Awesome Camp All Its Name Promises And More

The same technology that shrinks the world a little more each day — through phone lines and cell towers and mankind’s mastery of the wide open airwaves — also offers a level of workplace flexibility completely unfeasible only a decade ago. Working from home to avoid the morning commute is becoming more and more common, and co-workers collaborating on the same project may not even be in the same city, the same state or even the same time zone.

Naturally, that same malleability can be found in one of the best-known business staples: the conference. Or rather, the unconference. Coined in 1998, the term “unconference” refers to a business gathering of like-minded individuals where anyone can give a brief seminar on any topic, and the day’s agenda is assembled piecemeal as attendees deign to share their expertise with others. The idea has spread like prairie fire, and unconferences have been held on every continent but Antarctica.

And on Janurary 30th, Lincoln finally got in on the action. Based on the popular BarCamp unconference formula, Awesome Camp, held at red9, pulled in some 40 area entrepreneurs. Awesome Camp offered 22 impromptu sessions hosted by the attendees themselves, with topics ranging from tips for finding the right book publisher to a seminar on building a thriving personal Web site audience aptly titled “What the Blog?”

“The response has been more than we expected — everybody’s pumped, everybody’s tweeting about the event” said Deb Averett, one of the camp’s organizers. “It’s kind of nice: If you couldn’t decide between two sessions, you could follow up on the Twitter page and see what you missed. We’re a bunch of techies. I love it.”

Campers could follow tweets about the event in real time, courtesy an HDTV hanging over the bar and displaying Awesome Camp’s Twitter feed. As of February 1st, tweets with the tag #awesome camp had reached some 7,823 people.

Toby Schroder, founder of Fierce Robot, used his session to talk about what he and his company know best: search engine optimization. He said he felt a gathering of local entrepreneurs like Awesome Camp was invaluable to Lincoln’s business community.

“I’ve been following all the different start-up events going on in Omaha for a while now, and they all sound awesome until you have to drive there in the middle of winter,” said Schroder, who’d been in business for himself for exactly one year and one day at the time. “So when someone said they were going to do this BarCamp called Awesome Camp, I said I’d help out.”

Much like other BarCamps around the world, Averett and Awesome Camp’s organizers hope to make the event an annual occurrence. Next year, Averett said one goal was to draw more participants from outside Lincoln, making Awesome Camp a nexus for Nebraska entrepreneurs.

“It’s not just about Lincoln — you can think outside the box,” Averett said, referring to the role technology plays in helping big ideas spread faster. “Social media can bring everybody together and make things happen.”