What is it about BarCamp?

Social networking … this isn’t about foocamp v. barcamp … its much bigger than that. Tools are going to shape the future of these networks.

There is something about BarCamp that I can’t quite put my finger on. Its nothing to do with the FooCamp v. BarCamp nonsense … that’s all hogwash to me. What is fascinating is the way this community connected, organized and happened in such a short time. O’Reilly’s FooCamp may have been the inspiration but going over the weekend’s events at BarCamp I see that its just an entirely different beast.

Technology for the sake of technology has always kind of bugged me. Mainly because I’ve been in that business for so long. I’m a dork and I like doing dork things. Building or enabling new technologies that help you build or enable even newer technologies never really rang true for me. Its like building a pyramid that really never goes anywhere or does anything. But looking at how BarCamp was organized and how it happened makes me see social technology in action. Using the tools to organize socially quickly and easily. Again, BarCamp was a bunch of dorks connecting to talk about dork things … I’ll concur with that … however, the way that they organized is the fascinating part of all of this.

In looking through all of the flickr photos for both FooCamp and BarCamp its obvious a good time was had by all … I think this is just the start of something new and exciting … these technologies that we surround ourselves with everyday are just starting to enable some new and insanely great things. I can’t wait to see them as pervasive as the microwave.