Today, a group of techies took over G.WIZ as part of the weekend event known as BarCamp Sarasota. I had the opportunity to be a part of this special Occupy Sarasota: Techies Take Over G.WIZ event with a twist — not to be confused with any other “occupy” events taking place around town today.

If you missed today, there’s still time to make it tomorrow for the 2nd Day of BarCamp. Here’s where to learn more.

**Update** The BarCamp Sarasota Fall 2011 event takes place October 15-16 at GWIZ. Epiphany Marketing is making presentations there as well. We hope to see you!

I’m writing this from inside an Entrepreneurial Roundtable session being facilitated by locally-based technologist Stan Schultes. The ideas being generated within this “open source” group of people are absolutely stellar. There are folks in the room who have been there, done it, and are looking for an opportunity to share back and forth.

This is just one example of the benefits of having an event like BarCamp Sarasota. This year’s event is being held this weekend at GWIZ, which turns out to be a perfect venue because of their various small rooms that seem ideally suited for sessions like those you’ll find at a BarCamp event. The sessions are on a wide variety of topics — both technology-focused and otherwise. Skimming through upcoming session for today, here are some of the topics on the menu:

• “Leadership and Community Building, Why Now More than Ever?” with Sara Hand
• “The Zen of Building Sustainable Technology” with Lorrie Vervoordt
• “Programming Humans” with  Tracy Ingram
• “Facebook Marketing & SEO” with Thao Tran

At 11am, we’ll be presenting…

Making It All Pay: Growing Your Business with 21st Century Tools

Yes… technology is great! We love it… but without a comprehensive, written, measurable strategy in place, most every business will find themselves floundering in a sea of unfinished initiatives — nearly all of which have failed to produce any significant result from a business standpoint.

For example… how many businesses have websites, blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. but can’t point to any new business that they have produced? Or (perhaps worse) know that some business has been produced, but the metrics aren’t in place to identify how much and from which initiatives.

So… we’ll be talking about the strategy piece of the equation… and lining up all the elements in a way that gets you the result you desire. For most businesses, this means new customers, bigger  market share and long-term profitability.

Hope you join us for our session… More reports from this year’s BarCamp event later!

Though it’s still in the early stages of getting organized, I’m thrilled to announce the recent discovery of BarCamp Sarasota! Some old friends along with some friends I’ve not yet been introduced to are responsible for making this happen.

Things have gotten underway with a new home on the web and a Ning group which is all accessible at the BarCamp Sarasota website. Already there’s been an organizational meeting and another one is on the calendar.

So… calling all techies, bloggers, social media types, programmers, eggheads, geeks, propellerheads, etc.

Get over there and check out what’s going on… then get involved!

Then perhaps if there are enough WordPress users around the Sarasota area, we can manage to put together a WordCamp too!

(With apologies to all of my Geek friends for the photo… I’d hate to be accused of trafficking in stereotypes! Especially when we’re planning the takeover of the world! Oh… and… for the record, that is NOT a picture of me… from any point in my life!)