BarCamp: Give In Order to Receive?

Let’s start with the question: how do you determine what professional expertise to share and what’s the return you should expect from it?

In two weeks’ time, I intend to go to BarCamp Brussels 4. My very first ever. Since I’ve spent the past six months setting up what is probably the first serious screencast tutorial site in my country, I was thinking of sharing and doing a small talk about that.

I suggested this to my boss and so far he is OK with it. After all, since our site also includes a news section – obviously – I’ll also begin blogging professionally soon. The idea being, that in order to receive, you also have to give.

Openness, social networking, participation: these are today’s buzzwords and they’re also at the root of BarCamp, an unconference that is “off the record by default”. It’s also just a chance to hang out and spend a Saturday together with sweaty geeks staring at MacBook displays. What else could you ask for, right?

However, as this is my maiden geek-out, I’m also filled with uncertainty. Surely, I’m not supposed to just give away all the knowledge I struggled to find out, am I? Six months ago, I knew next to nothing about best frame rates or frequencies to record on. The effort we put into researching this, discovering how to get our apps work best for us… the investment, you can imagine, has been considerable.

In short, it’s valuable stuff. We all want to learn, but we all have to do business after, no?

On top of everything, I’m not sure about this at all yet. I’m only just reaching out to the Belgian tech and web scene; I hardly know anyone. Will my input make a difference? Will anyone be interested? Should I even go? I’d like to: I think there’s an opportunity there for everyone, but…

So, there you have it. I’m groping for a guideline here. If you blog, professionally, or about your job, how do you make these decisions? What is the way to go?

I suppose the best way to find out is to reach out then. Oh, and I will be sharing afterwards.

Ed: This post is a follow-up to a note I submitted to 9rules. Thanks to the people there who already provided me with some great insights.

Tags: barcamp, brussels, unconference