CastleCamp – a tourism Barcamp
| September 14, 2008 | Filled under everything's not lost, work |
CastleCamp Kaprun is over and I have to say that it was a real pleasure being there. my fourth Barcamp (2*klagenfurt, 1*vienna) but the first to have a dedicated topic: tourism. since I work in tourism and like the idea of Barcamps and also like free t-shirts, I had to be there. based upon the list of participants I knew and expected a few of our customers to attend, that’s how I could convince my boss to give me the company car and pay my accommodation.
LOCATION
the Barcamp took place at the Kaprun castle, you have to check out the official location-pictures. pretty awesome I must say. a great place, looking forward to the 360° panos from Stefan Kuzmanov. interior pix (thanks once again to dChris from Austria Tourism for his digital fisheye :)
ORGANISATION
it’s hard to believe that Rainer has never been to a Barcamp before, because he organized everything so well. apart from the location, the breakfast and lunch were great and delicious. also, all the coke, mineral water, coffee and Red Bull and stuff you want. the wireless LAN worked like a charm, there was a microphone for the introduction- and feedback-round (highly missed in Vienna). everything was A-OK. i wasn’t at the afterparty because I paid a friend a visit, but it seems like I missed some great music. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT. :)
SCHWAG or “I’m just here to get my free t-shirt and then I’m gone.”
so far, every Barcamp had it’s own t-shirt and they are always very welcome, but this time there was no t-shirt for anybody. way better: there was a nice sweater – the regular Zell am See – Kaprun sweater with only a few small logos on the bottom side. looks nice and is a great idea. very handy because it’s getting colder and colder – this weekend in particular wasn’t very warm :)
PARTICIPANTS
as said in the feedback round and in the video for Hannes (I think I don’t want to see it :o) i thought that a Barcamp specialized in tourism is a great idea – there was already one in Eichstätt. there were people from all different kinds of related companies with different backgrounds and interests and it was amazing to meet them and get to know more areas of the tourism industries, their goals, their problems, their approaches, their ideas, etc. very constructive and as always: the session-timeframe literally killed a few ongoing discussions. this is the fourth time I saw this happening, but of course the problem is that you can’t go to another room and continue, because you want to see ongoing sessions. how to solve this in future barcamps? longer sessions? longer breaks in between? set up a discussion board? but then you’d have to have registration and posting an so on, maybe too much to ask for some?
TOPICS
I’d say there was a fair share of the usual topics such as SEO, social media and web 2.0 stuff, but also some interesting conversations about guests from different countries in tourism destinations or hotels or a session about Open Street Map by Helge in substitution for Peter. OSM sounds interesting and I have to talk about it with my co-worker. and hopefully a lession could be learned: a Barcamp is not a place for a sales pitch. you don’t get to choose your audience – if your session is interesting enough, there will be an audience. if not, not. deal with it and try to be constructive in other sessions, not invasive :)
ALL IN ALL
for the time being, Rainer set the bar pretty high for future Barcamps I think. I’m looking forward to the next year and I hope to see many people again in Klagenfurt and on various other occasions :)
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Sounds fun, next time I think twice before not going.
Mein Resümee zum castlecamp08…
Trotz einem Tag Abstand zum 1. touristischen Barcamp in Österreich bin ich noch immer wie aufgewühlt. Es gab soviel Neues zu erfahren, viele meiner Ansichten wurden bestätigt und vor allem gab es sehr viele nette Leute zum Kennenlernen. …
muss man eigentlich auf englisch oder deutsch antworten?!
Ich habe nie wirklich den Sinn von Barcamps verstanden, für mich ist das dann doch schon ein wenig zu geekig….
Aber die Location sah echt nett aus :-)
ich kann beides, ist kein problem ;) Barcamps haben sicher einen geekigen Charakter, aber das CastleCamp war eigentlich das am wenigsten geekigste von den 4 Barcamps, bei denen ich jetzt war. Weil sehr viele Praktiker aus dem Tourismus dabei waren, natürlich zusätzlich zu den wirklichen Geeks.
Über den Sinn kann man streiten, viele sind ja der Meinung, dass Barcamps nur noch zum Netzwerken verkommen, was sicher auch stimmt – aber es liegt eben an jedem selbst, die Substanz reinzubringen. und meiner Meinung nach, war das bisher immer gut ausgewogen und bedingt durch die Sessionlängen kann man nicht immer so in die Tiefe gehen, wie viele gern würden :)
Hi like the blog, yet to go into the castle but your pictures are superb and interesting. Just set up a blog ourselves at :-
austria-holiday-apartment.blogspot covering the area of Kaprun and Zell sam See, was going to cover the castle but your article and the pictures speak for themselves.
Also heard of the tourist camp in the castle previously, but will have to improve my German first I think.
Best Wishes
derek@austria-holiday-apartment.com