created on Tue, 2006-09-26 21:07

China’s first barcamp

Last month, only a few days after Barcamp Vancouver, on our way to work Kris and I were speaking about our strategy for our upcoming second trip to China. It then occurred to us that it would be a great opportunity to help organize the first Barcamp in China, during our stay in Shanghai. We immediately recruited the help of Crystal Williams, who had been a key member of the organization team that made Barcamp Vancouver a success. With less then a month to go, we sent a shout-out to the community with hopes to find more help on the ground and set barcamp Shanghai in motion.

Not your typical barcamp planning

As always, Crystal jumped right into action setting up the wiki on barcamp.org, setting up the organizer mailing lists, creating the logo and blog badges. and laying down the foundation to help the organizers move forward with a plan of action. Through our own blogs and blog network, the official barcamp.org website, and an Upcoming.org posting, we had local “Shanghainese” volunteering to help within a matter of days. Luyi Chen and Jon Hancock jumped in quickly to lock down a venue, sponsors, t-shirts, and food, and Alex Cureton-Griffiths made early posts for us in his publication, Shanghai Networking News.