The Daily Blagica

This weekend, I was invited to attend ORD Camp. Similar to FOO Camp, ORD camp aimed to bring a group of builders together to brainstorm, share ideas and help create innovation. The majority of attendees were software developers, start-ups and technologists. Like last year's ORD Camp, this year's camp was invite-only. The attendees to this year's camp were actually recommended/suggested by the people from last year's camp (I wasn't invited last year). I've received many inquiries (and hate DMs, IMs, emails, etc.) as to why I would attend such an 'elitist' event (not my words). I was hesitant to attend, at first, but upon spending time with the founders and catching up with old colleagues, keeping the weekend event to a set group made sense. There was never a feeling of 'we rock and nobody else can come'. It was moreso, 'what can we build, what challenges do we and others face, etc.'

Here's why:

First, the event was sponsored with a set budget, which limited everything. The event, including food, drinks, WiFi, was free for the attendees. Limiting the number of folks attending made the event affordable and manageable.

Second, I attended sxswi, but got way more out of ORD Camp. The ability to have a set group of attendees enabled for knowledge sharing, weaving in and out of discussions, while whipping out laptops in the kitchen and walking through someone's idea. Doing this with a group of 500 wouldn't have made sense, given the space.

Third, Chicago is a massive city, with a technology, start-up community that continues to grow. This is fabulous. What is unfortunate is that we are such a large city and tend to believe that multiple events, groups, etc. can't co-exist together - they can. A big reason why Silicon Valley continues to thrive is the ability for numerous tech/social media/digital groups, founders and organizers working to put on event after event and conference after conference - sometimes competing with each other on dates.

Fourth, anyone TODAY can go ahead and create their own separate event, should they wish. Why not? Keep the ideas flowing with as many people as possible.

Yes, I knew a good portion of folks at ORD Camp, but that's because of my career in the Chicago digital space - I'm old. There are many people I didn't know. I see the opportunity of having been an attendee to be one of education to the Camp organizers for next year, introducing them to tech builders they may not have considered. I also think it's an opportunity to have more women attend the event (there were only a handful of us).

As I've always believed, Chicago 'tech' is massive. Tech means a wide array of things: developer, designer, reporter, ad server, search engine marketer, social media evangelist, startup, venture capitalist, etc. I can name a series of other 'invite only' events that these said groups may have, yet you may not be aware of. I also don't get invites to those events - and I'm OK with that.

Let's continue to celebrate the the fact that we have an extensive amount of social media/tech/digital thought leadership continuing in Chicago. Events happen all the time and we may not be able to attend or get invited all of them (including yours truly) simultaneously.

Lastly, kudos to Brian Fitzpatrick and Zach Kaplan for putting on an amazing weekend. I'm inspired to finally learn how to code - now I just need to find the time to do it.