Hi everyone,
In case you don’t know who I am, my name is Monnie – I am the lead organiser of BarCamp Adelaide, and also brought Cupcake Camp Adelaide to life.
This is where I’m going to be frankly honest with anyone who is interested in attending another BarCamp in Adelaide. There just wasn’t enough interest for when we started discussing it.
For the first BarCamp, we set ourselves an impossible task and organised it from the starting date of December 1st to the event on Feb 20. I wasn’t happy with all of it. We had to change venues at almost the last minute because of lack of interest and company sponsorship, and I also definitely was disappointed we had to charge for entry. These are all things we are working on changing this time around.
We also concluded that because of all the festivals on at this time of year, it isn’t really the best idea to have it now. So we’re pushing it back a couple of months. Trying to fit this kind of event in amongst all of the lovely Adelaide Fringe and Festival events, Clipsal 500, a State Election and more is impossible to pull off successfully. We are aiming for May/June at this stage.
The other thing that has caused us to push this back was the lack of interest for the planning meeting we last had. Five people turned up and we have apparently got a group base of almost 100 people. I’ve had a lot of criticism that’s assumed incorrectly I’m the only one running this show and that is exactly what I don’t want to be doing – you all make this event, it’s an interactive conference more than people paid to attend. That’s not the show we’re aiming for.
So here’s the action plan: In late March we will be holding another planning meeting, and for the hope of the event, I hope more than five people attend this time. It is important that everyone contributes and writes and speaks to people to get others involved. We’ve got a list of who we should be contacting but we want everyone in to help out. 2010 can be a fantastic BarCamp – there is a very strong Adelaide Twitter userbase now along with more and more networking connection opportunities that no one should miss out on attending.
We may combine a discussion of BarCamp planning into the next Adelaide Twitter Meet in the last week of March, but any possible organisation meetings will be published here.
Thanks for your patience, and hopefully we can meet and discuss things then. 
- Monnie