Another offshoot of Bar Camp, Drupal Camp is looking for a venue in NYC. As Amit can attest, finding a venue, especially in NYC, is the hardest part of organizing a camp.
So, if anyone has ideas for May 13-14 — Node 101 folks? — please let Noel know on the wiki. More details on their planning page.
technorati tags: DrupalCamp, drupal, DrupalCampnyc, civicspace, barcamp
I’m gearing up for a whirlwind two weeks that’ll start tonight in LA for Bar Camp (where Jason Roberts is putting me up), drop me in San Diego for Etech (with a ride from BCLA organizer Kareem Mayan) where I’ll be presenting on Flock, from whence I shuttle down to Austin for whurley’s Bar Camp extravaganza and then pop over to SXSW where I’m on two panels as well as going out of my mind for 120 seconds at 20×2.
Yowza!
Here’s hoping that my unprepared presentation at Under the Radar yesterday will improve over the next week so that by the time I’m talking about Flock at ETech I remember to hit the Star button and show off Photo Uploading. Heh.
At least I showed the mapping feature. Right Fredo?
So we’re about a week away from Bar Camp Austin and we’ve got a rediculous event in store for folks descending on Austin for SXSW. My buddy William Hurley (of the penguins) has been running amok, making plans and crackin’ deals and schemin’ like a madman. And he’s all but good on getting everything set up but he’s run into a bit of a snag: self-financing a whole Bar Camp is a bit… difficult.
(Oh — and we could also use some help getting some major bandwidth piped into the venue.)
So what are we talkin’ here?
Well, as with most of the camps, we’re trying to keep things extremely low cost. And obviously free for attendees.
But whurley’s out about $1800 for printing posters and badges, t-shirts, promoting and renting shuttles and would like lurve any kind of pecuniary support folks are willing to contribute. Any amount will do; and we like to keep donations to $250 or less, unless you’re sponsoring a round of drinks, a meal or some kind of service.
So how can you help? Well, simple:
Ok, I’m available to answer any questions or concerns you might have — but I’m totally psyched about all the work that’s gone into making this event happen and know that y’all’ll toss in some coin to help out!
If it is your first night at tequp, you have to talk.
And them’s the rules, except unlike Fight Club, but more like Bar Camp, you can talk about it after the fact. And judging from the description, I’d say it inherited a lot from Bar Camp:
tequp is a new collective focussing on innovative software and internet development. it is a passionate, informal and constructive meet. the main aim is not to share technological solutions, (although that is certainly an option) but to get to know locals doing cool stuff and share experiences of doing business.
started in melbourne, australia, it is hoped other cities join in on the tequp concept.
But here’s the nutty thing: according to my buddy Blake Burris (and father of this weekend‘s CocoaDevHouse), Cris Pearson, the mastermind behind the meet and developer of Comic Life, had never heard of Bar Camp before.
No, really!
Can you believe it?! Man, this whole accelerating serendipity thing is really starting to catch on.
Ryan lays it down. Ok, maybe I stick by my original snark.
So it’s like this, enterprise mashups, say whaaaaaat?
Makin’ me moola wit yo mashups baby — only if it’s DRM’d, TM’d, (C)’d or licensable. Hey money don’t grow on trees and mashups don’t either. Nor do the APIs, hey hey hey.
…or do they? Hrmm…
So so so, who’s gunna have the lowest pay-to-play mashable API stack? Dunno, but is that the best future you can come up with?
I got an idea; I got a stance (I mean, uh, I can git positional).
I’ll pay you z-z-zero for that information you’re already publishing. Toss that data into a format that I can read and parse and hey, no extra cost to you, eh? Pretty nifty. And cheap as hell.
Ok, so I’m bummed I wasn’t able to make it out to MuchoMashup Camp for reasons having to do with the current dayjob, but I gotta give David and Dave credit for their buzzworthy success. I think I’m supposed to play it nice or something, so I’ll just post some key snippets and agree with Andy.
For many, that more productive place was the “Monetization and business models” of mashups session. At least 65 swarmed into the room for approximately 90 minutes of talk about how to make money with the custom applications.
For example, one laid out the modus operandi of the sessions: “Whoever comes are the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it’s over, it’s over.”
This whole event was organized in two months, and it came off Monday–with another day of sessions, demonstrations and networking to go Tuesday–with no visible hitches. Even the Wi-Fi worked.
Perhaps the reason behind MashupCamp’s success lies in the exasperation most attendees feel these days with traditional conferences.
MashupCamp–a new kind of get-together – page 2 | CNET News.com
Been sitting on a number of posts that I don’t know I’ll ever get out, but I need to spread these few things.
First, modest Flock update in the wild (0.5.11). Jesse’s got the details on this updated developer preview. Go get it and tell me what you think!
Spent yesterday and some of today scoping out the venue for Wine Camp with Miss Rogue (that’s Andrew Fèrriere over there — the proprietor of the Wine Camp venue: Fèrriere Vineyards). Had some revelations about how the event should happen — and started planning the thing in earnest using Backpack. Will have details later this week.
