Now that the shine is off my memories of OGN5—not least by a leak of an upcoming post elsewhere on this blog owing to a keyfumble—I can nonetheless look back on a success. From the point of view of all the guests it was one sort of a success: the speakers were wonderfully engaging; contributions from our sponsors (especially Torchbox and Google) oiled the night’s machinery to the point where people barely felt it move under them; and even as I left some huddles of geeks were still chatting. I’d like to think they were still there the next morning, huddled round mugs of coffee and talking about some new usability study.
From my point of view it was a different sort of success: nothing went completely wrong. I managed to be nice to our resolutely amiable and upbeat keynoters, who delivered their respective talks with aplomb; we not only set up our own network but managed to fix both the pub’s wireless and upstairs electrics which were blown by a dodgy washing machine; the PA pumped out sound and people didn’t chat as much during the microslots anyway.
At the time I rated everything that happened in a negative sense—the absence of anything going wrong was the only measure I was happy with—which made it hard to appreciate that frequently I just had to let things become a little bit anarchic. Let’s be honest: nobody notices all but the worst of gaffes, and the sort of control that absolutely guarantees nothing will go wrong is generally tight enough to squeeze the fun out of an event at the same time as the risk.
If I could have the evening again I’d probably have given Daniel more attention in advance, so I’d have known what he’d prepared to discuss Barcamp Oxford. They’ve got some great stuff planned, and it’s a shame that a mismatch of expectations detracted from that. When I’m able to focus better I’ll post to the mailing list and get some stuff out there about Barcamp.
I’m completely exhausted, and have spent the whole day playing catchup as I worked. Nw I just want to sleep, possibly until OGN6. Wake me in the spring, chaps.
