So despite our limited experience and no major plan for the meeting we decided to try it ourselves. We wanted it to be a very open, creative space so we carved out a couple of hours and brought in lunch and off we went!
So ever since Mark and I got back from BarCampBankSeattle and discovered what a ‘BarCamp‘ is all about I have been wanting to do something similar within our company. To have a creative/idea session of sorts… We were finally able to most of us in the office, Roz called in from New Mexico via video Skype, and have our first internal barcamp of sorts yesterday.
First off, a little background, Barcamps are defined as:
<code>an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants</code>
So despite our limited experience and no major plan for the meeting we decided to try it ourselves. We wanted it to be a very open, creative space so we carved out a couple of hours and brought in lunch and off we went!
The limited plan we DID have went like this:
<code>- 2 hours session - 15 minute per topic - Whoever comes up with the topic starts the conversation - Come hungry!</code>
So I was initially thinking it might be hard to figure out topics to discuss, but boy was I wrong, people starting writing and yelling ideas out and we just started writing everything down. We honed it in to 9 topics (but based on our time we had to trim it down to 7, we’re chatty I guess)
7 Meeting Topics
<code>1. E-Reviews 2. Spreadsheet Standards 3. New Hire Process 4. Reporting 5. Benefits / Perks - Company Retreat - Office Space 6. Marketing 7. Banktastic.com</code>
Couple of the guys got real fancy and started filling out a ‘Mind Map‘ for the meetings, heres some fuzzy pics of there handy work.