This May I had the opportunity to attend ElggCamp Santiago. Thanks to the hard work from the Condiminds team and the financial assistance from all the sponsors, the event was an amazing success. Lucila Campos from Condiminds writes in with a followup for those who weren't able to attend in person:

Hi Everybody!

We just wanted to let you know ElggCamp Santiago was more than a success, it was AMAZING!!!

Brett Profitt along with the Condiminds team travelled to Chile's capital city, Santiago, a city full of entrepreneurship opportunities, in order to present Elgg as the powerful social engine it is. The one-week-long journey started at the Start Up Chile's meetup on Thursday 5 of May, where a group of about 30 people had the opportunity to have an closer meeting with the ElggCamp Santiago organization. Sadly Brett couldn't make it as he lost his Atlanta flight due to some problems at his local airport; but he sent some awesome videos (you can see here)  and had a live participation through Skype. You can see some images of the Start Up Chile event here.

The following days the team decided to visit a some places near Santiago, so we rented two cars and traveled to Viña del Mar and Valparaiso... there are some pics here if you want to take a look to us doing.. nothing! ;)

Finally, the day arrived!! On Wednesday 11th at 13.00 hs the ElggCamp > for Developers! started! This was a really great gathering where around 25 developers had the chance to meet Elgg's tech lead, Brett, and learn from his knowledge how to code on Elgg. You can take a look at the presentation he gave and the plugin they coded together on the coding session afterwords here.

At 18.30 hs almost 180 people were eating mexican food and drinking beer while waiting to be part of the official ElggCamp Santiago. That really rocked! The event started with a dynamic presentation from part of the Condiminds team, where the audience got to know how Elgg can be turned into a social platform for almost every use they could imagine.

After the Condiminds presentation, and on one of the greatest moments of the evening, Brett introduced Elgg 1.8 to everyone but with an incredible twist: He actually launched Elgg 1.8 beta1 LIVE from the stage! Suddenly Elgg 1.8 beta 1 was at the Elgg.org homepage, posted on the blog, tweeted... Amazing moment!

After his presentation two Agile experts take the stage to introduce everyone on the audience on the amazing benefits of  software development using the Agile methodologies. They were both intelligent and funny, a great way to learn new stuff! Take a look at their presentation here.

Finally, 5 tech entrepreneurs from different part's of the word (Chile, Colombia, España) shared they experiences on the Entrepreneurship Forum. The audience had a great time learning from their success and also from their mistakes! Questions from the public where the closure to this moment, and some of them really took advantage of it!

We are more than thankful for the support we received on this foreign country where Elgg is now a passion to be shared :) If you want to take a look to the event photo gallery please click here, and don't forget to visit ElggCampStgo.com

Hope you can join us next year on the ElggCamp Santiago 2012 or any time on the following ElggCamps!

Cheers!