Ross Mayfield writes:
Couldn’t make it to FooCamp this year? Well, some cool folks are organizing BarCamp in Palo Alto this weekend. Socialtext is donating the use of it’s office and wifi. They set up a wiki, you know what to do.
It’s terrific to see Ross and crew doing this. We’d love to invite anyone and everyone to FOO Camp — there are lots of people who we know and love, and lots of people we don’t know and would love if we knew them — but we just can’t accomodate everyone. (For an explanation of how hard it is to create the invite list, see my comments over on Om Malik’s blog.)
Since there isn’t any pre-organization of the program (except for who we invite), all it takes is a space, a wiki, and an invite list. The conference plan itself is done on Friday night with an old-fashioned paper wiki — a couple of big write on board with slots for all the available times and rooms. As noted above, the invite list is the hardest part. (The other hard part is cost — feeding a couple of hundred people for a weekend, renting showers and a big tent, costs tens of thousands of dollars — but a smaller event with offsite food nearby could offload even that cost.)
Net net, if you like the FOO Camp idea, and weren’t invited, see if you can get an invite to Bar Camp, or roll your own. We’d be glad to provide advice, as would people who’ve been to previous FOO Camps. (Yossi Vardi’s Kinner Net Camp in Israel is a great example.)