I attended this weekend the first time at a BarCamp and I was really impressed by the top organization of the BarCamp Senza Confini 08 in Klagenfurt . Even there were just a few session-slots booked before the conference started, almost every slot got filled with content at the end of the day. I was surprised how easy the interaction between the organizers and the participants worked out and how fast this process developed during the morning sessions.

It seems that the Austrian bloggers are very focused on making money with their blogs. Blogs are not only used for authentic communication but also to a very high level as information filters like traditional media. At the sessions where I had been almost everyone was a semi-professional blogger and already had some kind of sponsoring deal or revenue source. When it comes to motivation it looked like that the bloggers are more driven by the opportunity to make money then intrinsic motives.

My conclusion is that BarCamps are a cool and easy to set up conference format. But I don’t think I will attend at another Web2.0 BarCamp – always the same topics, companies and stories. The second thing is that austrian bloggers would probably do everything for money and so it should be quite easy and cheap for agencies and companies to buy clicks, attention, content or whatever you are looking for.