The purpose of BarCamp is to connect our fledging tech community members and companies in the spirit of sharing and learning from one another; and after attending with our 15+ Point2 delegation I would say without hesitation, it was a great success.

There were a number of fantastic presentations on subjects ranging from iPhone software development (without breaking the developer NDA of course) to sharing of womens stories in technology – each one spurring valuable discussion.

Personally, my favorite session(s) on the evening would be a toss-up between the excellent User Interface talk curiously titled “Manipulating people via their eyes, but not literally” or Point2’s very own Zach Scott and Aidan Rogers’ presentation on Agile programming – the methodology which drives Point2 Agent’s development.

In addition to the great presentations, conferences like BarCamp are also a perfect way to meet people, expand your local network, and advertise your business. To help facilitate this, the organizers even went as far as to compliment the generic “Hi, my name is:” nametags with “Hey, my Twitter name is:” Needless to say, this morning I had to spend a few minutes adding people to my following list and accepting follows from fellow attendees who I had met.

In terms of advertising, Point2 took the guerilla marketing route by equipping attending team members with some irresistible Point2 branded air fresheners (vanilla scented if you must know), and distributed them to people they met throughout the course of the event.

Since I volunteered to help with distributing t-shirts at registration (that’s right – complimentary shirts), I made sure to give an air freshener to everyone that I handed a shirt out to.

To see if there is a BarCamp happening in your area, check out the main site – and if there is a camp happening I would recommend it to anyone, technically inclined or otherwise. It is a great learning experience, and there all almost always to a session that piques your interest, no matter how discerning your tastes.

Oh, by the way. If anyone wants an air freshener drop me a comment or send me a tweet – there are still a few left!