BarCampCLT Meets Filmblazer

Over the weekend, we went to BarCamp Charlotte. We had no idea what it was or how it would go. It turned out to be better than we could ever have expected.

Ann Marie, Josh and I left Raleigh Friday night after everyone got off work and headed to Charlotte. We were trying to at least make an appearance at the Pre-Party but Josh is retarded and looked at the wrong thing so we showed up at Area 15 around 11:30 which is where the conference was but clearly not where the pre-party was. There was a group of sketchy guys standing in the street as we walked up and down trying to figure out if it was the right place and how to get in. They tried to talk to us and Josh pretended to be on the phone. Smooth, Josh, real smooth. Ann Marie and I stood nervously on the sidewalk waiting for Josh to tell us what to do. Then we overheard one of the scary guys say:

“well you put two guys in a room with knives and turn the lights off, see what happens”

That was it for us. We bolted to the car. So long story short, we epically failed on trying to get to the pre-party.

We persevered the next day and arrived around 9 AM with coffee in hand. You cannot face a social media conference without coffee because those people expect you to, get this, be social! Justin Ruckman took the stage and I waited for the show to start. His introduction was brief before he opened up the floor for everyone to pitch session ideas. Wait, hold the phone, anyone can present? I started poking Josh in the ribs so he would raise his hand and he turned to me with the “I swear if you don’t stop I’m gonna have to start beating you” look and said sternly “I got it”. (Did I mention we’re not pleasant in the morning?). We heard pitches on Twitter, How to make money, Online Video, Branding, and many more. Our pitch was called “Social Media and Filmmaking” that would be more like a case study of our project because “45 minutes of shameless self-promotion” wasn’t quite as catchy.

After all the pitches were heard, we voted on which ones we wanted to hear. It was all very democratic and surprisingly efficient. Once the votes were in, Justin assigned the most popular pitches a time slot. We were pretty nervous because they gave us the big room in the slot right before lunch. Somehow everyone got the impression that Josh knew what he was talking about.

The first two sessions went by pretty quickly. I went to the Twitter session which was mostly about dealing with bots and people misrepresenting you on Twitter. The second session was called how to make money online which ended up mostly being about e-commerce so it didn’t apply that much to us. Then it was our turn. We had a very short keynote presentation but it turned out the projector wasn’t working. So it was just Josh and about 30 people staring at him. He pulled it off though. He’s never been one for being shy. He briefly went over the tour and how he thinks filmmaking is changing. He tried to tie it back to social media and not make it all about us so it could be of some benefit to other people. We’re not completely selfish, you know?

Then people started asking questions. One of my favorites was “How did you pick the 14 cities?” and Josh’s response was:

“Well, we wanted it to look like we went around the whole country on the map so aesthetics was key”

Overall the interest and support was overwhelming. It was very encouraging to have people get so excited about the Two-week Turnaround Tour.

Without the structure of the conference being what it was, we never would have gotten the opportunity to do this nor would people have felt compelled to discuss it openly rather than just listen to him. We absolutely loved this concept and want to incorporate it into T3. There is no reason why we can’t structure the kick-offs this way. The open forum encourages creativity, discussion and community. Everyone gets a chance to contribute.

Going to BarCamp Charlotte was worth it just to discover these benefits. Meeting everyone else and making real connections with them just really put it over the top. Thanks again to everyone that put this together. If you were at BarCampCLT, leave comments to tell everyone else some of your favorite moments.