I spent much of my evenings and mornings this weekend watching the video feed from BarCamp, the impromptu open source alternative to FooCamp.
For those of you who don't know, FooCamp is a camp-out organised by publishing house O'Reilly. (In case you're wondering, 'foo' = 'Friends Of O'Reilly', but is also used in programming as an example variable name, e.g. $foo to mean $whatever_variable_goes_in_here. (Additionally, c.f. Foo Fighters and UFOs.)) It's an cosy little event (just 225 attendees, so terribly, terribly cosy. Specially as they all have to share a sleeping bag) which works on a strictly invite-only basis. Trouble is, you simply can't fit in all the people who want to go (which is always more than 225 people), so inevitably some get left off the list.
A couple of weeks ago, if that, Chris Messina, Andy Smith, Tantek Çelik, Matt Mullenweg, Ryan King and Eris Free thought that it'd be sort of cool to do a BarCamp for all the people who wanted to go to FooCamp but didn't get an invitation. No animosity, no competition, just an open source version. Only rule: If you come, you present (or help).
They got a venue from SocialText, and a whole bunch of really cool people to come and hang out and talk about geeky stuff. It was great fun watching the video stream, chatting in the #barcamp IRC channel, and generally wishing that I'd been able to be there. (Well, there and at FooCamp. I'm not too proud to say I would have loved to have been at both.)
Whilst I was talking to Chris, I rashly suggested that I start the ball rolling on BarCampUK. Not that I don't have enough on my plate already, but the guiding principle behind BarCamp is self-organisation. That is to say, there's no finding speakers or setting up a schedule – people just pitch up and present. Or hang out. Or hack code. Or whatever.
One of the things that I loved about San Francisco is just how often and how easily the geeks there seem to get together. Hacker parties where geeks sit around coding. Tag Tuesday were geeks sit around talking about the tagging. These get-togethers seem to happen so easily there. Why not here?
So, who's up for BarCampUK? We need a venue. A date. Wifi. Maybe some T-shirts. And a bunch of geeks who want to just get together and throw ideas around. (Of course, if there's anyone who wants to help me with the unavoidable logistics side of things, so much the better.)
Sign your name in the comments on the wiki if you want to come.
(PS Sorry for all the parentheses. (It's just a temporary affliction.))
BarCampUK
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