Unconventional Conventionalists
BAR Camp kicks off tonight at 7pm. While I'm crossing my fingers that there is enough bandwidth and space (100 people signed up, it's in the press, and there is only 2,500 sq. ft., need FunctionalSpillover, especially showers IMHO) -- some really great things are coming together thanks in part to last minute sponsors:
- There is a guy on the roof across the street (thanks IDEO!) right now setting up an 80 Mbps microwave connection (thanks etheric via David Weekly!), from there it's 802.11g across the street to a self organizing mesh and puppies and kittens.
- Technorati is cool enough to sponsor a party tomorrow night at Gordon Biersche!
- The good folks at Flickr are covering breakfast
- SimplyHired, LaughingSquid and SourceLabs sprung for beer
- Wordpress paid for the t-shirts
- Looks like we are streaming video, over here
Beyond that, there are two things I really hope happens -- a shared experience and memory.
Most self-organizing events only excel at what happens in the room. If a FooBarLink gets established between FOO and BAR, as well as remote participants like in DC, it provides a model for sharing and scaling. BAR Camp should be something that remote participants both enjoy and get, even when it happens at such a late notice they can't guarantee a real-time commitment for the whole event. They need to participate in shared experience, even if part of it has to be compelled by revisiting the archives. The most important thing is how participants contribute to memory: sharing notes on the process of how this occurred, notes on the wiki for what has been said, and a stream of tags and images for a rich experience.
