I didn’t go to last year’s Social Media Camp. I only heard about it a couple of days before it was due to happen, and frankly at the time I was dissuaded from going by the general murmurment of my peers that anything to do with social media would be “gash”. That said, the blog posts that I read afterwards sounded like the talks and presentations that happened would have been very relevant to my interests, so I made a promise to myself that I would do my very best to go next time.

So I went.

Now, Social Media Camp London ‘09 was only the second *Camp that I’ve been to that was focussed around a niche subject (the first was GameCamp – I hope there’s another one of those this year). One of the things that I loved about SMC was that there were very few people there whom I already knew. I like to try and talk to new people at these events, which can be a bit of a problem when everyone already knows each other. No such problem here!

The talks themselves were universally great, with each one offering their own insight into an area that the speaker felt strongly about. I must admit, I felt really quite bad about my “How to make awesome broken biscuit cake” presentation — whilst the cake was well received, I didn’t think the presentation fit that well into the topic at hand. If I’d made more of the “if you offer people something, they will come” angle, then I’d have been happier with things — as it was, the presentation felt like it would have been more at home at a standard BarCamp.

But enough with the self-flaggelation…

There were two things which stuck out at Social Media Camp as “not good” things — the number of no-shows and the number of empty slots on the grid.

As Vero pointed out in her post, there were a lot of no-shows. She did the sensible (but scary) thing of overbooking the event, but there were still a good few spaces available on the day. No-shows are something that happen at every *Camp, and it’s been talked about many times before. People not showing up means that other people that would have liked to have come couldn’t, which is no fun for anyone. That said, I personally liked the numbers at this event — it didn’t feel overly crowded, but likewise it didn’t feel too small.

One of the important things to note about Social Media Camp was the number of people there who’d never been to a *Camp event before. From experience, I know that they can be a nerve-wracking experience the first time. “Will people like what I have to talk about? Will I get jeered off-stage? Will everyone already know what I have to say?” I signed up for the first two London-based BarCamps, got a ticket, and then handed it back a few days before the events for those very reasons. It was scary. I finally made it to BarCampLondon3 though, presented, and loved it. I’ve now been to pretty much every BarCamp I’ve been able to get to, presenting at each one. That first hurdle is a difficult one to get over, but once you’re over it you feel great.

So, with all the newcomers to *Camps at Social Media Camp it was unsurprising that there would be a few people who felt unconfident to present. That’s okay, but there are some extra things that could have been done to help combat this (Kat has written a post about this already, and the excellent comments are well worth reading through).

The first thing that could be done (which Vero says happened more for the first Social Media Camp than this one), is to educate about the presentations before the Camp itself. By making a firm but friendly assertion that everyone should present, that if no-one presents there will be no *Camp, and by giving examples of a range of different presentations that people have made in the past the whole thing can be made a lot less scary.

The other simple thing to do is to provide a slot for lightning talks (5 minute talks, rather than the normal half-hour slot), and let people know about it before the event. This then gives newcomers who are less confident about their presentations an easy way to contribute something small and less scary than a full half-hour’s amount of material. At most of the BarCamps I’ve been to recently, someone has taken it upon themselves to take over one of the rooms for a session or two to run lightning talks. Unfortunately, I only remembered about this towards the end of the event this time, when it was far too late to do anything about it.

One other possible way to combat non-presenters that’s been mooted is to have a special room that’s just for newcomers to give them a “safe area”. My only worry with this suggestion is that it could lead to a feeling of segregation and that newcomers have to present there, rather than it being a place they can present if they want to.

Overall, Social Media Camp London ‘09 was a great event. I’ll definitely be back next time. I met a whole bunch of great new people who I just wouldn’t have met otherwise, and I came away feeling re-invigorated. Roll on the next one.

Which reminds me — I haven’t actually answered the question in the title of this post — why did I go?

It was pointed out to me a couple of times during the day that I am primarily a developer. In my day job I don’t try and build communities, and I don’t interact with users. At home though, I very much do (or at least I should). I run The Ten Word Review, a site where you can review anything you want as long as you do it in exactly ten words. Usage of the site has primarily grown organically, and I’m obviously interested in looking after the community that’s grown around the site. So that’s why I came, and I’m glad I did.

Some of you might know Broken Biscuit Cake by its alternative name, Fridge Cake (or by its posh name, Tiffin), but whatever you call it you quite probably made it way back when you were at school. That’s when I first came across it, and it soon became a favourite to make when we had a few biscuits left over in the biscuit tin that didn’t seem to be getting eaten.

