Thomas aka KWentin
the business cards (made by the great artist andi from innsbruck) where the only thing remotely accurate to american psycho. and i can’t even say i was dressed up as dexter, because the shirt and tie would be too much.
either way, a bunch of fun :)
last three pics (c) by markus “frank west” ortner
off to berlin, then sylt, then salzburg… all within 4 days.. that’s going to be fucking exhausting. have to get up at 4 in the morning tomorrow. but i managed to squeze my tripod into my suitcase and my camera in my backpack, maybe i have time for some late nightshots in sylt… that would be the only time that’s not fully planned. wish me luck btw :)
see how close we were? during the concert the guys went from the main stage right to the place where we were sitting.. and then played two songs unplugged :D how awesome is that? and what a great event it was! i’m still blown away…
(yes i was too late to buy tickets in the standing area, but obviously it was totally worth it :)
great concert, love to see them again :)
CastleCamp Kaprun is over and I have to say that it was a real pleasure being there. my fourth Barcamp (2*klagenfurt, 1*vienna) but the first to have a dedicated topic: tourism. since I work in tourism and like the idea of Barcamps and also like free t-shirts, I had to be there. based upon the list of participants I knew and expected a few of our customers to attend, that’s how I could convince my boss to give me the company car and pay my accommodation.
LOCATION
the Barcamp took place at the Kaprun castle, you have to check out the official location-pictures. pretty awesome I must say. a great place, looking forward to the 360° panos from Stefan Kuzmanov. interior pix (thanks once again to dChris from Austria Tourism for his digital fisheye :)
ORGANISATION
it’s hard to believe that Rainer has never been to a Barcamp before, because he organized everything so well. apart from the location, the breakfast and lunch were great and delicious. also, all the coke, mineral water, coffee and Red Bull and stuff you want. the wireless LAN worked like a charm, there was a microphone for the introduction- and feedback-round (highly missed in Vienna). everything was A-OK. i wasn’t at the afterparty because I paid a friend a visit, but it seems like I missed some great music. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT. :)
SCHWAG or “I’m just here to get my free t-shirt and then I’m gone.”
so far, every Barcamp had it’s own t-shirt and they are always very welcome, but this time there was no t-shirt for anybody. way better: there was a nice sweater - the regular Zell am See - Kaprun sweater with only a few small logos on the bottom side. looks nice and is a great idea. very handy because it’s getting colder and colder - this weekend in particular wasn’t very warm :)
PARTICIPANTS
as said in the feedback round and in the video for Hannes (I think I don’t want to see it :o) i thought that a Barcamp specialized in tourism is a great idea - there was already one in Eichstätt. there were people from all different kinds of related companies with different backgrounds and interests and it was amazing to meet them and get to know more areas of the tourism industries, their goals, their problems, their approaches, their ideas, etc. very constructive and as always: the session-timeframe literally killed a few ongoing discussions. this is the fourth time I saw this happening, but of course the problem is that you can’t go to another room and continue, because you want to see ongoing sessions. how to solve this in future barcamps? longer sessions? longer breaks in between? set up a discussion board? but then you’d have to have registration and posting an so on, maybe too much to ask for some?
TOPICS
I’d say there was a fair share of the usual topics such as SEO, social media and web 2.0 stuff, but also some interesting conversations about guests from different countries in tourism destinations or hotels or a session about Open Street Map by Helge in substitution for Peter. OSM sounds interesting and I have to talk about it with my co-worker. and hopefully a lession could be learned: a Barcamp is not a place for a sales pitch. you don’t get to choose your audience - if your session is interesting enough, there will be an audience. if not, not. deal with it and try to be constructive in other sessions, not invasive :)
ALL IN ALL
for the time being, Rainer set the bar pretty high for future Barcamps I think. I’m looking forward to the next year and I hope to see many people again in Klagenfurt and on various other occasions :)
2008-12-04 to 2008-12-09… berlin again, fuck yeah.
finally a reason to look forward to the end of the year and it’s cold season, usually i care more about the summer :D
