When Lori and I moved back to Philly from North Carolina in 2009, I knew almost nobody in the local tech scene. I’d spent years building a career somewhere else, and my professional network here amounted to a handful of people who remembered me from my radio days. Somebody suggested I check out an event where you didn’t need an invitation, didn’t need a badge with the right company name on it, and didn’t need to explain what you did for a living before anyone would talk to you.
That was BarCamp Philly 2009. My first Philly tech event after the move. I watched a blank board fill up with sessions proposed by whoever walked through the door, sat in a classroom while a stranger taught me something I still use, and left with the first handful of friendships that turned into the community I’ve worked in ever since. If you’ve ever wondered why I keep showing up for this thing, it starts there. Practically everything I’ve built in this city traces back to somebody I met at BarCamp, or an idea they introduced me to.
The year I brought my dad
In 2018, I brought my father along.
Dad wasn’t a tech guy. He was a mechanic — the kind of person who could fix anything with an engine and spent his last working years quietly repairing rides at Disney World so kids wouldn’t find their favorite one closed in the morning. But he loved being around people.
BarCamp gave him exactly that kind of room. He wandered the atrium, chatted up students and startup founders, and sat in on a session or two that I’m certain meant nothing to him technically and everything to him socially.
It turned out to be one of the last events I was able to share with him. His dementia advanced in the years that followed, and it took from him the thing he loved most — the simple enjoyment of being around other people. He passed in 2020. I think about that morning at Wharton more than I expected to. Not because anything remarkable happened, but because nothing had to. He just got to be in a room full of curious, generous people, and that was enough.
That’s the thing I want to protect.
Why I’m asking now
This week I wrote about why Johns & Taylor keeps sponsoring BarCamp Philly — the business case, the state of tech event sponsorship, all of it. Short version: the corporate money that used to keep community events running has mostly dried up, and the events that survive will be the ones their communities decide to carry.
This post is the personal version of that ask. BarCamp Philly 17 is coming this fall, and the organizing team — on which I’m now serving for the third year in a row — needs two things.
The first is money, and I promise it goes a long way. We run the entire event on roughly what some conferences spend on lanyards. Donations through our Open Collective page cover the unglamorous essentials: insurance, coffee, signage, name tags. Last year, community donations also covered tickets for about a dozen people who couldn’t afford to attend. Every dollar is publicly accounted for on the Open Collective site, so you can see exactly where your contribution went. If BarCamp ever gave you a talk, a job lead, or a friend, this is the most direct way to hand that gift to someone else.
The second is time. Two kinds, specifically.
On the day of the event, we need volunteers to help with check-ins and to help run the board — the big, chaotic, wonderful wall where the whole schedule gets built in real time. You don’t need any special skills beyond showing up early and being friendly to strangers. My dad would have been perfect for it.
And behind the scenes, we could use a few people willing to join the admin collective — the small crew that plans the event across the year. We especially need help with sponsorship outreach. If you’re someone who’s comfortable making an ask, or you have connections to organizations that still believe in supporting community events, you could take a real weight off a volunteer team that’s stretched thin. This role has been sitting open for a while, and filling it would change our whole year.
If either of those sounds like you, reach out through the BarCamp Philly site or just reply to this post — I’ll personally connect you with the right folks.
The room is the point
Seventeen years ago, BarCamp handed me a community when I didn’t have one. Nine years after that, it gave my dad one more good morning surrounded by people. I can’t pay either of those back. The best I can do is help make sure the room is still there for whoever walks in next — maybe somebody who just moved here and doesn’t know a soul yet.
If you can chip in a few dollars, here’s the link again. If you can give a Saturday morning or a little time each month, even better.
I’ll see you at the check-in table.
