I had a great time at the Unconferenz at Kapiolani Community College yesterday. I wasn’t really sure what to expect – it was the first conference I’d gone to that did the whole “unconference” thing, and I wasn’t very familiar with the tech community here in Hawaii, but ooh boy am I glad I went. It was good fun, I met good people, and there was even good food!
The conference venue was beautiful:
We showed up early to eat beignets (perfect little fried dough things) with lilikoi butter at the farmers market on campus, then got ourselves registered and started putting our names on mysterious pieces of paper with topics written on them. Within 45 minutes the organizers had the papers arranged on a time/room grid, and we had our conference schedule! I went to talks on software for photography, news and new media, blogging platforms, Android app development, and finally the use of social media in businesses. All fantastic, and all much more than just talks – they were conversations going on, often at lightening speed, bouncing around a roomful of intelligent and interested people with very diverse backgrounds. Very cool. Lunch gave me a little opportunity for netbook show and tell, along with some netbook envy:
(left: my netbook, running Ubuntu. Right: a 9″ Dell netbook running Mac OSX.)
It was a success. I learned a lot, met some of the “movers and shakers” in the tech community here in Hawaii, and joined TechHui, a Ning-based social networking site for local tech stuff. Not bad for the first Saturday of spring break!
