Darbro

Joe, this wasnt an organizational problem, as much as it was a venue sponsor/economy problem, we actually probably contacted at minimum more venue sponsors than we have for any previous barcamp. None the less, we’ll have something kick ass soon and be back rocking better than ever.

http://www.verticalsysadmin.com Aleksey Tsalolikhin

That’s great, sounds very sensible.

I hope it’s in the 2nd part of January as I’ll be out of the country for the holidays including beginning of January.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help on the weekend of the conference.

Best,
Aleksey
John Doe

Sounds good. I preferred it when it was once a year anyways. Thanks for the update.
http://www.heathervescent.com heathervescent

I’m really disappointed in this. I know firsthand the challenges of organizing a barcamp with little support.

Even in today’s economy there is way more support and a significantly larger community. Instead of postponing and deciding that barcamp is going to happen only once a year – I’d let the community decide and get involved to make it happen.
http://artlung.com/ Joe Crawford

Chris, you say it’s not an organizational problem, but this post details the ways in which all the primary current leaders were overburdened. Perhaps my comment was seen as nitpicking, but it was not meant so. The few-weeks-ago thread on list call to get help with venues was a start, but I think this indicates there’s a need for a larger core set of primary organizers. Perhaps for the next organizers meeting make a broader call to the community for help.

And here’s where I expose myself as all-talk no action — I can’t take this on right now as I’m moving and traveling for the end of this year.

And thanks for all the hard work: it’s appreciated.

Chris “rocknrollgeek” Darbro

Joe: that part of the post probably came out wrong. As swamped as we were, that didnt really take away from the dedication and devotion to BarCamp, like I mentioned, in the end we had contacted more people than we can count on fingers and toes, and the availability wasnt there, or was only there for an astronomical price that couldnt be afforded. Things like switching to a year, etc, had nothing to do with this, they’ve actually been in the works for quite some time, we did lag there on announcing/talking about that more. But, it’s time for change, and time for improvement. BarCampLA attendees have talked, and we’ve listened. Some big changes that the community has requested for a while will be coming, in the way things happen both days, tracks and scheduling and availability, and more. Not sure how much you know of me personally, but I always make things kickass when my hands get a hold of them, and BarCampLA is no different. We’ve got an awesome team of organizers who I have great faith in and are amazing in their abilities and what they do.

Keep your eyes peeled…you’re gonna like what you’ll see.
Thanks for the Support!

Heather: yes, whether on twitter or blog comments, we know you’re disappointed, and as you’ve mentioned many times in the past, know that you know first hand the challenges of organizing ________ event. Regardless, in the past couple years BarCamp has progressed and grown and more, it’s continued to get better, and that’s not changing. Like I mentioned to Joe, we’ve got a rock star team who i couldnt be more proud of, who have all the proper dedication and experience to making this BarCampLA great.

http://factoidlabs.com Mack Reed

As a charter BarCamper (haven’t missed one yet) let me say I think going to once a year is a big mistake.

This community is so prolific and the evolution of its work – and the market space – is so virulent and fast, that we’ll be missing out on a huge amount of innovation that could inform and enrich all of our working knowledge and personal/professional/creative evolution.

Active BCers will have to choose now from among twice as many cool projects/ideas the ones that deserve their one or two presentation slots, and we’ll miss out on many more of the ones they didn’t show.

I hope I speak for more than a few of us in saying let’s shoot to have the biannual schedule continue.

As this excellent community grows, shrinking the window through which we all get to view it is counterproductive, untransparent and, well, sad.

BarCampLA 8 update – (postponed)

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