This is my side of the story about the BarCampFCT event.

First of all, congratulations to the organization for selecting a great place to make the Barcamp. I never went to the FCT UNL before, but I loved the peace, the view and the weather. However, next time try not to do a Barcamp on a amphitheater.. it kills networking!

The day began with a slow start… The poor guy talking about FireHOL had the duty of waking people and do the kick off. Next talk about technique presentations by João Rico started well, but quickly became boring. I had to get out of the room and search for some coffee…

This was actually a good idea, because at the coffee break room, it was happening a lot of networking! Kudos for the cookies and the coffee, they were great! This happens to be the first time to know people and mingle around.

Next it was the lunch… the lunch was perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Congratulations for this!

Wizi arrived late, and managed twice to almost kill the barcamp. On their first talk, they asked for 5 minutes, and delivered some 20+ boring talk… Can’t help it…

But then there was halfbaked! Lot’s of great ideas about creating a new company, and lots of laughing too. Great time! TarPipe’s didn’t disappoint, although I was expecting a more practical talk about the service (/platform/product).

After more coffee and cookies, it was time to IGNITE! First I have to say that ignite sessions should have been done earlier, and the organization should be more fair and respect the speakers. Some got 10 or 15 minutes, some got 5 with auto rotating slides (killing the presentation), and then Wizi destroyed all the ignite spirit.

I managed to get 5 minutes auto-rotating slides and talked about “Debian Sucks” (it doesn’t, really!) and the OpenSSL fiasco.

Overall it was a great day, the organization deserve a great applause! I’ve got some good conversations, new ideas, met new people, and learned how a company (Wizi) can easily generate some bad buzz at an event.