BarCamp Seattle 2009 Day 1 Highlights

Jun 13, 2009

BarCamp Seattle 2009 was a lot of fun today. Things got off to a great start when I ran into and caught up with a bunch of friends in the local tech/startup scene. A lot of the usual suspects were on hand, and it’s always nice to hang out with them.

I started things off by giving a talk in the 11:30 session on GTD – Getting Things Done. I’ve been on and off the GTD wagon for several years now, and used to give training sessions at a previous company, so I know the theory pretty much backward and forward. There were about 40 people at the session, and I felt a little nervous before I got into the swing of things. However, A few people came up afterward and complimented me on the talk, which made me feel a lot better – thank you, you know who you are!

A few other highlights from Day 1:

– The raucous laughter coming out of the Lightning Rant session. It sounded like they had a *great* time, and I can’t wait to hear more details tomorrow.
– I met Daniel Escapa, who works on my favorite software product of all time, OneNote. His name didn’t register with me at first, but I’ve read Daniel’s blog on and off for a long time. Great guy!
– I met Arianna O’Dell, who is the founder of FlyBy, an online music site. They have an interesting business model – free music with the occasional visual advertisement on your iPod.
– Had a chance to catch up briefly with Sarah Schacht, who runs Knowledge as Power, and is a strong advocate for government transparency. It sounds like things are going pretty well for KAP right now.
– Talked to two startup CTOs who both declined to talk about their products or companies. Funny, because I thought stealth mode was so 2007.
– Finally met @missrogue herself, Tara Hunt, who was attending and who also is in the middle of launching her new book, The Whuffie Factor. It’s a book about social capital and how companies and individuals should participate in the new world of online communities. Looks like a good read!