After my presentation yesterday, lots of people asked me how I made the cake, and whilst there’s a photo set on flickr with the instructions, I thought it would be nice to condense them all down into a little broken biscuit cake recipe here as well. So, here goes.

To make Broken Biscuit Cake, you’ll need the following (but don’t forget to hack it to make it nommy to your own tastes):

1. 250g biscuits. I like chocolate covered ones, but you can use anything. It’s good to have a mix of types and textures.
2. 300g milk chocolate.
3. 150g dark chocolate.
4. 100g unsalted butter.
5. 150g golden syrup.
6. 75g raisins.

And that’s all you need. Making the cake is as simple as combining the ingredients together like this (and it only takes about 20 minutes all told):

1. Put the biscuits in the sandwich bag, seal, and hit with a rolling pin until broken. It’s important to scream whilst you do this.

   Make sure the pieces are broken up nicely — you’ll want lots of crumbs and a few pieces about half the size of your finger nail. The crumbs are important to make sure that everything binds together later, and the larger pieces give you a little bit of extra texture in the finished cake.

   I find it’s a good idea to hit the bag on one side for a bit, then turn it over and try the other side too.

2. Break up 150g of the milk chocolate and all of the dark chocolate and place it into a mixing bowl. Chop the butter into pieces and add that to the bowl too. Finally, take the golden syrup (it’s about a third of a tin) and add that to the bowl too.

   Run the spoon you use to add the golden syrup under a hot tap first to heat it up and make the golden syrup slide right off it.

3. Whack the mixing bowl into your microwave on high for a minute or two. When it comes out the chocolate and butter will have started to melt and the golden syrup will have degenerated into a thin liquid. It won’t look particularly pleasant. That’s okay though.

4. Use a spoon to mix the chocolatey, buttery, syrupy mixture together. Just keep stirring it for a couple of minutes.

   Don’t stop once everything’s combined into a simple liquid though. If the mixture looks liquidy then you need to keep stirring. Once the mixture begins to come together and take on the consistency of a sloppy warm fudge then you’re done.

5. Pour the broken biscuit bits into the mix, along with the raisins. Mix everything together until you get a nice gooey chocolatey mess.

6. Grab a baking tray and cover it in clingfilm.

   Make sure you get the clingfilm as smooth as possible. If it’s a bit kinky then it’ll get trapped inside the cake and you’ll have difficulty getting it out when you come to take it out of the fridge later.

7. Place the cake mix into the baking tray.

   My advice here is to not dump it all into the tray in one go. Instead, try putting a few blobs of the mixture around the tray. The less you have to move around when you press it down in a minute, the less the clingfilm will get kinked up.

8. Once the cake mix is all in the baking tray, press it down with the back of the spoon. Make sure the cake is nice and compacted, and that it properly fills the tray.

9. Put the cake in the fridge. It would probably be sensible to cover it so that nothing else contaminates it.

10. Break up the remaining 150g of milk chocolate into a bowl, and melt it in the microwave as before.

11. Remove the cake from the fridge and pour your melted chocolate on top. Smooth it over the top to cover everything. You wouldn’t want to upset someone by giving them a slice that wasn’t covered in chocolate, would you?

12. Put the cake back in the fridge and walk away.

13. Let a couple of hours pass.

14. Turn out the cake. The clingfilm will be stuck to the bottom, so pull it off, making sure none is left behind.

    My technique for removing the clingfilm is to pull it vertically, rather than horizontally. I find this helps to stop it from tearing and leaving bits behind.

15. Cut the cake into little pieces. I find that each cake makes about 30-40 pieces, and that due to its density, a bit heavy knife is preferable for cutting it.

16. Put all the slices into a nice tub, and put that back in your fridge for nomming at your leisure. Reward yourself with a slice now.

    Due to the nature of this cake, I advise keeping it in the fridge. Chocolate, golden syrup and butter melt at low temperatures, and the cake gets pretty sticky if you leave it out in a warm place.

And that’s that — it’s all pretty easy really, and really tasty too. The scary part though, and probably something that everyone at Social Media Camp won’t want to hear is the number of calories this cake contains. An entire cake contains roughly 5800 calories, making each slice 145 calories of awesome chocolatey goodness.

Om nom nom.