While the social scene of an event allows for friendships to easily develop, the true value of the event was during the unconference itself. I had the pleasure of helping Josh out with the Life/Local track of the event (and with the attendee badges, though, as Jeremy knows, that's tough to call a 'pleasure' ;).

Jim Johnson kicked off our track in the morning with a session on politics. There's so much happening online that campaigns can now take advantage of, and it was really interesting to hear people's impressions of things like transparency and authenticity within the political "industry." It's also cool to contrast national campaigns vs. local leaders and their use of blogs. The readership is of course a bit different, and from the examples given, it'd seem that the more local the political leader, the more authentic the blog felt. I'll be curious to see how politics learns and adapts to this exploding new medium.

Connie Reece was kind enough to join us from Austin, Texas to lead a discussion on meeting people and networking online. Twitter, facebook, linkedin -- all sorts of new tools to allow us to meet new people and manage the contacts we already have. Discussion centered around how to use these tools effectively and maximize their benefits. One of the things that jumped out to me was Connie's comments on how she adds twitter friends -- same way as me, and I'm sure a lot of other folks. If you do not use your "about" space appropriately, and I can't remember the relationship, I'm not likely to add you back. Just food for thought for all you twitterholic's out there ;)

Alicia Dorset led what was probably the strongest conversation of our track on 'Separating your work life from your personal life'. While I had to step out to handle some Emurse business, what I was able to take in was the stuff that unconference's are made of. Quality discussion on sad but true issues like stalking, privacy, work/life issues, employer/employee issues revolving around things like facebook and blogs, and the dangerous, catty world of offline scrapbooking. Who knew Scrapblog isn't just creating a fun product, they are also saving lives. Crazy.

My session on the Local Orlando scene was also something I would consider to be a success. The amount of contribution and participation to the orlando new media/technology community has exploded this year. Florida Creatives has been a growing success, barcamp was huge, blogOrlando was incredibly impressive and coworking as a value based approach to shared workspaces is becoming more and more accepted/encouraged/evangelized. We have a tremendous pool of talent here, and a truckload of creativity that's being expressed in more and more impressive ways. It's falls on us to start bringing people together and creating the relationships that will be required to serve as the base for what has the potential to be an amazing, vibrant community. We're already here, we just need to get to know each other!

Some of the take aways from the local orlando session -- the need for a common local blogroll, a list of everyone's twitter names, events that are more broad (not just technical, not just creative, just events that will allow us to all share in a great experience). I believe it was John Frost who suggested a possible photo walk. A few suggestions were made on possibilties for this -- either Disney, which would be right up John's alley, or working with the History center downtown. They do historic orlando walking tours that would be great and appeal to folks of all backgrounds, not just geeks and creatives. Bust out the nikon's and flood flickr with our "art" ;)

We talked about the effectiveness of sites like Meetup.com for getting together with other likeminded folks in our hood. Upcoming.org also lists events, but isn't nearly as used here in town. Two regular meetup's that you should consider attending are Florida Creatives (Monday, October 15th is the next at Crooked Bayou, downtown) and likemind. Likemind is a morning coffee meetup that is open to anyone of any industry, and is held at B&S Daily Market. The next Orlando likemind will probably be October 20th-ish, but we'll announce once we're sure (checkout likemind.us for more information).

One of the things I wanted to mention, but it escaped me, was Outside.In. Outside.In offers a great opportunity for us to pool together our content. It's not as used as it should be, the conceptually, it's a great site and something folks should look into joining.

We also did a crash course on coworking, similar to the presentation I gave at barcamp. The big difference, of course, is that Alex Hillman from Indy Hall in Philly was able to come be my wingman and answer our questions. From my discussions with Alex over the last year or so, the Philly scene holds a lot in common to the things going on here in Orlando. Many of our issues are the same, so it's been great to have him lend a hand with suggestions and encouragement. The Philly scene spent a solid year, if not a tad more, building community and evangelizing to anyone who would listen -- pretty much exactly what we've been doing down here. It was at the last blogOrlando that I announced our effort to bring coworking to Orlando, and its amazing how much more knowledgable and accepted the idea has become in that time. Coworking is a reflection of the community, an evolutionary step in its development, and I really do think we're on the verge of pulling off something great here in town.

So what did you think? What are the things that we can do right now to make Orlando's scene that much stronger? What events have you enjoyed? What efforts do you participate in? Are you excited by the changes you've seen here in town? Join in the comments below or blog about it on your own site. Tag with "blogorlando", "orlandoscene" and/or "floridacreatives" (which will show up on the floridacreatives.com site).

Wow. What a great event. Gregg, Jason, and everyone else (update: larry!) who put in the time and effort to pull this thing off -- massive props.

Taste was packed. Not just packed, but standing room only packed, but in a not all that uncomfortable way. The presentations were of great quality and entertaining. There is a massive amount of talent around here, and it's a true joy to see everyone come out of the woodwork for something like this. Can't wait for the next one.

I gave a brief presentation on coworking, or as Chris Scott suggested, "cow orking", which I used for the title (and it still makes me giggle -- thanks chris!) It was sort of a local-centric warm up for Friday's blogOrlando local session track. I tried to show the co-working video with Brad/Chris/Tara talking it up, but couldn't get sound working (thats what I get for trying to be fancy). For those interested, here's a link to a Florida Creatives post with the embed of the video. Also, here is the direct link to the Coworking-Orlando google group.

