The Juice Journal

I attended my first BarCamp this past weekend, and I have to say I had a blast. Being around so many intelligent, erudite, open-minded people is always a high.

For those not in the know, BarCamp is an “unconference”, an open gathering of people who themselves decide the topics of panels and discussions. The attendees are largely from the various nerd communities, but the format is very open and appropriate for anyone with ideas. I think that’s most people.

I think my favorite discussion was an open-ended gathering with the topic “The Social Sciences of Technology”. We discussed differences and similarities between online interactions and “analog” interactions; wiki ideas applied to government, decision-making, and societal structuring (with enthusiastic and enlightening thoughts from Mark Dilley); the troubles with binary mindsets; and hope for community self-determination through intelligent use of technology and self-activism. And much much more!

I also loved meeting and chatting with other clever minds and fun folks, some sharing my field of web work. George Huff and Todd Quackenbush of We the Media were great to talk with after a delightfully confusingingly-named session on design and nerdery. I look forward to bumping into these two again. Bram Pitoyo and I enjoyed an intense conversation about design, freelancing, web browsers & word processors, and all manner of fun typophile crap. I also just noticed somewhere on his website that he is a “elevator music enthusiast”, a topic we did not discuss but I’d love to bring up with him sometime. Finally, I met someone I consider a big shot, Rael Dornfest, former CTO of O’Reilly Media and current wizard at Values of n (which I asininely called “Powers of n” when I first approached him).

I could talk about the ideas and the people I experienced at BarCamp for a bit longer, but I’m tired and blog entries are supposed to be short and sexy I’m told, so I’ll just let the rest be.

Join the community: go to a BarCamp near you!

{love},
{ryan}