I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal
There’s an open source conference of sorts coming up in LA on November 3rd. It’s called BarCamp. Check it out at: http://barcampla.org/
We start by gathering together in one space and going around the room to introduce ourselves with three tags to describe what we’re passionate about (or want to talk about). There will also be some announcements. After this, people who intend to lead a session will add their session info to an empty schedule grid (may be moved around early on). If you see a session you’re interested in, go to it.
After a couple of sessions, you will have a significant amount of downtime for lunch. Feel free to wander around and socialize while or after you eat. More announcements will be made, and any newly proposed sessions will be announced.
After the sessions are finished, please stick around to clean up. It’s generally as simple as throwing trash away and taking down signs, but all the help is appreciated.
If you brought wireless equipment or power strips, find a coordinator and ask where they’re most needed. Please set your wireless router to a unique SSID (e.g.- barcamp_xxx), to avoid networking conflicts (nasty with a dozen routers in the same room named the same thing). Also, if you can, please lower the radio output of your router. There’ll be plenty of WiFi cloud to go around without everyone blasting out at full power.
While loosely structured, there are rules at BarCamp. All attendees are encouraged to present or facilitate a session. Everyone is also asked to share information and experiences of the event, both live and after the fact, via public web channels including (but not limited to) blogging, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wiki-ing, and IRC. This open encouragement to share everything about the event is in deliberate contrast to the “off the record by default†and “no recordings†rules at many private invite-only participant driven conferences.
Fun stuff. November 4th, check it out.