I‘ll be going to PodCamp Boston this year, just like I attended the first one Bunker Hill Community College, but after looking at this growing list of companies (with some very big ones, like Micro$oft), I’ve been wondering how this “unconference” is going to change this year. If the content of the sessions is going to be influenced and created by the participants, then I think PCB2 (what I am calling Podcamp Boston 2) is going to be very different, indeed.
Am I misremembering the atmosphere and what happened last year, or was there very little selling of products and services? I felt like I was in a community where people wanted to help each other, learn, and grow. I didn’t feel like every interaction with someone was a potential commercial transaction, it felt like an opportunity to meet a cool person, maybe network, maybe meet a future collaborator . . . it was a weekend filled with “maybes,” not a weekend of potential customers.
Reviewing the expanding list of sessions that have been proposed, there seems to be a good mixture of new and old faces . . . along with what could be corporate drones (you can pick them out yourself). I guess it doesn’t surprise me; PCB2 is being staged in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center this year, not the community college. We’re going corporate, a big time convention center that may have better facilities, but still . . . we’re going to where corporations go to show their wares, they aren’t coming to Bunker Hill Community College.
I’ll try to be open minded, but I’m also going to be ready to be disappointed if I feel like corporate culture has invaded this unconference.