Ross Mayfield's Weblog

BarCamp Block Party

Ok, holy smokes, next weekend's BarCamp Block Party could be absolutely huge.  The map of confirmed BarCampBlockLocations has room for over 500 participants.  Please sign up now so we can get a good estimate for attendees for meals and parties (wiki/Upcoming/Facebook).

Also, we are looking for feedback on the idea of it becoming a BarCampOree.

BarCampOree is a thematic approach for BarCampBlock that we are considering for having different BarCampBlockSessions grouped by both location and theme.  We are soliciting feedback on this idea from participants and providers of BarCampBlockLocations.  Here's the general idea:

* DesignCamp at IDEO
* FutureCamp at IFTF
* OpenSourceCamp at Socialtext 2
* EnterpriseCamp at Socialtext 1
* OfficeCamp at Intalio
* ConsumerCamp at Edgeio

We are still looking for cash ($300 limit) and in-kind sponsors.  So far we have Socialtext, Strategiclee, Web 2.0 Expo, TechCrunch, Yahoo, Google,  Lumeno.us, Timbuk2 Designs, Leverage Software, Citizen Agency, CommunityNext, BayCHI and Ma.gnolia. Also, it looks like we may have a solar powered wifi mesh that covers half of Downtown Palo Alto.

We created the first BarCamp in just seven days, an that's about how much we have left.  Please blog this , or volunteer.

UPDATE:  Mike Arrington blogged it, and reflects:

Two years ago I attended the first Bar Camp, which was held at Social Text’s offices in Palo alto. It was just a few weeks after starting TechCrunch, and nearly everyone I met there is now a friend. It was held just before all the craziness happened with the web, and the people who were starting companies weren’t expecting much of a return - they were doing it out of passion.

Pandora and TechMeme launched at the event, and we got our first glimpse of Flock. My notes on the event are here and here.

Since the original event there have been over 150 Bar Camps held around the world. 10,000 or so people have attended at least one of them.

UPDATE: Slideshare just offered to sponsor in comments, and I updated the wiki accordingly

BarCamp Block Party, mark the date

We are looking to host the biggest BarCamp ever, on its third anniversary, at the place it started.   So far we have a date, August 18th and 19th, and location on the block where Socialtext is.  Mark it, because with the help of neighboring companies, we might have room for 1,000 participants.

HealthCamp

HealthCamp is this weekend at the Socialtext office in Palo Alto, a Barcamp for health care and technology issues.

HealthCamp is an unconference focused on the growing innovation in health care delivery, outcomes and prevention driven by new technology and new ways of thinking. This growing revolution has been termed "Health2.0" and although it encompasses the use of Web2.0 technologies, it is a much broader transformation in health care and the role of the consumer.

Wiki Wednesday November 2nd

The whole Socialtext team is in town for an on-site retreat next week, so we are having this month's Wiki Wednesday in Palo Alto.  Some great suprise guests are coming by.  Mark the date and sign up on the wiki.

Also, a few of us are coming to TagCamp this weekend. Unfortunately it overlaps with the UCLA-Stanford and Earthquakes-Galaxy football games, but I'll stop by for some geek time.

Barcamp Video

Dorrian Porter put together a classic video of barcamp (55Mb .mov [via Laughing Squid).

Photo from the Wired News piece

Cheaper to Host than Attend

It's becoming cheaper to host your own event than attend one. And it's really cheap not to host or attend with all the remote participation and podcasting options out there.

With the right social software, you can promote, coordinate and self-organize events with near zero cost. Location does matter, but not for everything. Now cost can be a good thing, as some events are better with a little exclusivity, but inclusive options provide alternatives that help the ecosystem as a whole.

A more wild thought is that event models almost correspond to the three modes of production identified by Benkler:
* Firms and contracts: invitation is the barrier to participation
* Markets and prices: price is the barrier to participation
* Commons-based peer: reputation is the barrier to participation

Think about this for a minute, even if you are not in the conference business, and expect an explosion in events and venues. Easy group forming is creating the same disruption for the event market as personal publishing has for media.

The Camp Where Everyone is a Quartermaster

Any event takes time to gestate and intermingle with what you encounter next.  It will be a bit until I figure out the wonderful thing that emerged this weekend, and document it with others for others.

