[ale] OT: Barcamp in Atlanta

[Brian Pitts]

Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> That's wonderful.  Just great.  Splendid.
> 
> What is it?

Basically, a fun place for techies to go and meet innovative people and 
share knowledge. It helps if you've drunk a few pitchers of the Web 2.0 
kool-aid.

 From wikipedia:

BarCamp is an international network of unconferences ? open, 
participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants 
? focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source 
technologies and social protocols.

History

The name "BarCamp" is a playful allusion to the event's origins, with 
reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off 
of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open 
source publishing luminary, Tim O'Reilly.

The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 
2005, in the offices of Socialtext. It was organized in less than a 
week's time, from concept to event, with 200 attendees. Since then, 
BarCamps have been held in over 31 cities around the world, in North 
America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and Asia. To mark the 
one-year anniversary of BarCamp, BarCampEarth was held in multiple 
locations world wide on August 25-27, 2006.

Influence

By "open-sourcing" the organizational process of Foo Camp, that is, 
codifying it in a wiki and making that publicly available, BarCamp seems 
to have struck a chord. Beyond the BarCamp-branded network to which the 
first event gave rise, it quickly became a model for unconferences in 
other fields or for more specialized applications, ranging from WordCamp 
and PodCamp to Seattle Mind Camp, to name a few. The involvement of key 
figures in the web development community, such as Tantek ?elik and Ross 
Mayfield, no doubt helped its adoption.

Structure and participatory process

BarCamps are organized and evangelized largely through the web, 
harnessing what might be called a Web 2.0 communications toolkit. Anyone 
can initiate a BarCamp, using the BarCamp wiki.

The procedural framework of BarCamp is similar to Open Space methodology 
for organizing meetings, but looser. It consists of sessions proposed 
and scheduled each day by attendees, mostly on-site, typically using 
white boards or paper taped to the wall. This has been dubbed, with 
another play on words, The Open Grid approach.

While loosely structured, there are rules at BarCamp. All attendees are 
encouraged to present or facilitate a session. Everyone is also asked to 
share information and experiences of the event, both live and after the 
fact, via public web channels including (but not limited to) blogging, 
photo sharing, social bookmarking, wiki-ing, and IRC.

Hosting and attending

Venues typically provide basic services. Free network access, usually 
WiFi, is crucial. Following the model of Foo Camp, the venue also makes 
space for the attendees, a.k.a. BarCampers, to literally camp out 
overnight. Thus, BarCamps rely on securing sponsorship, ranging from the 
venue and network access to beverages and food.

Attendance is monetarily free and generally restricted only by space 
constraints. Participants are asked, though, to sign up in advance.

Historical precedents

The conceptual origins of this form of self-organized unconference can 
be traced back to hackers' meetings in Europe, especially those nearer 
to anarchism and autonomism, happening since the '90s in Temporary 
Autonomous Zones or other occupied places. Also, the BoF sessions of 
IETF meetings may have provided inspiration. However, BarCamps lack the 
political motivations and are actually quite integrated with the 
mainstream ICT industry, often getting substantial sponsorships from 
major corporations.