In late August, the organizers have yet to finalize a date, Vancouver will hold BarCamp-style conference titled, appropriately, BarCamp Vancouver. I've started a PubSub feed for the unconference, which I will attend. After BarCamp Toronto, while waiting for my fligh back home at the airport, I started writing out my thoughts about that unconference in particular and unconferences in general (keeping in mind that I have only attended the first day of one of them, of course). Joey explained the concept of BarCamp (really well, I might add), and he says that the confusion about the philosophy of "no spectators" applies “doubly so for events with programmers”, mentioning that 75% of them classify themselves as introverts. It's not clear, though, what he prescribes, so my article, still in heavy drafting mode, will attempt a prescription.
Traditional speaker-audience conferences do not challenge introverts to participate, because nobody, not even extroverts, is invited to participate. Most of them, however, are so far stabs at the dark, so I'm wondering, what tips do you have in order to become successful introvert conference and unconference attendees? I'm particularly interested in strategies for unconferences, since they challenge introverts to speak up and participate, something introverts have trouble doing in loud places with lots of strange people. Extroverts and introverts alike both have experiences worth sharing, so please don't exclude yourself if you fit one of either categories (or even those that fit in both columns A and B).