Had a pleasant day trip to DC on Saturday for the Third Annual BarCamp DC (Schedule | Twitter | #barcampdc).

Location: MLK Library. Ah, in the heart of DC. A wonderful diversity of townies, international tourists, homeless, and, of course, geeks. My kind of town.  I sat in on the following sessions. My notes and commentary:

Scout n Lunch
I missed the whole topic creation confab. Yeah, bummed because that’s where you really meet people and stuff. Weekend sleep is more important, I suppose.

• Spent the first hour just floating from session to session getting the lay of the land of the rooms and format. The environment was collegial and the panel spam was being kept to a minimum.
• Second hour: I think the camp was serving free lunch (courtesy of the sponsors) but, hell, Chinatown was right around the corner. Yes, played some hooky to pay homage to Tony Cheng’s restaurant. Cheng’s is a classic 70s Old School throwback (I could see a spectacular John Woo Triad shootout scene here). The food is nothing overly spectacular (had the tofu-beef and pork dumplings…dim sum station was out this day, too) but, boy, they load your plate.  Good value and I come here as habit/tradition. I digress…

Session 1: Lean Start-up
So the first real session I went to was Lean Start-up with Kevin Dewalt (Twitter).  Kevin runs the DC LeanStartupCircle Meetup and is an enthusiastic student of Eric Reese (StartupLessonsLearned.com) and Steve Blank (Wikipedia):

• He started the session by asking the provocative question of why so many startups fail (he humbly included himself in this camp with two “failed” startups under his belt).  Even though the US is considered the gold standard for start-ups, the vast majority of them fail.
• Introduced the concept of “Lean Startup”. From what I was able to understand, this is a methodology that attempts to apply the Scientific Method to Innovation with a heavy emphasis on hypothesis testing. Based on this testing, you continue to iterate until the final product or market emerges.
• EARLY dry testing of whether a market exists in the first place is crucial. Use tools like Google or Facebook ads to see if there is any real demand for your product. This step is crucial and may save you much wasted time and money. Why go “all in” and build something that nobody wants.  These ideas mirror Blank’s “Get out of the building” and “Customer Discovery” theories.  For the VCs these days, tech itself is much less important than real customers.
• An audience member was touting Mechanical Turks as low cost beta testers. Also, personally vouched for the whole “exclusive beta” marketing strategy (”shh, don’t tell others” technique). Twitter with its lists and Google with the wave invites is doing this masterfully, btw.
• There was some Zen talk about how you approach things without understanding the problem AND solution. I didn’t get that. I still don’t get it. Then again, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Session 2: How to lead a small business to success
The best way to describe this session is IT Jerry Maguire starring Peter Corbett (Twitter | Blog: Advercation) of iStrategyLabs.  This was one of those classic “How I Did It” talks:

• Basically, went through in detail, how he went from being laid-off from an agency to forming his own successful interactive company (iSL) and developing a nice client list (ie, Geico) in a remarkably short time.
• Pro Tip: An audience member asked how one changes the stance of customers only wanting you (and no one else in the firm) doing the work.  Peter, as the recognized face of the company, gets this all the time.   Essentially, on day one, introduce the person doing the work for the client and set clear expectations.  Create a comfort level and ensure the client has an immediate direct line to you, the principal, for feedback.
• On developing tribes/networks/collaborator relationships: (1) Give, give, give…rarely ask. I’ve heard Robert Scoble share the same advice. (2) Get out and build your personal brand and community.  He did this by building the TwinTech parties, others have created user groups, etc.
• On a side bar, he used a lot of relationship metaphors for business (”Having never seen the bride naked until after the arranged marriage”…basically, test drive with some potential collaborators on a small project to see whether a long term partnership ought to be forged. Can we work together?). In the end, business is relationships.
• Uber Secret Pro Tip: “People want to buy, not be sold.” This maxim is the foundation of Peter’s “trade secret” method of closing sales.  He sheepishly shared that strategy to the audience, and well, I’m not going to share it here.  You should have been there.

Session 3: Freelancers lessons learned
The topic of this session had to with freelancing (or creating startups) when you are working a full time “real job”:

• This one was sort of a mishmash, I think, primarily, because there aren’t too many universal maxims when it comes to this topic.  Every situation is different, and you could see that play out as the various panelists had opposing opinions (some said to disclose with your employer, others said “what you do in your spare time is your business.”).
• Nice anecdote of when you go to a networking event, someone hands you their card…then 8 seconds later (”are you cool?”) you get handed their other card.
• There were some obvious no-brainers: don’t work on stuff that directly competes with your employer/client, don’t work on outside projects on company computers, etc.
• Funniest moment was when one of the audience members revealed himself as an IRS taxman (we knew something was up when, earlier, he effused praise for the Agency). I gotta wonder if that then stifled the openness of the rest of the discussion especially around tax issues.

5 PM Session
My mind, much like my stomach after Cheng’s, was pretty full at this point.  I was spent, man. Exit.

I learned a lot of stuff. I hope I contributed some points as well (at least, this post will be a small contribution to the community).  I love the unconference free-form dialogue concept and will be back.  Great job by the organizers, sponsors, and the grande dame MLK Library!

More Recaps

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• Political Activity Blog: Another great #Barcampdc experience
• Russell Heimlich: BarCampDC 3 Recap
• TechCocktail: Barcamp DC 3 Recap

*4 Twitter references…5….in this post. Who do I send the Lincoln to?