Riga, Latvia, 10 February
Jamaican flags seem fitting in a joint called the Sunset Café, draping over the top shelf of the bar as easily as the Reggae music flows from the DJ booth.

But since the saloon overlooks the River Daugava rather than the Caribbean, though, it turns out that the florescent lights of the bar radiate more warmth than the sunsets. But on the chilly evening of 8 February, most of Café Sunset’s patrons are more accustomed to the artificial glow of the computer screen than the warmth of the Greater Antilles anyhow.

Just as the meet-and-greet gets going this evening, alternative media playboy Arturs Mednis (editor and publisher of Jaffa Magazine) takes a moment to officially open BarCamp Baltics 2008 with a welcoming speech – in Russian – while about 75 bloggers from around the world sample flutes of complimentary champagne.

The only other interruption of the evening comes halfway through the evening, when a group of cheerful Azerbaijanis take the mic and raffle off homemade pastries to anyone who could answer trivia (again, in Russian) about their South Caucasus country.

The distinctly multi-cultural evening seems the ideal way to ring in the first edition of BarCamp Baltics, a three-day unconference boasting about 500 participants from more than 35 countries.


“For many of our participants attending BarCamp Baltics was the first time they ever saw what young people from other ex-Soviet countries look like,” writes organizer Evgeny Morozov, a Belarusian who studies the social implications of new media. “Think Ukrainians meeting Latvians, or the Kazakhs meeting Lithuanians, or the Azeris meeting Belarusians — it is thanks to BarCamps that many of them finally heard about the problems of each other for the first time.”

The foremost goal of the unconference – a term coined in the mid-90s, and, according to Wikipedia, “primarily used in the geek community” – was, indeed, networking. The entire unconference was loosely organized, so as to facilitate as many connections as possible: Friday was a laid-back “Day Zero”, full of optional, guided, museum trips and the opening party. Saturday’s schedule saw a slew of 20-minute presentations. That evening provided discounted bar-hopping for all Barcamp participants. Sunday’s activities – before rides and flights home – included an innovation incubator and a big-group session of lightning-round presentations called Pecha Kucha – a term of Japanese origin indicating five-minute professional presentations (roughly, 20 slides, .20 seconds for each).
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