It was Saturday, 21 February 2009 when the second Barcamp in Slovakia opened its doors for the community in Bratislava. I was looking forward to meet the guys again, who attended the Barcamp Vienna at HP last October 2008. The event was very well organized by Pavol Magic, Peter Jančárik and some other guys. Thanks a lot, it was great to join!
Bratislava, capital of the 1993 founded state Slovakia is only a one-hour-drive or around 80 km away from Vienna. It is the same distance like Vienna – Krems, Vienna – Retz, Vienna – Gloggnitz or Klagenfurt – Spittal. In our heads it is still as far away as Klagenfurt – Ljubljana – if not even more far away.
The BarCamp Bratislava was at a learning institute Gapos in the city of Bratislava. Quite easy to find by car - thanks to iPhone and Google Maps, which were running without using Data-Roaming as Google Maps cached the map and GPS continued to following. There have been more than 130 people attending in Bratislava - most of them out of the region Bratislava. The community is surrounded in Bratislava and there is yet no other Barcamp in Slovakia or other kinds of sozialising events.
I was surprised, that not more geeks from Vienna joined. It would have been very interesting to leverage and to collect interesting experiences - how guys in other countries see the developement in the online-area and where they are within the “evolution-timeline”.
There have been 19 sessions in up to 4 rooms at the same time with interesting topics: Enterprise 2.0, Systemno Biznis, Affiliate Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Connect and Search, three session around “Social Media” and many more. Most of the sessions were unfortunally helt in local language.
- It was very interesting to follow Bodo Balazs’ session “The pirats of the pirats of the Carribean” from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. His session was around data-privacy and illegal filesharing.
- Angelo Laub presented his startup http://www.mjam.net and the possibilities for Slovakia. It was interesting to share thoughts with him, when we were driving home.
- Daniel Kostan from Czech Republik was talking about social media in general and showed us, what is happening at the moment in Slovakia. Daniel was talking about Facebook, MySpace, XING, LinkedIn and about the future of social networks. I was wondering, why Twitter was missing in his presentation. After asking, I got informed, that Twitter is not yet used in Bratislava/Slovakia as a communication tool and that not many people are aware about the possibilities.
And this was the most interesting part: To see the cultural and social differences between two countries and to notice different approaches.In this case f.e. as Twitter is one of the most important communication-tools within Austrias Online-Community, Twitter is not yet used in Slovakia.
In Austria, a lot of information is running via Twitter and it is very well accepted and developed. I did not notice this kind of “Digital Lifestyle” before and think, that it is a special developed social experience in Vienna.
Also the number of meetings, events and discussion-rounds within this community is extremly well developed. If there are BarCamps in Austria, nearly everyone is going to twittering, blogging, shooting pictures, making videos to upload them as soon as possible. I missed this kind of sharing and lifestyle in Bratislava as well as sharing infos and driving discussion on areal-time digital-basis f.e. via Twitter.
I noticed one thing. The amount of collectiv information in social media pages, events, discussions and meetings in Austria is very high. We are understanding the digital way and using social media for our needs. It is a part of our daily life. On the other side, the amount of real doings like f.e. startups is quite low.
It is interesting to follow the activities in Slovakia within the next months. Which directions and ways they are driving it and using social media and the knowledge to connect, share, leverage, network and grow. Thanks a lot, I am looking forward to your next BarCamp this year! See you there!
More links
Images Barcamp Bratislava by sugarmelon
Twitter Messages around Barcamp
Barcamp Slovakia
