Musings from NewBCamp’s Vice President of Cheerfulness
- Posted February 28th, 2008
- Filed under: Community, Events/Presentation
What I loved most about the NewBCamp conference, Providence’s first Podcampish unconference, was the raw desire to learn. From the newbies to the seasoned vets, there was a constant murmur of eager conversations. Perhaps it was because we were hanging out at a school cafeteria – it was held at the Johnson and Wales University downtown campus. Being an exceptional culinary school, they apparently have a dining hall every other room. And that is what it felt like for me. Those lingering conversations with friends and professors in the undergraduate days when you first discovered learning is fun.
And this learning was fun. It was an unstructured, unpretentious, go-at-your-own-pace taste testing of an impressive array of technology topics – from social media to web design to wireless hardware to virtual worlds. I’m in the biz and I still had a hard time deciding which sessions to attend. Of course, I had to check out fellow Bluer Adam Darowski’s talk on web standards – his passion for the subject evident as always. I learned I need to quit being lazy and using the “face” tag. Luckily I don’t write much html anymore. I also caught Brian Jepson’s session on mobile lifecasting. I learned how to blog from the beach. Good thing I live in the ocean state. Unfortunately I missed some of the afternoon, but many of the presentations are linked from the website.
And the real highlight of the day was my parting gift. Conference make-it-happener Sara Streeter presented me with a delightfully festive bag with a very crafty, very Rhodie business card holder with 4 custom designed NewBCamp cards titling me the “Vice President of Cheerfulness”. I’m interpreting this to mean I was an early-encourager of a concept she and the rest of the hard working NewBCamp folks hyper-achieved tenfold. Or that I just smile a lot. Regardless, I’m now making it my personal mission to find 4 other newbie ideas, people, functions, concepts, or cafeterias to encourage and support and give a “cheerful” card to. And hopefully there is another NewBCamp soon so Sara will give me some more cards.
