The first O’Reilly Twitter Boot Camp – #OTBC was held in New York as a pre cursor to 140 Characters Conference – #140conf on Monday 15th June, 2009.

With opening and closing keynotes were like matching bookends of The Twitter Book #twitterbook offered to all attendees and authored by the keynoters @timoreilly and @SarahM.

Attendees came from across the country. Just a few I spoke with coming from LA – @EricMueller of @FLWbooks, Texas – @marlaerwin , Vancouver – HootSuite, Las Vegas -zappos, Boston – @mvolpe , Philadelphia, @SBrownCCI from Cincinnati and @sticky_mommy from Vermont.

The demographics of attendees was a little different from my usual O’Reilly conferences of MySQL, OSCON and Web 2.0. There were less the half the attendees with laptops at hand for notes & twittering, offset by the high blackberry or should I say shaq-berry users (Thanks Ami @digitalroyalty), easily seen from the back of the steep and dark auditorium. A greater proportion of different industries and gender lead to many questions and discussions from users, not just technologists.

The morning panel sessions afforded no question time due to speakers providing good but overtime content. Over lunch Mike Volpe of HubSpot a corporate sponsor for the day set the standard by asking his panel of speakers to stick on time. This afforded almost 30 minutes of question time and a roar of approval from the crowd.

There is a lot of valuable information you can find by Twitter Search of #OTBC. A few examples include:

• @archivesnext: Good advice: RT @mpedson RT @timoreilly: Twitter usage policy from @zappos at #OTBC: “Just be real and use your best judgement.”
• @GeekGirlCamp: Hmmmm. Lots of conflicting views on following on Twitter here. What makes YOU follow someone? Would love to know… #OTBC
• @CarriBugbee: ROI is a tricky thing on twitter; if you’re using it solely to generate revenue, you might be there for the wrong reason – @wholefoods #otbc
• @mvolpe: “Driving ROI on Twitter” slides and video of my presentation later today for #OTBC – http://tinyurl.com/061509mvolpe
• @ronaldbradford: Best Practices for Twitter – Build a commercial-grade profile. @CarriBugbee at #OTBC
• @journalismgal: Ask questions within your tweets even something as simple as your fab apple #otbc
• @ronaldbradford: Do stay tuned in. Nights, weekends, holidays are all twitter time. Maria Erwin @wholefoods at #OTBC
• @harrybrelsford: Is Twitter the new Google? That is belief of @erictpeterson Twitter is creating entire new businesses (Flash Light books) #otbc #smbnation

My individual brands of @ronaldbradford and @MySQLExpert will certainly benefit from a wealth of knowledge of the day. If only I had my Twitter name on the tee shirt I was wearing for the event.

The only down sides to the venue the lack of power for attendees, flaky Internet and a basement auditorium with no cell phone service. Important things to re-consider for a online technology conference. In true form the attendees including myself @ronaldbradford, @SBrownCCI, @GeekGirlCamp, @14str8 used the medium of the conference and our voices were heard and some limited power made available. Thanks O’Reilly for listening.

Thank you to all speakers @katmeyer, @timoreilly, @steverubel, @zappos, @carribugbee, @twittermoms, @flwbooks, @davidjdeal, @bethharte, @dunkindonuts, @reggiebradford, @wholefoods, @tedmurphy, @adbroad, @digitalroyalty, @erictpeterson, @mvolpe, @laureltouby, @sarahm and to Zappos.com for the after event happy hour.