BarCamp Stuttgart 2019 (#bcs12)

BarCamp Stuttgart #12This weekend Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th of September the 12th yearly BarCamp Stuttgart took place again. As usual the event communications happens via twitter, see https://twitter.com/bcstuttgart hashtag #bcs12. I had paused for 5-6 years since last attending BCS. While the topic focus has shifted a bit since that time, it became more open and non-technical IMHO, it had been a really interesting and enjoying event again. I had the impression that this event is a place where some of the most motivated and engaged people from Stuttgart meet once a year. 

As usual, the topics on the open BarCamp had been very diverse but there were many new inputs and things to learn. The most technical session was probably on the Python scripting language, that answered some of the questions I had from my fight with python 2 versus 3 and virtualenv.
While the most physical and practical session has been Augen-Yoga:

A bit worrying is that the number of participants declined from last year’s 250. The Hospitalhof could have easily hosted more participants. So is the format of a BarCamp out of vogue eventually? It would be a pity as the organisation team did a great job again and in the contrary the BarCamp format could be used as a hack to the culture of a company potentially. No other format of event is so open, free and basic democratic that it could be an alternative or addition to corporate management updates or question and answer sessions.

So join next year again when BarCamp is again in Stuttgart or anywhere else!

BarCamp Stuttgart 2011

I just a week ago got a tip from some ex-HP colleague that there is a yearly event of the local Web 2.0 scene here in Stuttgart, the Bar Camp Stuttgart (BCS4) for the forth time already. So this weekend from Friday to Monday the event took place in the Literaturhaus (Bosch Areal, MFG etc.) with main event days Saturday and Sunday (1.10/2.10). Unfortunately I could only attend on Sunday but still it has been an interesting experience. Dresscode relaxed of course, at the begin, after a gratis breakfast and a short introduction round for new attendents like me, the group of max 250 persons proposes sessions and plans the day on a board in front. Then one had the day over sessions in various rooms of the MFG as well as outdoor. That’s the sessions that I had attended:

  • Xing — how to use Xing in combi with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter for self-marketing
  • FAQ Existenzgründung
  • Stuttgarter Startup Szene — Networking
  • Deutschland den Geeks — political discussion about Pirate Party
  • Coworking

Unfortunately one could only attend one of the up to 8 parallel sessions, there were quite some interesting topics, sometimes far away from the actual topic of startups or Web 2.0, but everyone is free to propose a topic as long as it finds some interested people to attend.

The whole event was free, sponsored by MFG and others with optional sponsor tickets. Excellent catering framed the sessions. It was interesting to see how much potential for new startups and innovation ideas there is here in Stuttgart after all, although there were barely any potential founds in the FAQ session, only already-entrepreneurs. Obviously the climate for IT startups in Stuttgart is not as ideal as in other places like Berlin, although there is not some Coworking facilities, places like the IBH, where we had started and several events for new companies like this one.

So pretty interesting experience and I’ll sure attend next year’s BarCamp again. My page on Mixxt.