BarCampOttawa

When I was at SXSW this year, I got to see Tantek Çelik. Not one-on-one, mind you, but his presentation on Creating Building Blocks for Independants. While I knew of him before, I didn't feel passionate about any of his work such as microformats. It was an interesting presentation and it managed to change my opinion of him and the work he does. He seems genuinely interested in building tools that enable others to take those things and build on top of them (microformats being an example of that).

The presentation came to its conclusion on the subject of BarCamp and how it came together in only six days. BarCamp is essentially a day where a group of people (the original BarCamp had over 100 people) that come together, break off, schedule sessions and generally just discuss some fantastic ideas. What was interesting was his analogy that BarCamp had become a building block for people around the world to use.

And such is the case here in Ottawa. BarCampOttawa will be on Saturday, April 22, 2006 and will be hosted at the BitHeads office. I'm really excited to see what comes out of this and it should be a great deal of fun to participate in. If you're in the Ottawa area or feel like making the trek from wherever you live, I recommend checking it out!