In other news, Mashup Camp is tomorrow, the first-ever trademarked decendent of Bar Camp! Oh, and not only is there a signup list for The Son of Mashup Camp already, but the “Bar Camp of Mashup Camp” — Mucho Camp — will be taking place at the birthplace of the original Bar Camp — at SocialText‘s offices. So if you didn’t make it onto the Mashup Camp list, definitely show your inclination and then drop by Mucho Camp.
What else? Well, Boxes and Arrows has a great article about the formation of Bar Camp. A great read.
Then we’ve got Bar Camp LA and Bar Camp Dehli coming up March 4-5.
Bar Camp Austin needs posters (yes, Whurley, I’ll do them!) I expect those of you heading to SXSW to make the pilgrimage to this stellar event (trust me, nothing can prepare you for what’s in store…)!
And finally, Enric needs help planning and promoting his Indie Film Camp.
Jeremy Kleindl posted the mp3 audio from Bar Camp Dallas presentations. Check it out:
Yeah, it’s nearly 3am, but I figure I need to jump in and post a few thoughts that I’ve been sitting on or else I’ll never get around to it. Helps to have some inspiration, tired as I am.
So Saturday was Bar Camp Dallas, something like the 5th Bar Camp ever. The day after, yesterday, we decided on the spot to hold the second ever Mash Pit. Both events were resounding successes, as have been the previous Bar Camps — and we’re continuing to explore models for effective geek collaboration from the ‘Pits.
So the thing is this. The conference industry doesn’t make sense any more. At least to me. I know that some people make their livelihood running conferences, and that’s fine — really. Keep on keepin’ on. That’s your thing, I ain’t gunna knock it. But what conferences are supposed to offer, in my experience, can now be had cheaper, better, more intimately on the local community scale than what you might expect from the 1000+ person mega-conferences.
…which remind me of Disney World when I was a kid: that hot, sticky, popsicle-drip-drip, crying-babies, broken toy, long lines, sunburn kneecaps, are-we-there-yet, why-is-this-line-so-long kind of thing.
Yeh. You can imagine why that doesn’t sound so happy-happy-joy-joy anymore.
So let’s break it down. Benefits of a conference? Travel, meet people, hear things, say things, collaborate? Oh, and party. Ish.
So let’s focus on those for a minute. How can we bring those things to you today given what we’s gots?
Well, let’s make the whole thing free and more accessible (still need to work on universal access, yes yes). Then let’s make everyone a participant and responsible for their satisfaction with the event, during the event. If you don’t like it, you can fix it. Remember, you’re a participant, not just a passive attendee. (It’s free right? Set your expectations accordingly and then adjust as you see fit!) There are any number of roles to take on at any given point: presenter, documentor, collaborator, eater, feedback-giver, conversation-maker, realist, hacker, coordinator, wiki-editor, design-printer-maker, IRC-chatter, fucker-of-shit-up, and so on. Improvise. Surely your special brand of somefing-foo can come in handy!
Given that, find a medium-sized venue, pick a date, toss in wifi, food, alcohol and coffee, whiteboards, markers, projectors, rinse, lather, repeat.
There you have it, the special sauce that makes the community micro-conferences we’ve been running since August work. Amazing, sure, but they work.
Oh, and it helps that we’ve designated the mark of the event as belonging to the entire community so that you don’t have to ask permission to when starting your own event (you can use the mark however you want, but it’s wise to stick within the rules of the road if you want community support). So y’know, just go to the wiki, grab a page and start editing. Instant fame and riches comin’ up.
. . .
A couple other things. Owing to the generosity of the sponsors (who were capped @ $250 or a meal each) Bar Camp NYC ran a surplus. Yes. A free conference ran a surplus without whoring out the whole experience. The shirts were even sponsor-logo-free. I keep tellin’ ya, it ain’t about the money, man.
So does it scale? Hells yes. Know why? Because these are local community-sized events. They’re run of, by, and for community members with the remote participation from anyone who wants in. Infinite scalability via IRC… and things we’re still inventing…
Yeah, one last thing before I doze off… we’re building the tools to make these events easier to start, easier to run, and easier to participate in. Which means lower total cost and less effort necessary to stage future Camps/Pits/Unconferences.
If not already, consider conferences exploded soon. Very soon indeed.
Due to the increasing amount of spam we’ve been getting on the old skool kwiki wiki at barcamp.org, we’re moving it over to David Weekly‘s excellent pbWiki. Until the forwarding goes through, you can get to the new wiki at:
TorCamp planner David Crow has a good write-up about pbWiki, so I’ll leave that bit up to him.
I’m excited to see the wiki moving to a better-featured app (especially one that was created at one of our SHDHs), so if you’ve got a moment, give us a hand and help us migrate this thing! Tanks!
Factory Joe 