All those blog articles in German during the weekend probably made you wonder what happened on this blog. Just like I had announced earlier, I spend a day at the Future Music Camp 2009 in Mannheim, a Barcamp focused on the future of the music industry, hosted by Pop Academy Mannheim.

Unfortunately, I could only attend the camp on Saturday, but it was still worth it. The barcamp was organized very well. I'd like to especially highlight the decoration and the food (inclusive of the barbecue on Saturday night).

What I probably liked most is the excellent mixture of participants coming from big and small labels, download shops, mobile carriers, Creative Commons Germany, but also musicians, music freaks, people studying at Pop Academy and other institutions, and even a guy from the Pirate Party. All that facilitated discussions on a high level - and created the opportunity to view your own questions out of a very different perspective.

The sessions were interesting, but of different quality. This is probably the only thing I'd like to criticize: Providing a dedicated moderator for the sessions (rather than letting the presenter moderate himself) would have been helpful. Especially for Ralf Plücker's session, I would have wished to hear more about his experiences and less opinions from the audience - there are many opinions, but few hands-on experiences like his... For some sessions, it would have been good to make clear whether it is intended more as a presentation, discussion or just as a brainstorming session.

The camp-related tweets can be found via the tag #fmc09, and there's also some pictures in a Flickr group.