The energy of InfoCamp Berkeley may be slowly fading into an awesome(pants) memory, but we have a few more people to thank before we’re done.

Our Outside Sponsors. One more virtual round of applause for Mozilla Labs, Create with Context, and Chaddus Bruce. Your support added so much to our event; words can’t express how grateful we are.

Our Internal Sponsors. The School of Information at UC Berkeley granted us use of the lovely South Hall and put up with countless questions (“Where do we order garbage cans?”) and last-minute requests (“Hey, can you print us a poster?”) along the way. The Information Management Student Association (IMSA) planted the idea for an event in the first place and stuck by our side as it evolved into the InfoCamp you saw. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

InfoCamp Seattle. Or should we call them InfoCamp International? The folks who started this whole endeavor taught us so much; we hope we can repay the favor some day. Rachel, Andrew, Kristen, and the rest: you rock.

Erin McKean. Erin, you were a delight. We couldn’t have imagined a better way to kick off our day than with your inspiring and entertaining presentation; I think we’re all Wordniks now. If we make good on Powerpoint Karaoke, will you come laugh at us?

Our Volunteers. You stuffed envelopes, fetched tacos, carried boxes, cleaned tables, and did it all with grace. Wear that blue fabric with pride.

All of You. InfoCamp can’t happen in a vacuum. Just check out the schedule board below: that’s you there. We loved meeting with you, chatting with you, connecting with you, and learning from you. We hope to see you in 2011!

About a hundred people converged on UC Berkeley’s South Hall today for a fantastic (many would say an “awesomepants”) first InfoCamp Berkeley. A huge thank you to all of the unconference participants who came out for a day filled with thought provoking, energetic, and fun day of discussion about all things info.  And, a huge, huge thank you to our sponsors, Create with Context, Chaddus Bruce, Mozilla Labs, the Information Management Student Association (IMSA), and the UC Berkeley School of Information for their support!  Photos are posted–be sure to tag your photos and videos with infocamp and infocampberkeley. Be sure to keep a look-out for other upcoming InfoCamps and news from the InfoCamp community.

See you soon!

There are plenty of ways to contribute to InfoCamp Berkeley — present a session, deliver a lightning talk, just show up to our sold-out event. But with a couple of weeks to go before March 6, we’re seeking a few contributors of a different kind.

We’d love to find a few great sponsors who can help us put on a fabulous InfoCamp. In exchange for your financial support, we can offer link and/or banner space on this website plus posters or other advertising on the day of the event — putting your company front-and-center in front of 80+ of the Bay Area’s most connected and enthusiastic information professionals. (Plus, of  course, we’ll get you a ticket so you can come hang out and see the event you helped create.)

While we appreciate support in any amount, we’re specifically looking for sponsors for Saturday’s lunch and afterparty. Want to hear more about what that would entail and what we could offer you or your company? E-mail Heather Ford at hford@ischool.berkeley.edu and we’ll talk details. Thanks in advance for your consideration!

Much to our delight, we are getting registrations from all over the US. Last time I checked, Miami held the record for farthest travel!

Berkeley and generally Bay Area hotel prices can be a little steep, so if you’d enjoy some company from the far corners of the country, why not add your couch/guest bedroom/hammock to the InfoCamp wiki? The travel page has a new section where people in need and in excess of abode can find each other.

Good karma never came this easy. Mix it up, info types!

InfoCamp is an unconference for the information community. Started in Seattle by a bunch of friends and colleagues in 2007, it quickly grew from 100 participants and 16 sessions, to 300 participants, 51 sessions and two InfoParties.

This year, a bunch of excitable UC Berkeley Information School students decided to organize an InfoCamp to share some of their crazy ideas, and to invite others interested in user experience, information architecture, interaction design, user-centered design, information design, librarianship, online search, information management, informatics, and related fields in the Bay Area to share in the fun. We’ve been helped along the way by Kristen, Rachel, Andy and the other great founder-folks in Seattle, and hope that this is the start of a long and fruitful partnership.

The format

InfoCamp has no pre-determined session topics or presenters, other than a keynote and plenary session. You, the participants, create and lead most of the sessions! You determine the topic and format of your session, and pitch your session idea to the group, and sign up for a time slot. The exact schedule will be created as we go.

The purpose of this format is to encourage collaboration, interaction, discussion, and real-time innovation. The benefits of this format include the immediacy of the topics – the sessions didn’t have to be submitted months ahead of time – and the fun, exciting (and a bit chaotic) feeling of being part of an event that’s being led by everyone.

Just because sessions are planned on the day, doesn’t mean you can’t start thinking and planning with your peers on what you can talk about or facilitate on the day. And don’t limit yourself to a traditional discussion session. One of the most successful sessions in the past was ‘Interface Off’ that was held at InfoCamp 2007 where the Zaaz team presented a design challenge in which session participants were asked to satisfy the needs of a ‘client’ and design a user interface to meet the client’s needs. Other ideas include:

• gather people to discuss a common interest
• solicit feedback on a design
• demo a half-baked product
• organize a panel
• present research findings
• set up a debate on a controversial topic
• start a conversation group
• discuss solutions to a problem
• brainstorm an idea

Schedule

Each session in 45 minutes long – except for one lightning talks session where we’ll have four 8 minute presentations around two core themes: information governance and policy, and human-centred interaction and design. Our keynote speaker is the brilliant Erin McKean, lexicographer and dress analyst extraordinaire who will talk about what it’s like to be in the presence of so many new words. After we end the event with prizes and final session madness at 5pm, we’ll saunter down the road for a not-to-be-missed InfoParty.

What are you waiting for? Get one of the limited tickets for InfoCamp Berkeley 2010 from EventBrite and join us on Facebook for more.

At the UC Berkeley School of Information a couple of people are working hard to bring the successful unconference format known as InfoCamp to the East Bay. In the next days, you will read a lot more about what’s going on and how you can be a part of it.

Mark your calendars: InfoCamp is coming to Berkeley on March 6, 2010.