Reflections on BarCamp Cape Town 2006

It's just under one and a third years since the first BarCamp Cape Town and it's just under two months until *Camp, the next BarCamp-style technology unconference in Cape Town.

One things that struck me about BarCamp Cape Town was the breadth of those who came - anything from hard-core C programmers through the Python/Ruby fanboys to more run-of-the-mill PHP programmers to those who couldn't program at all as well.  Those who work in marketing to those interested in it to those who find the entire field a bit distasteful.  Businessowners to wannabe-entrepreneurs to those who'd just like to code and have pizza slid under the door every evening.  It was a place to meet new people in your area of interest - existing groups weren't really growing the pool, and also a place for inter-pool connections to be formed.

BarCamp Cape Town was the catalyst of a few ad-hoc "Geek Dinners", from which sprang 27dinner (in Cape Town and Johannesburg mostly, and also in Durban) and GeekDinner (mostly in Cape Town).  While there are some who move between the two, there hasn't been the sort of mass integration the likes of BarCamp Cape Town since then.

I want *Camp to be the place where that interaction can happen again.  We'll probably have separate "tracks", so that nobody is forced to listen to "marketing" or "geek" speak when they'd rather not, but there should be plenty of opportunity to swap tracks for a bit and to mingle between talks or in the Games Room.

What excites me is that I feel we've become more aware of our surroundings, and we've started to build local heroes (people and sites/businesses), and we've got a bunch of interesting startups to talk about.  There was no Amatomu or Afrigator back then, and Muti was still young.  I'd love to hear from the people who've built the businesses and/or technology behind these and other South African "Web 2.0" (much learn not to feel so bad saying the phrase) social media/user-generated content/&c. endeavours.