Today, I attended the first BizcampNewry, which I must say I very much enjoyed it. It was an all-day event & held in the Southern Regional College in Newry, a city about 30 miles from Belfast near the border.
For those of you unaware what a “BarCamp” event is, it’s basically a mini-conference where the attendees arrive and sign up to be the speakers for half hour slots throughout the day. You can generally talk about whatever you want but from experience of attending similar events, it’s wise to have done some preparation before hand, rather than jump up on a whim. It’s also advisable to speak on a topic you are very well versed in as you never know who may in the audience, and you could find yourself out of your depth very quickly.
It was billed a business conference but the talks I attended were very online business orientated although this may have been due to the effect that I was drew to the webby sounding talks. I did see, for example, a talk on auditing which I’m sure was business agnostic.
Of the talks I attended, I particularly enjoyed Niall McKeown’s (ION Online) talk on why you shouldn’t (should) start an online business, Lee Munroe’s presentation on the growth of Lookaly and Mark Nagurski gave a great insight in the afternoon on how to monetize your online brand.
There was also a presentation in the morning (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the gentleman’s name, if anyone remembers, please let me know in the comments), who told of how he had successfully built a business online selling inflated balloons. An amazing idea and he passed off some very useful tips and tricks to consider when distance selling physical products online but he did however advise people with an idea of selling products to start off by building their own websites. I disagreed and why I disagree will be the topic of a blog post later this week…
These events can sometimes be blighted by people only there to promote brand numero uno, but thankfully that didn’t seem to be the case today with many speakers clearly just giving up their time to pass on the value of their experience which was appreciated. If you were one of these speakers, I thank you.
All in all a great event so close to home, and big props to Chris McCabe & Nichola Bates for making it all happen, these things don’t come together magically and I’m sure there was a lot of hard work went on behind the scenes.
Incidentally, I found out about this event through the Digital Circle network and also see that there is a BizcampBelfast on the horizon. I shall certainly be there.
