It was great to attend an event like this! Huge thanks to the organizers. It’s nice not to have to travel anywhere to go to a barcamp :) Nice, too, to recognize among the organizers people I know and hadn’t seen in ages. Hi, Vera! :)
I only went to the talks and skipped the other “parts” of the event, being unsociable :) A lot has been said about the good stuff, meaning the talks themselves, on Twitter and in other blogs; I have a very small remark about the organization.
First: Why gather people at 9 in the morning and leave them freezing until 12:45 (the start of the first talk at the Academy)? What was all this circus with city hall and Mayor Gurvits for? It was very unpleasant when all the attention turned to him during Svetlana Taranenko’s talk. The whole thing looked like an excuse for PR for the city authorities, in the persons of Yusov and Gurvits, rather than a barcamp. That’s my personal impression.
The bit about Odesa as the internet capital of Ukraine was especially hilarious. I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t stand politicians’ grand words.
Because of the long morning “freeze”, there were, to put it mildly, rather few people at the last talks.
Second: if there are 5-minute breaks between talks, constant late arrivals and chaos in the rooms are inevitable: naturally someone will run over time, and if it’s interesting, people will want to hear the end. And what if you want a coffee as well?
Conclusion: to let the participants “socialize”, they could have made the gaps between talks longer and dropped the unnecessary introductions (read: PR).
Judging by the reviews, everything else went off brilliantly! So thanks again to the organizers and participants.