The freakishly beautiful Strata Center at MIT hosted BarCamp Boston 4. BarCamps are unconferences meaning attendees shape the agenda. The BarCamp wiki plays at major role in determining who attends. Often the first people who sign up attract similar people and determine the event’s audience.  According to one attendee, the Boston social media crowd split from the Boston technology crowd. The former flocked to Podcamps and the latter to BarCamps. Unaware of this, I signed up to teach a social media workshop at BarCamp entitled “Twitter for Business.”

I signed up 20 minutes before driving to MIT. And when I arrived, my name tag was printed and waiting for me. Sooz took my picture which was then printed on a sheet of paper and handed to me. On the paper were a few questions:
* Pick 3 tags that define you. (I selected: socialmediamarketing, blogger and rubberchicken)
* What idea which no one knows about will be hot in 5 years?
* What’s your favorite input?

There were two reasons why our picture was taken and responses used.

When everyone at the conference gathered together for the morning meeting, all 300+ people were asked to stand and introduce themselves. Rather than sitting through hours of elevator speeches, each person said their name and their three tags.  This let everyone in the room take note of others with similar interests.
Our picture and responses were posted against the wall for all attendees to see.

Sessions were also posted on the wall. Each was listed on sticky pad affixed to an oversized chalkboard. To gauge interest in a session, people wrote its title on a piece of paper then posted it to the proposed session board. Attendees grabbed markers and made a check on the sessions that interested them.

My session, Twitter for Business, offered strategies to help attendees develop their twitter accounts.
My primary recommendation was to start a business account for twitter focusing on a specific type of content or topic. Post content relevant to that topic, follow people who care about that topic and show them you’re paying attention by adding value, asking and answering questions.

I left BarCamp 4 with a few key take aways:

•  Let conference attendees vote on topics to increase interest and participation
• Ask people to select tags that define them to help others easily network
• Post attendees picture and interests to add to the networking experience

Since attendees shape an unconference, one expects it to be less organized than a planned conference; however, every BarCamp I’ve attended has been expertly managed.