Photo by Harald [ha75]

What a great idea! It took us only 5 minutes to open the account and to find a host – and not just any host, but the one who’s also attending BarCamp! :) Thank you Thomas and Iona :)

The BarCamp started on Friday evening with a Warm-Up Party, and lasted till Sunday evening which meant 2 full days of great networking! About 230 people were participating, and it guaranteed there’ll be a lot of sessions: 45 on Saturday and 27 on Sunday. But, that wasn’t a problem at all since the sessions were held in HTWG Konstanz. It’s an University building 100m from the lake. So whether you wanted to participate in a session or to chit-chat with people at Strand Bar relaxed in a beach chair with a cocktail in your hand – the choice was all yours.

We’ve held one session “Advantages and disadvantages of PayPal’s payment system” and it turned out to be a really great and creative discussion with both experienced and unexperienced users of PayPal’s service.

The organization of BarCamp Bodensee was perfect! And I really don’t know how the organizers, Oliver Gassner as “project mind” and Patric Schmid as “man in charge”, have managed to do that. They’ve provided us everything: breakfasts, lunches and dinners, coffee and drinks trough the whole 2 days. And they’ve had a great sponsors, of course. But I’d like to single out one of them. Peter Eich has provided 50 free bicycles for the BarCampers so that we could see the lake’s area. Another reason why I’m singling-out Peter is that he’s made an video interview with us, and it’s published on his blog. Thanks, Peter!

Photo by Peter Eich

This was my 2nd and Pedja’s 4th BarCamp. And all that sharing of knowledge and experience simply astonishes me. Bunch of people who are more or less in the same industry, talking and discussing about business or a meaning of life (oh, yes, we’ve had that session too :) ) or just hanging around and chatting – it’s just great! I’ve learned some new tricks about how to be more efficient, I’ve discussed the idea of International BarCamp Network, I’ve participated in You Tube Movie Karaoke and I’ve cycled 20km with no problems at all – and all of that within just 2 days. Amazing experience!

And the last but not the least I want to mention a few people:
-Sacha Schlegel from Lichtenstein who was our CouchSurfing room-mate and with whom I’ve had wonderful talks and discussions. Hope to see you soon ;)
-Michele Capobianco from Switzerland, who was my partner at YT karaoke “Pulp Fiction with FB Farmville sub-titles” :))
-Justine Adam, great girl and a great web developer at Novelys in Strasbourg, she shares my “love” for red wines ;)
-the to-me-unknown person who managed to get that red sausages sponsorship – they were yummy/tasty/excellent! :))

So long, and thanks for all the fish/sausages until the next BarCamp Bodensee! :)

I’m not gonna tell you now about all these details. Today, I would like to tell you about a completely new experience I’ve had.

If you’re wondering what’s on my T-shirt, it says “Don’t stare at my tits, I’ll blog it” :)

Few days after the web-shop was on-line, and all these great things have happened, I was invited to attend FuturAD conference in Zagreb, Croatia, and to present the wtfJeans case-study. The conference was organized by Interactive Advertising Bureau and Best Marketing Croatia and it was held on 24th and 25th of March.

I admit it was a big challenge, because I have never been on stage in front of so many people. Being a part of an elementary school theater-play with another 50 kids does not count here. :)
Preparing a presentation was not a problem, although I’ve somehow deleted it a day before my trip to Croatia, but these things happen when you don’t press ctrl+S often enough. ;)

Lots of my friends from Zagreb were there too. And at the same time it was both a great support and a huge responsibility. I simply needed to give my best!

Yours truly, big stage and wtfJeans photo behind me

When I’ve stepped at that big stage, and the technicians gave me the microphone, the one that reminds of a Madonna-kind-of-thing, I’ve looked at the audience, just took a deep breathe and said to myself “The show starts now. Too late for running away!” :) I had a stage fright for the first couple of minutes, but the moment I’ve started to talk about the 5th of March, a day when wtfJeans was at twitter’s trending topic, all that anxiety have disappeared somehow, and I’ve almost felt connected to all these people.

Sanja, Ivan Brezak Brkan (friend,he designed our logo and written most of the text at our web-shop front page), Pedja, Borja (great friend, who supported us from the beginning)

All I wanted was to show them how we’ve managed to spread the story about our project by using only social media channels (Twitter, FB, blog…) and I wanted them to know how much we’re enjoying what we do. Another important thing was explaining them that every question from our customers, every blog entry about us, every follower on Twitter, every single person that at least have re-tweeted us – all these people have helped us to make a wtfJeans project better and successful.

Just some geeks checking out WiFi connection ;)

I think I’ve made a good presentation. I think that all these attendees at FuturAD now do understand that one doesn’t need lots of investment or a good and well-paid marketing campaign. All you need is a project you believe in, good and trustworthy community, and lots of hart. With those things – everything is possible.

We really believe in our project. Both Pedja and I have been working 24/7 (and still do) and it paid off. I don’t get any more which-big-jeans-company-is-behind-this mails, no explanations needed anymore. People now know what wtfJeans is, they understand how and why we’ve made them. And they know that we just looooooooove what we do. :)

Photos by Smijesak & FuturAD