The Australian National University hosted the third Canberra BarCamp yesterday, an unorthodox gathering of like-minded souls brought together by a thirst for knowledge, to meet new people and chow down on sandwiches.

''We've got a real story going on at the moment we've got geeks eating salad,'' unorganiser Craig Thomler said.

Jokes aside, BarCamp is more than a geek convention it's a forum about social innovation, design and technology. For those taking part it's an informal, relaxed platform on which to thrash out ideas, air debates and learn a little something.

Dotted among the young IT crowd were public servants keen to get with the zeitgeist.

This being Canberra, Government 2.0 presentations featured heavily.

ACT Labor senator Kate Lundy described the event as a fusion of social participation and information technology.

''It's the passion and commitment to make our democracy better through citizen engagement,'' she said.

The BarCamp phenomenon emerged in the United States in 2005. The meetings, or ''unconferences'', are born in online forums and put together by ''unorganisers'' like Mr Thomler.

Anyone who volunteers to help with set-up, logistics or general organisation is an unorganiser. Hence Senator Lundy, who brought along the duct tape, got a guernsey.

Those taking part are encouraged to put together presentations on almost anything they like.

''It's very flexible in the way people run presentations,'' MrThomler said. ''There's a lot of energy in the room.''

Presentations ran for about half an hour on average yesterday, although late afternoon was reserved for lightning talks: five slides, five minutes, one topic.

When the time is up, someone helpfully bangs a gong.

''It's a bit like Red Faces,'' Lachlan Hibbert-Wells said.

More than 100 people registered for yesterday's event, compared to about 70 the previous year.

BarCamp gives semi-anonymous bloggers and posters a chance to put a face to the avatar. Senator Lundy said she knew of some of the people taking part through the online world, but yesterday was a chance to meet face to face.

Yesterday was Sydneysider Hibbert-Wells's first Canberra BarCamp.

''I finally got my visa,'' he said.

The 24-year-old, who is handling social media for this year's Earth Hour, is a veteran of unconferences in Sydney. Like most others taking part he has his Twitter account, #Warlach, etched in Sharpie ink on his name tag.

Twitter and similar social networking sites proved invaluable tools for the event unorganisers. They paid almost no money for advertising it was all tweeting.

With as much as 40 per cent of the crowd coming from interstate, the Twitter name tags were a handy reminder a conversation was only a tweet away.