Reflections on BarCampCLT (1-24-09)

Today was my 2nd experience with an unconference. BarCampCLT allowed people to bring topics to the people, and through a voting process organized the sessions. If you are a very structured individual, you might have issues with this conference format. However, I had the opportunity to sit on the following presentations. Here are some major points to share with you.

1. Twitter

• This tool is considered as an information buffet; Only take what you need!
• tweetdeck was overwhelmingly the apparent the choice of twitter client
• Be weary of the disruptive elements if you use twitter under your brand – People are known to falsely retweet

2. OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)

• XO2 is not under development yet – still considered as an artists rendering
• OLPC discovered that $$ was not an issue for customers
• Recommended reading: End of Poverty (Jeffrey Sachs) & Innovator’s Dilemma (Clayton M. Christensen)
• Before OLPC, there was NO netbook market
• Strength: Cannot beat it’s rugged design & run on very little power
• Weakness: Networking aspect – Not stable when networking 20-30 XOs; glitch discovered at a conference
• SW developers & educators are in demand with project; Have you tried XO’s GUI? Get Sugar today!

3. How to make $$ online

• You should have been here!
  

4. LinkedIn & Facebook

• What is your brand?
• Discussed usage of FB & LinkedIn
• FB limits you to only 5000 friends; fan page is unlimited
• In conclusion: Who you are=FB What you do=LinkedIn

5. Resume Killers

• Resume should go no farther than 10 years back
• Know your niche
• +1 versions of resume; customize for market
• If still employed, you can post anonymously to job search sites and should ask for at least 10% increase

6. Videocast/blog

• Viral videos are NOT dead
• Best quality ranking (per W. Sutton) then use tubemogul or heyspread to push content!
  1. vimeo
  2. viddler
  3. youtube
• Examplar of a great videocast: epicfu.com
• Referenced for mobilecasting: 12seconds.tv & seesmic.com

Look for audio from the above sessions later over here.