I spent the whole previous day at the first Barcamp South Bohemia. I did not attend only as a passive participant; I also brought my own talk on speech recognition and artificial intelligence. This archived post captures what the Barcamp was like and what I saw there.

Before the Barcamp

After Plzen Barcamp ended and it became clear that Endis would not stop at organising one Barcamp, Vasek Mara asked me to submit a talk. I was pleased, because my speech-recognition talk had not made it into the Plzen Barcamp programme among the flood of SEO and Google Analytics topics. The talk was submitted, more than 30 people signed up during voting, and I started looking forward to Ceske Budejovice. South Bohemia is almost home turf for me, yet I had never given a talk there, even though I come from the region and studied at secondary technical school in Pisek.

The preparation came with one organisational reservation. On 7 June, speakers received an email saying that their talks had been accepted and that, if we used slides, the organisers wanted them by 11 June. I had a talk about speech recognition, so I needed at least audio. I replied asking whether there would be speakers in the room and waited. The next day there was no answer, so I wrote again. The third day there was still no answer, so I wrote once more. On 10 June I received an irritated reply from Honza Kalianko saying that it was nice of me to write three times, but they were handling many questions and had to check the audio. They said there would be none, although in the end there was.

Whenever I had spoken somewhere before, the speaker was usually cared for, questions were answered quickly, and the organisers tried to secure the technical requirements for the talk. Endis Wagnerova was a good example during Plzen Barcamp: she called, asked whether a morning slot suited me and whether I needed anything extra, and that was that. Speakers give conferences a lot of value and invest their own time and money into their talks. A note for next time.

Saturday Morning

I travelled to the Barcamp with my colleague Petr Stanislav from Plzen on Saturday morning. Orientation on site was excellent: signs everywhere, and at registration I met Denisa Endis Wagnerova and Jirka Kolda Kolarik, a pleasant meeting with more people from Plzen. The low attendance was surprising at first glance. Compared with the announced 300 people, I would guess half or a third. Most likely many people preferred the nice weather. Their loss.

Before the first talk we stopped by another familiar face, Tomas Jukin from Juicymo, and talked about news and little robots.

Thanks to that chat we arrived late for Radek Bartusek’s talk on smart homes. The style was very showy, and what was presented as a smart home was more like a remotely controlled home. I imagine intelligence differently. This kind of demo might have impressed people ten years earlier; today it is less surprising.

The next talk, MacGyver on IoT for $3, was interesting and technically packed. Arduino and related boards sit a little outside my usual hobby territory, and I still liked it.

Then I struggled to choose. I do not use PPC, SEO, Facebook, and similar harsh words, so I went to David Setka’s talk on cooperation with Google. It was a pleasant surprise: well-prepared slides, plenty of behind-the-scenes information, and a nicely done video intro.

After lunch in the local cafeteria, I went for coffee with the Galosoft team. The coffee was excellent; I even prepared it myself as a French press. Naturally, I managed to spill coffee on myself and had to deal with a brown stain on my T-shirt before my talk. Somehow it worked out.

The afternoon talk by Daniel Gamrot was excellently delivered. I liked Dan’s enthusiasm, and the self-organisation tips were useful.

After moving to the neighbouring building I listened to Jakub Horicky on Evernote. It was nice and motivating. I almost felt like installing Evernote again, especially because of OCR for scanned documents.

Then I stood behind the speaker’s desk myself with my speech recognition talk. The pleasant surprise was that audio in the room worked out of the box. Attendance was good given the overall size of the Barcamp, the questions were relevant, the audience stayed attentive, and I enjoyed the talk.

For those who want links to the slides and libraries I mentioned:

After my talk I went to see Jiri Kolarik’s talk on remote cooperation. Another hit. Jiri Kolarik can talk, the topic was interesting, and he added many observations from Socialbakers.

The final talk I saw was by Michal Spacek on password managers and secure passwords. It was well crafted. I often say that a good talk is recognisable by the fact that even when the content itself is not new to me, the talk is still enjoyable. This was exactly that case. The discussion was good too, including Kolda’s question on how to explain to users the impact of losing or having their digital identity stolen.

I deliberately skipped talks by Stepan Bechynsky on speaking for Microsoft and Tomas Jukin on Arduino and neural networks, because I had already seen them in Plzen and they were great.

Conclusion

The closing part of the Barcamp took place in the spirit of #zprdeleslajdy, and Petr and I challenged each other to go on stage. It was a good experience.

What to say at the end? Barcamp South Bohemia worked well. It was a pleasant, intimate event, and I chose the talks well. My thanks go to all organisers. Good work. The speakers kept my attention, I met familiar and new faces, tried robots and drones, and enjoyed a calm South Bohemian day.

For the next years: worse weather, therefore more people, and speakers and talks just as good or better. Thanks.