August 24, 2005
Foo Camp, Bar Camp: smartmobbing ftf meetings
Smart Mobs and the Power of the Mobile Many, Technologies of Cooperation
Open Space Technology is a simple methodology for enabling people to create their own agendas at meetings and conferences. Tim O'Reilly created a version of an open-space conference for invited participants, Foo Camp, and Ross Mayfield describes an open-to-all event, Bar Camp. Combining wikis with Open Space methods is an increasingly popular way to smartmob face-to-face gatherings:
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 EntranceBarCamp 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. [Posted by Howard on Smart Mobs]
Posted by jo at August 24, 2005 10:59 AM
