User:Saffyre9

DemoCampGuelph is a series of user-generated conferences (or unconferences). They are open, participatory events, whose content is provided by participants. Participants are those interested in design, development, marketing, startups and more from Guelph, Ontario, and the surrounding area.

History
David Crow and Albert Lai created the DemoCamp format as a light-weight, participatory gathering for designers, developers and entrepreneurs to demonstrate to each other the projects they were working on. The first DemoCamp was held in December of 2005 in Toronto at the Bubbleshare offices. DemoCamp was derived from the BarCamp unconferences, but is lighter in format, allowing them to be held in a few hours on a weeknight, and thus more frequently than a BarCamp.

The first GuelphDemoCamp was held June 6, 2007 at The Albion Hotel in downtown Guelph. It was organized by Brydon Gilliss. It was originally held at The Albion Hotel until the ninth camp, on May 13, 2009, where the event was moved to the eBar. It is run roughly every 3 months, taking place on a Wednesday evening at 6:30pm.

Notable presentations have included:
 * YooStar
 * AideRSS (now PostRank)
 * PagerDuty

Format
The format of DemoCampGuelph begins with a keynote speaker doing an approximately 20 minute talk on their area of expertise. Topics are usually broad enough to apply to everyone in attendance in some way. Past keynotes have included:
 * April Dunford speaking on corporate messaging
 * Tara Hunt speaking about her book The Wuffie Factor

Once the keynote is complete the demos begin. Each demoer is asked the following 5 questions to get the ball rolling and they have a total of 5 minutes to demonstrate their product/utility/whatever. Then while the next person sets up their demo they are given another 5 minutes to take questions from the crowd if need be.


 * Who are you?
 * What are you showing?
 * What qualifies you?
 * What do you get out of it?
 * What do they get out if?

Another important aspect of the night is that when a demo doesn't quite require all of their question time, audience members are welcome to come up to the stage to make announcements. Items like seeking employees or employment or general event notifications are common. For the technical sector in Guelph this can be an excellent way to find the people required for their small/medium businesses.

Charitable donations are also collected from the crowd throughout the night as well.