While there are new tech conferences in San Francisco every day, LA is more famous for Hollywood, the beaches, surfing, traffic on the 405 and amazing weather. But LA is such a large city, so there must be a few tech geeks among its 15 million inhabitants, right? If not, start-ups MySpace or Revver would not be based here… So a couple of tech geeks and bloggers took the initative to create BarCamp LA , an “un-conference” where tech angelinos meet each other without a formal agenda. I had read about “un-conferences†happening in San Francisco and was curious to discover the concept and meet the tech community in LA. Paris had the advantage to have a vibrant start-up community and that is something I miss in LA.
It was not easy to find the Little Radio Studio hidden somewhere in East LA between the 10 and what is probably the worst neighborhood in the city, but I managed not to get lost. I could not go to Saturday’s sessions, so when I showed up on Sunday morning, the event was already organized so I could not really participate as I was supposed to.
Overall, it was an interesting day. I could watch presentations about the semantic web, wikis for financial investors, get-things done, worldchanging.com, scalability across platforms, futurism and 3D worlds, re-inventing packages in a digital world, democratizing organizations and The One Second Film
In conclusion, an interesting first time for me. I was obviously unprepared, but I am sure there will be a next time.
To read a good coverage of Barcamp LA, go to Mack Reed’s blog.
Olivier, it was great meeting you at BCLA. Glad you’ve found something reasonably approximating the startup scene in Paris.
BTW, Fabrice Grinda’s startup that I confused your employer for is http://www.olx.com.
Cheers,
Kareem