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SAN FRANCISCO — From his perch on a balcony high above the floor of a dimly-lit nightclub, Chris Hutchins looks out over a sea of long faces and grins.
He's happy because he's found his calling.
Hutchins isn't surveying a crowd of boozing hipsters, but rather a mass of over 300 recently laid-off workers from the Bay Area's technology industry. They assembled here Tuesday for LaidOffCamp, a free, day-long conference for the recent victims of the souring economy: the unemployed, the self-employed and the freelancers eager to fill their suddenly uncluttered schedules.
"Everybody gets laid off at some point," he says. "It's normal."
Hutchins should know: He's LaidOffCamp's founder and himself the victim of a recent lay-off. He says his goal was to provide an opportunity for out-of-work programmers, consultants, IT pros and web designers to give advice to one another, network and maybe find a new gig or start a new company.
Perhaps most of all, he says, the gathering is about empowering those within the growing community to rediscover their roots.
"Getting laid off is an opportunity to find what you're passionate about," says Hutchins. "And not only what you're passionate about, but how you can leverage that passion to sustain yourself."
As more and more tech workers are forced to face that great question — "What do I do next?" — the most enterprising among them are revisiting the goals they once abandoned in favor of a high-paying tech job. By putting their web-savvy skills to use, they're finding success.
Hutchins says he's discovered his own passion, which is organizing community events such as Tuesday's conference and spreading them around the world. Several LaidOffCamps are planned in other cities — New York's will be a two-day affair. Hutchins didn't make any money off of LaidOffCamp, but the experience has energized him to follow this new path.
For others, their new-found freedom has led to real business opportunities doing what they love.
LaidOffCamp attendee Jeff Steinmetz put his audio and photo production company Urge Productions on the back burner to take a job as an editorial director at a start-up. When that job evaporated, Steinmetz resurrected his old business and returned to composing and producing music for a living.
"After the wave of reductions in work force, it has been great to follow my passion," he says, "and re-focus on the arts with my production company."
Web designer Regina Gelfo was laid off from her job at Current TV last November. She immediately turned to yoga, a personal devotion of hers, for inspiration.
She wanted to build a set of online tools that could help bring the San Francisco Bay Area yoga community together. When she met a fellow web-savvy yoga enthusiast with similar goals, they started looking for ways to collaborate. The two came up with the idea of launching an informational yoga portal — a place for students to go to find the closest studio, learn about local yoga events or find classes that best fit with their schedules.
It's a lesson born of the yogic concept of satsanga -- the power of community.
"Everyone is looking at ways to shave off the fat right now," says Gelfo. "Working together and combining our efforts is something that definitely needs to happen."
In the process, the two have designed the seed of a system that could serve as a white label solution for other businesses.
While some have landed on their feet, most of LaidOffCamp's attendees came seeking guidance.
Tuesday's sessions ranged from the purely practical — "Start-up Basics," "Career Networking," "Tools for Freelancers," — to the esoteric — "How to Be a 'Yes' Person in a 'No' Economy" — but almost all of them emphasized low-cost solutions to common problems.
Nate McGee was laid off in September of 2008. He took advantage of his abundant down time by starting a blog about — what else? — living on the cheap.
McGee presented a LaidOffCamp session on his topic of expertise. Some of his tips: cancel cable and watch TV shows online at Hulu; ditch Netflix and Amazon and sign up for a local library notification service like Wowbrary; learn to love cooking and ask around on Craigslist for recipe advice.
Several presenters throughout the day mentioned the financial planning web service Mint as an essential tool for discovering places to cut costs.
With most of the attendees were currently on government assistance of some kind, the sessions about how to stretch a dollar were the most crowded. Even seemingly unrelated panels about start-ups and venture capital funding were also peppered with questions about how things like freelance contracts, tax returns and self-employment status would impact the flow of those twice-a-month unemployment checks.
There were also numerous sessions about how to use social web tools like Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn to build a personal network.
Fitting, seeing how the social web was largely responsible for LaidOffCamp's success.
Hutchins says the idea for the event came to him in January, shortly after he lost his job at a consultancy firm. He bounced the idea off a few friends and one of them Twittered about it. Luckily, that friend had over 4,000 followers, and enthusiasm quickly spread. Hutchins started a wiki page. Sponsors lined up, volunteers emerged and a local nightclub donated its space for the occasion.
Tuesday's turn out was huge. At 9:30 in the morning, the line to get inside stretched down the street. The venue was crawling with reporters -- The New York Times and CBS among them. Coffee ran out before the sessions even started, and dozens of boxes of pizza disappeared in an instant at lunch time. The sessions were packed elbow-to-elbow all day.
Some companies showed up looking for potential new employees. LaidOffCamp's organizers gave them bright blue t-shirts with "I'm Hiring!" printed on the front. One the back was a blank white square, and the reps were encouraged to list the positions they wanted to fill using a Sharpie.
Photos: Michael Calore/Wired.com
*Updated March 5th 9:30am to include additional links and some clarification about the purpose of the yoga website.
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