Bar Camp Nairobi – 21st June

11:29 A.M.

So we have started with coffee and bites to eat. Lots of folks still streaming in. A few sessions posted on the board. People ready to talk all kinds of things. Blogging Tricks, Ubuntu Servers, CMS content management, WordPress stuff, and a whole mess of others. That is just for this morning.

12:39
Going on the 3rd session here. Had a basic presentation from some Google map folks about using maps and data and all that fun stuff. Just bit into the meat of the topic but didn’t get a chance to chew it much. Second session were all topics I had no idea about. A gadget by a group called BugLabs that can be programmed with java to do all types of things. A talk about using Ubuntu for all kinds of nifty things. Another group talking about a web app that monitors local Kenyan content,etc.

This third session is about “blogging”. 30 minutes is a little too short to really get deep into anything, but is fun none the less. Alot of the Kenyan bloggers that I keep up with are here. Is a little strange to be in a room full of these guys. Almost intimidating.

14:12
Back from Lunch. In a few minutes we start a one hour session where anyone with a topic can stand up and talk for five minutes. Will be interesting to see how this one works. In my experience when you get a large group of people together in Kenya and people talk, it can take five minutes just to get through an introduction.

19:47
Somehow the day disappeared. The conference is finished.

It was a fun day. Bloggers, Developers, IT folks, geeks, journalists, etc all showed up to see what was going on. The discussions were quick, some were boring and some were great. Most of the topics were a chance for people to throw out ideas and get feedback from the participants. These topics ranged from blogging, internet security, application development for Kenya, the iPhone and whatever else took their fancy.

Hash over at whiteafrican has some nice photos of the event.

In this photo, you can see me sitting in the back corner trying to listen intently. Some of my favorite bloggers are in this picture too.:

The internet connection was free, the coffee was strong and the people were great. I had a blast today and can’t wait to do this again.

Hash, hope you don’t mind me using your pics:)