This weekend was BarCamp time again, the very first BarCamp Antwerp to be specific. There was some heated discussion on the intertubes about the true meaning of BarCamps and I was afraid this would have a negative impact on the quality but au contraire, I had a fun time!

• Béate Vervaecke kicked off with her “De 3 Hoofddeugden Van Een Ad Words Beheerder” (in Dutch) on how you can optimize your AdWords campaigns, a presentation to remember for later, loads of useful tips.
• The next one was Thomas Vande Casteele with his advanced Google Analytics course: “How to Pimp Google Analytics, Apply Ninja analysis and find the Golden Nuggets in your traffic”. It’s obvious now that I have been abusing Google Analytics in the past. It’s a powerful tool but you need to learn how to use it.
• Following was Tijs Vrolix with “How to create a 30-minute presentation in 10 minutes” which had nothing to do with presentations but with the “I Heart Phone” Facebook group. He is looking for

  Belgian designers, developers and thinkers working on iPhone (and mobile in general) apps and interested in meeting up to share experiences and thoughts [...].

  Nice idea, I’m looking forward to the first meeting. We also had a brief discussion on copyright law and how to persuade public companies to open their data.
• Stef explained some basic electronics for his Tweetshirt 2.0 concept. I had read about the Arduino, but Stef convinced me: I need this! He gave an awesome presentation and opened a whole new geeky world to me.
• It looked like Koen Delvaux continued Stef’s presentation with “The Kodel, an RC airplane autopilot for aerial photography”. He built a system where his remote-controlled plane will follow waypoints (added via Google Earth) to a certain location where the plane will circle around and take pictures of the area (read: low budget aerial photography), pure genius. I have been waiting for this presentation and it sure didn’t disappoint.
• Some more coffee and off we went to Stijn Wijndaele’s Twitpickr presentation. He got a lot of Twitter buzz last week, so I wanted to hear his story. I don’t always agree with his statements but auch, this guy has a special presentation style.

Before I forget: a special thanks to Anne Verberckmoes for organizing. You can find most of the presentations above (and more) on BarCamp Antwerp’s SlideShare page.