Suggestions for future barcamps:

• Probably going to need a bigger venue ;) More space for side chats would be nice. Side room worked well, but there were a lot of us.
• More interactive presentations, less talk-at-you presentations. It's barcamp. Joke around, interact, ask questions of the speakers and from the audience. Heckle. If I had any complaint, it'd probably be that. I can only take so much powerpoint.
  
• Might want to break up the lightning talks/full on presentations and intermix them. Change the pace around to keep people active.

Overall though, a very successful first barcamp.

But wait, there's more! The week is not done yet.

Registration ends Monday at 10pm for blogOrlando. A bunch of great speakers from all over the country are coming here this week for an unconference Friday at Rollins College. It'll be a great time. I'll be leading a session on the local scene. Things I plan on discussing -- likemind, Florida Creatives, coworking, user groups, barcamp, local tech startups, community building/expanding, general Orlando/Central Florida/Middle Florida discussion. My buddy Alex Hillman will by flying down, which gives us a great opportunity to ask coworking related questions. I'd love it if you could join us :)

I went over to Citizen Space to take it all in and find more inspiration for our Orlando efforts. For those who aren't as up on the scene, Chris and Tara have been at the forefront of the coworking movement. They were an original part of hat factory and now operate citizen space along side their consulting company, citizen agency.

What separates coworking from a typical shared workspace is the common sense of values and community. The general feeling behind all of it has a lot in common with the open source movement -- open collaboration benefits everyone more so than not ("barcamp everyday") I've been cheerleading the concept locally since I moved back from DC (around the time I started talking to Chris, actually), and was really happy to be able to visit their space and take in their efforts.

Below are the pictures I took. It's about, I'm guessing, 1000sq/ft or so. Full time members pay $350 a month with no contract, all just month to month. There's a conference room, mini fridge, internet and an overall kick ass vibe.

One of the things Chris and Tara mentioned is that they find the retention rate is really really high for the full time members -- people who have a desk and are leaving their things at the office -- but not quite as high for the part timers. Day passes for folks visiting and looking to drop by are free, as it seems to add to the overall atmosphere. There's a master lease holder (Citizen Agency), and then everyone pitches in from there. An earlier effort involved trying out what sounded like a "parlor fee" to help buy additional amenities and furniture for everyones benefit, but it didn't work out well.

Overall, they estimate that they spent about $8k on renovations/furniture/etc over a six month period, which includes their kickass chandelier.

We also talked briefly about nicknaming our brown bag meetups. Jelly in NY, Cream cheese in philly -- something citrusy in Orlando, though not sure what yet. Suggestions welcome ;)

If your interested in this stuff, I'm sure the topic will come up at barcamp (I may talk about it if the schedule isn't busting at the seems. Word is attendance might push 300 :\), and it will for sure be discussed during my local session at blogOrlando. Alex Hillman, from indy hall in philly, will be joining us for that as well. (woot).

Our monthly Likemind meet up is this Friday,July 20th, at 8am over at the Downtown Panera. :)

Typically, us work-from-home folks stick around afterwards for an informal "co-working" type scenerio. If you're up for it, plan on hanging out until early afternoon. It's a great location with decent food, free internet and fun company!

We've created a google group for the Orlando coworking initiative. This isn't intended to replace the general Coworking group of course, just more of a place to get noisy about finding spaces and hooking up various folks looking to get going.

We have a couple groups that are ready asap, and a number of people who are ready one-day-in-the-future. All are welcome. If nothing else, it's more community building for our town ;)

Check it out here.

The second meeting of the Florida Creatives was a huge success, props out to Ryan Price for keeping up the great work. Crooked Bayou was a much better venue than Dexter's for this kind of thing, and the turnout was significantly stronger.

A little link love out to Gregg Pollack from Tech CFL. Jamie Byrne and the rest of the gang at Petentials. Stefan Price from Roundtable Productions. Natasha McIntosh from North-South Marketplace. Marshall Sontag from WineQ.com. Josh Hallett from Hyku.com. Chris Scott from iamzed.com. Erik Hersman from WhiteAfrican.com. John Rife and his awesome wife from FindingJohn.com. Kyle Fiducia from VaguelyAware.com. Bill Ferrante from BillTheBroker.com, and Mark Baratelli from imakepodcasts.com.

Those are all the names I can remember off the top of my head (that I've associated websites too ;), but I'm a little tired. My apologizes if I missed anyone. Shoot me and e-mail or leave a comment here to put me in my place ;)

As far as coworking interest goes, we seem to have enough folks looking to jump on board. We're going to start meeting up once or twice a week at various coffee shops to get into a groove while we scout out potential costs and locations. I'll add info to the wiki as things develop.

Now that I'm settled back down in Orlando, starting to dust off some of Gavin and I's initiatives. One of them is to help spur some sort of coworking environment here in Orlando.

Basically, the idea is that a handful of creatives types get together and split a lease under an umbrella corporation. This allows us telecommuters and freelancers to have a place to concentrate and get work down, while at the same time helping grow the Orlando tech community. Ideally it should be someplace near downtown, as it's centrally located.

If you're interested, add yourself to the wiki page. We'll bring everyone together and see what we can pull off. A few of us will be meeting up at the Florida Creatives gathering, which would be a great time to see what's what.

CoworkingOrlando

I'm starting to do some research on co-working possibilities. Massive thanks to Chris Messina for pointing me in the right direction so far.

If you have had any experience with co-working, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me a line at alex at emurse.com. I'd ask specific questions, but yeah... just getting started ;)