My First CampFiber Experience: A Resounding Success

Saturday the community of Lafayette, LA pulled off the world's inaugural CampFiber, an informal event aimed at bringing together groups of people around the central topic of what can we do with a full fiber infrastructure.

This first CampFiber was focused on pulling in local developers and creative types to discuss application development. And it was successful on many fronts:

- Great attendance. We started out with standing-room only and despite it being an 8-hour event that got technical towards the end we still had 20+ that soldiered through from 9am until 5pm.

- Attendees were educated, diverse, and inspired. We had applications developers, website builders, design professionals, entrepreneurial types, community leaders, and a strong contingent from Lafayette Utility Systems there to interface with the developer community.

- Everyone had a good time. I say this because there was a ton of laughter, everyone participated in the lively discussion, and when I talked with attendees afterwards there was nothing but appreciation for what happened and excitement for what's going to happen next.

- We covered some significant intellectual ground. I'll go into this in more detail in later posts, but suffice it to say I feel confident that the conversations we were having helped lay the groundwork for furthering Lafayette's potential to be the epicenter of the growth of the next generation of the Internet.

- There's great enthusiasm for more events. When I suggested I had interest in leading at least three other CampFibers focused both on related and tangential topics I got a ton of positive feedback. Plus with local tech group Zydetech rising out of the ashes I see unlimited potential to replicate this model of getting everyone into a room for an open discussion many times in this community.

I'll be going into much more detail about the event in posts throughout this week, but for now I wanted to make sure I thanked everyone who helped make this possible:

- Terry Huval and the LUS team for sponsoring my travel and buying in to using CampFiber as forum for connecting with local developers.

- Abigail Ransonet and Bryan Fuselier at the Abacus Data Exchange for providing the space, sponsoring the food, and providing a tremendous resource to the community through the introduction of broadband fabric computing.

- Ruth Ann Menutis for creating the space we used, a killer multimedia room in the Travis Technology Center (more to come on this story of economic development soon).

- Pat Raaz and her team from ZStudio for their terrific production work shooting, lighting, and staging the event.

- Eric Credeur and his team at Blue-Line Computer Solutions for their hard work and technical expertise in setting up the webcast and facilitating the technology setup for the presentations.

- Lafayette City-Parish President Joey Durel for taking time away from inspecting local golf courses for hurricane damage to kick us off with some tremendously inspirational words from an inspirational leader.

- Lafayette City-Parish CIO Keith Thibodeaux and Lafayette School District CIO Logan McDaniel for participating in a lively discussion during our local leader roundtable.

- All of our presenters during the second half of the event (more details to come on this soon): David Goodwyn, Aaron Lozier, Eric Credeur, Matt Turland, and Jeffrey Lyons.

- Kit Becnel who heads up for Academy of Information Technology at Carencro High School both for doing wonderfully describing her program without any warning and for bringing three of her students along to attend.

- And everyone who attended. With your energy, ideas, good humor, and community spirit this event couldn't have happened. I could not have asked for more from any of your or anyone who helped put the event on.

My first CampFiber was an inspirational, transformative experience for me, and I hope it was for everyone who attended.

Lafayette has the unique opportunity to not just revolutionize its own community but to serve as a leading example for the rest of the country and even to possible shift the course of all human communication.

That may sound hyperbolical but I assure you it's not. The sky is the limit for what Lafayette can do with the resources at its disposal. From its technology to its people to its community, all the ingredients are there to create the recipe for what the future of the Internet can be.

So needless to say, I can't wait to see what happens next!