As the BAR Camp janitor, I guess I need to help clean up this mess. Some people got miffed about not going to FOO Camp, especially those who had the experience before (the last two years were some of the best events I've been to, ever) -- and are now are wining like teenagers at a band camp who didn't make first fiddle.
To be clear, Bar Camp is not anti-FOO, quite the opposite. You can see from Tim's post that he has opened the concept for others to extend, others have before, and that's all this is. The only difference -- open as in door -- is really an experiment that could go either way. I hope something magical happens that connects the two camps during the event, prototyping a model for scaling.
Carefully picking participants is a tried and true facilitation technique that O'Reilly does masterfully (Tim says how, in comments), it sets the stage for self-organization. Unfortunately this creates a tension, healthy sometimes, between an in-group and an out-group. It was hard for me to think about not having the FOO experience again, but recognized the need to clear the cache. FOO will be fantastic and I hope my friends (hi ingy!) come home with wonderful tales and new initiatives.
But you need to remember what has changed -- the cost of group forming has fallen -- so anyone create one of their own, almost instantly. This will not lead to more competition between groups, but understanding across them.
