Dennerlein, Gutounig, Kraker, Kaiser, Rauter & Ausserhofer

I-KNOW – 13th Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge

Technologies, 4 Sept 2013 – Graz, Austria

Assessing Barcamps Incentives for Participation in

Ad-Hoc Conferences and the

Role of Social Media

Overview

● Introduction to Barcamps

● The Rules of Barcamps

● Research Questions

● Method

● Results Questionnaire & Interviews

● Discussion & Outlook

Introduction: What is a Barcamp?

○ ad hoc or un-conference without predefined content

○ open to the public

○ open, unconstrained and self organized exchange of

knowledge

Photo: Rene Kaiser

Introduction: What is a Barcamp?

○ Origin in the Web 2.0

community

○ Usually free of charge

○ Participants define the

session topics

themselves

○ Session planning on the

spot

○ No strict difference

between speaker and

audience

Photo: European Forum Alpbach

Photo: Rene Kaiser

• 1st Rule: You do talk about BarCamp.

• 2nd Rule: You do blog about BarCamp.

• 3rd Rule: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a

presentation slot.

• 4th Rule: Only three word intros.

• 5th Rule: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.

• 6th Rule: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists.

• 7th Rule: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into

another presentation slot.

• 8th Rule: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (Ok, you don't

really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions

and be an interactive participant.)

Introduction: The Rules of BarCamp

Source: barcamp.org

Research Questions

1. What is the motivation of people to contribute to

an unconference such as the barcamp?

2. What role do social media play and how are

they used in the context of barcamps?

Method

● Object of study

○ Barcamp Graz 2012 and its attendees

○ Characteristics:

■ yearly changing combination of sub-camps (e.g. politCamp,

wissensCamp)

■ organized by volunteers

● Methodological approach (Cresswell & Plano Clark,

2011)

○ Mixed methods research

○ Explanatory sequential design:

quantitative → qualitative

Method

● Questionnaire:○ Administration: paper based / Analysis: Descriptives

○ 8 questions:

age, gender, education, place of residence, technical affinity, number

of previous barcamp visits, expectations, recruitment for follow up

study

● Interviews:○ Administration: semi-structured interview

○ Analysis: Qualitative content analysis (Mayring,2000)

○ Questions:

■ What motivated you to attend Barcamp Graz?

■ What were your expectations towards Barcamp Graz?

■ What role do social media play in context of the barcamp?

Results - Questionnaire

Sociodemographics:

• Age (n=92): 16 to 61 years with a mean age of 29 years

• Gender (n=98): 25% females

• Education (n=98): average education level was secondary

school

• Place of residence

(n=92):

● Technological knowledge and skills (n=90):

○ barcampers describe themselves as rather technically affine

● Frequency of participation (n=85):

Results - Questionnaire

Results - Questionnaire

● Expectations of the participants concerning the

Barcamp (n=99)

● Recruitment of participants for follow up interviews: 48

promises

Results - Interviews

What is the people’s motivation to attend BCG?

• the barcamp people

“Learning from the youngsters in the IT-sector”

• the format and structure of the barcamp

“I´m interested in self governed organizations”

• the topics of the (sub-camps)

“I´m interested in the topics web, social media and

socio-political contents”

What expectations did the participants have regarding the

BCG and to which extent did they come true?

• freedom to express one´s own opinion

• giving others input on their ideas

• in-depth discussions

• enjoying the event

• ...

“That I can get to know interesting people and that there

will be in-depth discusssion and that I gain new

knowledge.”

Results - Interviews

Do social media play an important role in Barcamps?

Generally important role attributed to social media

“On the one hand I´m a strong fan of participation and on

the other hand it adds value for everyone.”

Results - Interviews

Before the barcamp During the barcamp After the Barcamp

promotion of event

half of the

interviewees found out

about the event through

social media

- to spread news,

highlights, interesting

thoughts or quotes (using

Twitter, blogs or wikis)

- as a communication tool

to connect to other

participants and keep

relationships alive

May social media also constitute a barrier?

• possible decrease of attention during the sessions

„In my opinion, it [the use of social media during sessions]

keeps me from actively participating in the session.“

• one-dimensional way of promotion through social media

barcamps partly seen as insider events

Results - Interviews

Discussion

● Aspects of Motivation:

○ People: Meeting and networking with interesting and diverse

people of the barcamp community

○ Topic: The common topic of the (sub-)camp implies shared

interest between participants and determines the emerging and

to be discussed themes therein

○ Format: Little restricted structure and open format of

knowledge exchange of the barcamp

→ format / community is enabled by shared activities:

■ Rules

■ Use of social media

Outlook

● Are barcamps a kind of Community of Practice (CoP;

Lave & Wenger, 1991)?

○ motivational aspects of barcamps are similar to the

characteristics of CoP

○ explore how the theoretical framework of CoP is fruitful to

explain mechanisms of barcamps

● Investigation of similarities and differences to other

concepts of knowledge exchange

○ scientific conferences

○ open source movements

○ open space theory

References

● Creswell, J.W. & Plano Clark, V. L. (2011). Designing and

Conducting Mixed Methods Research. Sage Publications, Inc.

● J. Lave and E. Wenger. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral

participation, volume 95 of Learning in doing. Cambridge University

Press, 1991.

● P. Mayring. Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Forum Qualitative

Sozialforschung Forum Qualitative Social Research, 1(2), 2000.

Web:

● www.barcamp-graz.at

● www.barcamp.at

● www.barcamp.org

This work was conducted by members of the

Wissensmanagement Forum

http://wm-forum.org/

Read the full paper underhttp://know-center.tugraz.at/download_extern/papers/sigproc-sp.pdf