“I love being geeky with other people” – Dan Callahan

Dan’s quote pretty much sums up the BarCamp Philly experience for me, though I would substitute “learning” for “being geeky” (there were copious amounts of both all day yesterday). The event was a great success and fun because:

• I made cool new friends. Some were members of my PLN that I’d planned to attend with all along [Rob Rowe, Kristen Swanson, Mary Beth Hertz, Ann Leaness, Dan Callahan - a.k.a. Team (edu)BarCampPhilly], others were educators I met there for the first time, and others did something else entirely for a living. But … everyone was a teacher, and everyone was a learner.
• I saw how ‘unconferences’ work. While much of the behind-the-scenes planning is a mystery, the primary engine – the session scheduling system – was simple to grasp and worked wonderfully.
• I learned new things about leadership, branding, web 2.0 tools, and innovative teaching practices.
• I got to lead a conversation on a topic I’m passionate about, teaching as a second career. The group was small (about six not counting a few of my Team (edu)BarCampPhilly co-conspirators) but the conversation was terrific because everyone in the room contributed. I hope it was beneficial to those who needed it most.
• We were leaders among leaders – the Etherpad system we used for planning & control got people’s attention … and others started using it. Way cool.

I don’t want this post to be some big long boring verbose mess, so I put together a quick Voicethread. I hope my teammates (and other attendees) will add to it, as well.

-kj-