Jelly were in attendance at last years Barcamp Blackpool and really enjoyed the event. This year we decided to descend on the Pleasure Beach once more searching for inspiration from fellow web people. This year myself and Dan also did talks too.

Barcamps are renowned for having some off the wall talks, and so while I was putting the finishing touches to my talk on paper, Dan was busy knitting in the talk by Cat Ashton. Probably about the least techy way to begin the day, but this is exactly the kind of thing that helps us think about things in a different way.

After Dan’s talk, swiftly followed by lunch, we were back for more sessions. Dan tried to re-learn HTML basics in the Girl Geek Tea Party, producing a David Dickinson inspired masterpiece, while I found time to talk pricing design before moving onto Rich’s presentation about Design Education. This was an interesting debate more than a talk, though Rich did have his view to get across too. We also attended Jon Atkinson’s “How to sell yourself in 45 seconds” which involved a pitch from daring audience members, followed by feedback and a re-pitch. Both myself and Dan took a lot from this and hopefully this is something we can work on in future.

Dan then went on to watch the Stick Man Animation presentation by surely one of Barcamps youngest speakers, while on the other side of the room I was following Walter’s fascinating talk on Sociometry. Before long I was presenting my own talk on David James and how to live your life a bit like a crazy goalkeeper. This was the last session of the day and before we knew it, Barcamp was gone for another year. We both got a lot out of the day and really look forward to coming back in 2011, hopefully it will be just as good as 2010!