I just came back home from BarCamp Scotland 2008 and I have to admit that I had a great day.

When I first heard the name I thought something about fighting your way from pub to another. Bar = place to drink, Camp = camping or Kampf = fight. But it turned out to be pretty nice way to share and present ideas and views.

I knew that I should present something there as that is part of the idea of a BarCamp. I ended up choosing Code Camp to be my topic because the names match a bit and I find idea of a Code Camp interesting. In case you do not know what Code Camp is about you might want to check this article about it. So, during the day I wrote couple slides, wrote my name on the time slot and enjoyed other presentations. (HyberNumbers, FusionCharts, Dave Murray-Rust's Multi-touch Table and
A.nnotate plus many more)

Before I had mine the previous presenter had his interesting presentation with plenty of questions coming from the audience and he exceeded his time a little bit but that was just perfect for me. I prepared to present my topic rather fast without explaining every detail and aspect so I knew that half an hour would be almost too much. I was a bit nervous as I did not talk about that topic too much previously but there were some good questions from audience so I was happy. And in any case, it was valuable practice for me.

Between the presentations and after the official event I had numerous discussions with different participants. Topics varied a lot and from those conversations I learnt dozens of small pieces of more or less valuable knowledge.

So, as a conclusion I can recommend this type of event to anyone who is interested in all kind of new ideas and concepts.