From my last event, Wikimania, two statements stand out:

• Leadership in Wikipedia is knowing where information is
• The more Wikipedia fails, the more money it attracts

Somehow these points apply to Bar Camp.

When someone walked in the door, 300 people perhaps in total, over 100 at peak, usually Kit would be there to guide them.  People insisted on handing out cash and it would make it's way to the guy with the PayPal account (Chris).  A collective sense of who was doing what was achieved before the event in a lively IRC channel (remember Happenings?).  If you had an idea, like a sponsored sub-party, it could simply get done.

BarCamp happened where it did because of location awareness.  About a week before, after we moved into the neighborhood, I met the Flock guys (knew Termie only through time based media) through Plazes.  We chatted a bit.  Then I got pinged with this crazy ass idea asking if I had suggestions for space and bandwidth.  A wiki was thrown up, the rest is increasingly well recorded history.

About 3 hours before the event, I started to panic. 100 people signed up on the wiki and we only had so much room and one DSL line.  A little chatter in the IRC channel and David Weekly (who was working on mirroring the Kwiki off of Andy's humble server) who called someone he knew at Etheric.  Within 10 minutes a guy showed up and got on the roof looking for line of sight.  No clear view and he headed off. 

Thinking of elephants and keyholes, I stared at the building in the way across the street.  Walked over to the IDEO receptionist who must have thought I was in creative plight who summoned the infrastructure guy.  He agreed to give roof and electricity access, called Alex at Etheric, who bridged in Tomas and he happily got back and on the roof -- but note the IDEO guy held off on his weekend for 3 hours to let it all happen.  Great neighborhood. 

I probably should have been panicking about the need for showers, but instead kept thinking about sweaty happy fun.  David Sifry and Stewart Butterfield were both reached by cell on their way to Foo and happily sponsored the bar and brunch tabs.  Marten Mickos from MySQL and others offered to sponsor on their own and we held off to keep the budget replicable.  We did get a burst at the Gordon Biersche party Technorati sponsored from the expected 40 to 100 people, which will work it's self out.

After putting in deserved family time, I locked the doors at 7 pm on Sunday.  48 hours of what you would expect to be chaos and shit that goes down on your permanent record.  But there was Tantek literally picking up lint, spotless facilities, only one damaged participant laptop, and nothing left to do except record learnings and give thanks (especially to Tim O'Reilly).

Guessing from my last two years at Foo, a lot got done there.  At Bar, save a few initatives and enlightenments, we had good time chatter.  The kind in which the PC revolution was started with hobbyist computer clubs, but now it's SC's turn (viva wikiwyg!.  A seriously powerful thing when the social network gets activated, and in a way, how this all got started.
 

Open as in door is simply magical.

ThankYouLetters

ThankYouLetters is a great way to praise people who pitched in for BarCamp.

Wikiwyg

This weekend we put something cool out into the world. Wikiwyg is what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor for wikis, or pretty much any other text area on the web. It's open source licensed, available for download and demo. Jeff Jarvis said wikiwyg is "the way wikis are supposed to be."

Our hope is this makes the two-way web usable. You can see the genius of Socialtext lead developer Brian Ingerson in something that is almost a bug, but might be a feature: double click anywhere to edit. Then you will notice it snaps into edit mode, as the editor was already loaded with the page -- reducing, but keeping, the distinction between display and edit mode. You can toggle between wysiwyg and wiki text (more efficient when you know it). Sexy Ajax pixie dust lets you edit without touching the server until you are ready to save. Always remember that Wiki Wiki is Very Quick in Hawaiian.

Here's some wikis running it:

* http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp05/
* http://www.kwiki.org/
* http://wiki.wikiwyg.net/
* http://barcamp.org/

One of the benefits of being based on open source is not only that we can share, but innovate openly. We still have some work to do (IE support, ugh) until it's ready for Socialtext production and would appreciate feedback and participation.

ForkCamp

Unfortunately, Om's post about Foo vs. Bar got Slashdotted, perpetuating the myth of conflict.  This Slashdot comment put it nicely:

This is open source... its just a branch from the original idea, re-packaged by someone new for the problem that they want to solve.

Sure forks in the code/idea base aren't always good but I'm sure if Bar gets some good ideas that they will be incorporated back into the Foo release.

--
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi

On the big upside, I just saw the FlockDemo.  Flock is a Social Browser built on Mozilla that gets people sharing.  Can't wait to play with it.