summize u went to melbourne pubcamp.

Today after tracking #PubCamp thru Summize, and gcalendaring that a Monday 3pm-8pm slot avoided peakhour driving, didn't clash with meetings, and there had been positive buzz from the Sydney event - I thought it may be worth dropping in to the 2.0 unconference at a pub format - for a free drink n twitter. Arriving a bit after 3pm, I was greeted by Mick Gatto of Underbelly getting into an AMG Mercedes.



I tried to not look like I was photographing the alleged Tony Soprano of Melbourne, but I was megapissed that in the blink of the eye he jumped into his tinted window merc and missed my acutely angled blackberry. (it could be any1 in that car BB, damn i tell u its mick gatto - being a $300k AMG S-Series I wonder if its one of the opes prime sports-car loot) I couldn't really ask him to get out of the car as I missed the shot. I don't think he would "get" twitter. But he might "get" me.



Once inside and presentations started, it was a slow burn crescendo as "Web 2.0" definitions, terms like remix and user generated content were distantly heard from the far back. I thought being a PubCamp though there would be some waiters(esses) taking drink orders, or better a twitter direct message the bar your order (like the rooftop movie setup in cbd melbourne that so impressed A VC Fred Wilson) Melbourne Pub Camp, was after all different, better most said, than it's Sydney counterpart.










Over half of the people in Europe are on social networks said one of the media panellists. And Melbourne's the same. I just dont know which half of my social network budget is wasted :)



There was a dedicated projected screen for the 'twitter/summize backchannel' which while kewl in a realtime feedback way, MTUB fans have been spoilt by @lucas' visualisation tools which give prominence to posts, and realtime streaming. This was more static.









Most of us were sitting on iphones, blackberries, treos + spechty has taken over from camreilly as the tablet at a conference guy - where we were tracking summize.com #pubcamp, and m.twitter. Externals were chipping in, with Inquisitor Duncan Riley being especially vocal saying he hadn't been invited.










Neither had alot of us, but in the last fortnight were unable to avoid Norgesque LittleBron updating her followers on her Control Media debates and presentations, which had supposedly incensed and divided the crowd into Pro Curated Authoritative Journalism versus the Non-Fact Checked Citizen Journalists.









Duncan following 900 or so twitterers obviously missed the blatant signal with all the noise he must attract from his followers. We told him invite or not, to get down'ere, which he soon did and boy did he take control.



Even Old Media raconteur Steven Mayne couldn't escape Dunc's healthy encouragement (or AlvinP's illustrations) to the Panel of Free Content with Steven suggesting that AFR in another life need not ever have been half-pregnant in its web strategy in supporting a paid and limited free version; He said they should have just had a print version and not even worried with a half baked afr.com. Duncan seemed happy with this. Steven blogging the next day said : "Thanks also to Duncan Riley for reprising Kerry Packers Bondy line with “theres only one Christian kerr in a lifetime” - I wholeheartedly agree."









Downstairs over a dart, we both wondered if any of the Fairfax kindren understood the financials of one women operations like dooce.com, and run out of home enterprises such as TechCrunch, both of which are likely 7 figure turn over businesses.










Although the Pub prefix for the event had been considered misleading by many a free alcohol seeking free conference attending twitterer, the post-drink unconference panels were the ones with the largest payoffs.










Companies that darest not speaketh their names such as ABC, BBC, and Telstra had their wiki, facebook and user generated content strategies behind the corporate firewall and smokenmirrors PR laid bare.









Tom, working for a large Telco, mentioned the one post he didnt get approved by 3 departments, is the one that ended up in him getting dooced, luckily tho Tom is still making good tips playing the Baby Grand at some select spots around Melbourne, with a Crown Lounge tour coming up.



As the public transport catching poster boy of the Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade @andrewsayer wasnt going to be outdone by TelcoTom on the grand piano, with Mr Sayer showing anything u can do, I can do standing up.



After a 3pm start, by about 8pm time seemed to lose its significance, as a 30 minute unconference session would then break for some drinks, and then be on again.



One constant though was Duncans support for Free Content, and the breaking down of the paid premium walls which havent worked anywhere in the world.










Except in the case of the Wall Street Journal, where Rupert decided he didnt want to give back the $100m of online subscription straight away.



By now it was getting late, well 930pm-ish and the staff working there were in need of a taxi home, spilling some no-name coke everywhere.



LittleBron's networking wasn't going to be stopped by a little bit of Coke on the table though.



Moments before my blackberry finally ran out of juice after finally locating a charger from @anguskidman, @mspecht was still twittering for finger food, pizza, or really anything beyond a chocolate chip cookie which were very nice, and served with coffee around 5pm, to which a backchannel contributor opined that 2 cookies per audience member was not an ideal or abundant ratio.










I get the feeling some might not have minded 20 large pizzas arriving during the unconference part. But overall it was pretty impressive if somewhat parochial that a Brains Trust of people were flown down to educate the Melbourne Market on Web 2.0 - many of which were well worth it, minus a chillingly painful talk about "Paradigm Shifts" where the only thing left unsaid was to imagine you were walking past the Bondi Beach cemetry chanting "I am the Network" + "I am the Paradigm Shift".










Anyway good thing about speed presenting is the less persuasive presenters go quickly and you dont have to marry them for an hour. Altho they needed some of Ross Dawson's 5 minutes bell management : 5 minutes is 5 minutes, not 12. Sorry to be Dicko@Idol, but some people shouldnt sing.



The only person in more places at once, and almost with as much to say (as he did do a presentation, and run one of the panels!) was Filtered Media's Mark 'i once worked with Steve Gillmor Duncan' Jones. Audio for his preso here.









Here he's smoozing @marketingmag.



Wrapping things up, Jed did a little speech which I couldn't hear but I assume brought together the central themes of the conference, and synthesised some meta-patterns from the 3 running concurrently unconference rooms; Basically what @trib, @bronwen, and @duncanriley said. Chanting "I am the paradigm shift. I am the network" Jed probably reinforced something along the lines of : If you build it, set it free, unless you can charge for it, and if you do, make sure you have a good argument or Duncan will encourage you to set it free.



Luckily I wasn't the only approved unmedia with pictorial and video access to the subjects today at PubCamp;



Foxy Twitter user @Fox, channeling the Seinfeld episode where George was an in-demand hand model, proves she's not just an ultra-slick twitter username, made sure everything (or something?) was recorded on her suave flip too.



By this time it was definitely time to leave, as I was bit paranoid that Mick Gatto may have been engaged by Fairfax to shut up the Free Content splinter group. I shouldn't have been concerned, as @guilthatenfear, had quite the boxing moves to match it with older pauncher Gatto.



Any companies looking to hire a great customer service, leading edge socialnets user should ping @guilthatenfear btw. It was surprising in the unconference the issue of whether companies should ban Facebook. To which I'm obviously in the quite the opposite camp, wouldn't you hire GenY's like @guilthatenfear who are cutting edge consumer-creators of twitter and facebook and may just help your company become a leader in the space, rather than a spazz. Banning socialnets would be like taking the Pub out of PubCamp.










And at 1252am and quite a few too many coffees today, but hey I'm lucid, good to see the true Beyond Publishing ethos of PubCamp is still going but coming to a close. Every1 seems to have enjoyed themselves.. Night.




















Update : Spechty has posted his thoughts and uploaded his preso which i'm annoyed i missed... Renai@AFR (soon to be the bigwig@zdnet) has published his social networking comes of age, sort of piece in the daily finance paper ! But in true melbourne v sydney conspiracies : the melbourne event misses out due to deadline :)

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Lots of people posting their post-Pubcamp thoughts today:)