A quick visit at Barcamp Graz 2016

Originally, I had planned to come for at least a day but I didn’t feel all that great, so I ended up only being at Barcamp Graz 2016 for a couple of hours on Saturday morning.

Despite that, I quite enjoyed my time there, having learnt a couple of new things about game development and what goes on at the metalab in Vienna. Big thanks to the respective presenters. I also got a chance to ask Martin Leyrer what bagpack he has 😉

Something that felt a bit forced, though, was the introductory session. I know it’s a tradition, but does it still make sense if the event is supposed to have more than 150 attendees and the main hall doesn’t really allow for a huge circle to be formed? This way it only helps you with learning more about the 8 people directly around you. Even in the expedited mode (name + 3 tags) it took nearly 30 minutes to finish and therefore delayed the whole session planning process quite a bit.

Barcamp Graz is already soft-split into multiple small and topic-specific camps that are mostly self-organized (think FOSDEM). So perhaps it would make more sense to move the intro-session into each camp instead and just present each camp in the big hall? Just an idea 😊

A really nice touch this time (note that haven’t been at the BCG for a couple of years now due to scheduling conflicts) was that the sponsors tried to keep the amount of waste down by handing out water bottles made out of glass in cooperation with RatioDrink. Things like that have become more and more popular over the last couple of years at community conferences and that’s a good thing 😊

I’m a bit sad that I couldn’t stay longer but Sunday was already full of other things to do, too. Perhaps next year if time permits. That being said, big thanks to the organizers. These couple of hours I was there were great and everything felt extremely well organised and the catering was (once again) top-notch!