Processing FOWA and Barcamp Miami

Now that FOWA and Barcamp Miami have blown through South Florida, I wanted to take a couple of minutes and post some thoughts about the two events.Barcamp Miami this year was definitely  a success, last year we had about 60 attendees, 3 presenting stations about about 10 or so presentations. This year we jumped to 300 registered attendees, 6 rooms and about double or triple the amount of presentations. I can’t thank Alex, Brian, Chris and Mike enough for their work the event would have not been possible without their efforts and a big thanks has to got to Carsonified for letting us squeeze in with the conference, I spoke to Ryan Carson briefly while setting up and he was really supportive of the whole event. Unfortunately I was running around alot so I didn’t catch alot of the presentations, but I was impressed with what the guys from a.viary are doing, I really think that application is going to do well.FOWA was great as well. I didn’t attend any of the workshops but was there for the talks the following day. All the presentations were excellent, but I think the real value to conferences like these is the inspiration you get from attending. For me personally I really like to get my “wheels spinning” from attending events like these. The people you meet, the exchange of thoughts on various ideas really helps you sort of flesh things out in your head. I will also say that it’s just great to have a large conference like FOWA come down to Miami, it sort of legitimizes this area in terms of what alot of us at Refresh and other initiatives have been trying to do for the past couple of years, it gives us exposure and let’s other people know that there is more to South Florida than just beaches and palm trees. So I really hope to have both of these events happen again in conjunction next year, thanks again to everybody.