BARCAMP

'BarCamp' is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

Contents

History

Influence

Structure and participatory process

Hosting and attending

Historical precedents

See also

References

Further reading

History

The name "BarCamp" is a playful allusion to the event's origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing luminary, Tim O'Reilly.
The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 2005, in the offices of Socialtext. It was organized in less than a week's time, from concept to event, with 200 attendees. Since then, BarCamps have been held in over 31 cities around the world, in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and Asia. To mark the one-year anniversary of BarCamp, BarCampEarth was held in multiple locations world wide on August 25-27, 2006.

Influence

By "open-sourcing" the organizational process of Foo Camp, that is, codifying it in a wiki and making that publicly available, BarCamp seems to have struck a chord. Beyond the BarCamp-branded network to which the first event gave rise, it quickly became a model for unconferences in other fields or for more specialized applications, ranging from WordCamp and PodCamp to Seattle Mind Camp, to name a few. The involvement of key figures in the web development community, such as Tantek Çelik and Ross Mayfield, no doubt helped its adoption.

Structure and participatory process

BarCamps are organized and evangelized largely through the web, harnessing what might be called a Web 2.0 communications toolkit. Anyone can initiate a BarCamp, using the BarCamp wiki.
The procedural framework of BarCamp is similar to Open Space methodology for organizing meetings, but looser. It consists of sessions proposed and scheduled each day by attendees, mostly on-site, typically using white boards or paper taped to the wall. This has been dubbed, with another play on words, The Open Grid approach.
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.

Hosting and attending

Venues typically provide basic services. Free network access, usually WiFi, is crucial. Following the model of Foo Camp, the venue also makes space for the attendees, a.k.a. BarCampers, to literally camp out overnight. Thus, BarCamps rely on securing sponsorship, ranging from the venue and network access to beverages and food.
Attendance is monetarily free and generally restricted only by space constraints. Participants are asked, though, to sign up in advance.

Historical precedents

The conceptual origins of this form of self-organized unconference can be traced back to hackers' meetings in Europe, especially those nearer to anarchism and autonomism, happening since the '90s in Temporary Autonomous Zones or other occupied places. Also, the BoF sessions of IETF meetings may have provided inspiration. However, BarCamps lack the political motivations and are actually quite integrated with the mainstream ICT industry, often getting substantial sponsorships from major corporations.

See also

★ Foobar

★ FooCamp

★ Unconference

★ SuperHappyDevHouse

★ Open Hack Day

★ Podcamp

★ EntConnect

References

★ Anon. Podcamp Boston. ''Podcasting News''. June 27, 2006. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ BarCamp.org (website). Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ Calishain, Tara. Triangle Techies Heading for a BarCamp, ''WRAL's TechTalk Weblog''. June 27, 2006. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ Çelik, Tantek. Remembering the idea of BarCamp, ''Tantek's Thoughts''. July 10, 2006. Retrieved July 14, 2006.

★ Craig, Kathleen. Why "unconferences" are fun conferences. ''Business 2.0 Magazine''. June 6, 2006. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ Messina, Chris. Bar camp buzz builds; the story twists, turns, shouts! ''FactoryCity'' (weblog). August 18, 2005. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ Murali, J. New conferencing tool: An attempt to conduct on-line meetings in a participatory environment. ''The Hindu''. April 17, 2006. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

★ Singel, Ryan. Barring None, Geek Camp Rocks. ''Wired News''. August 23, 2005. Retrieved June 30, 2006.

Further reading

★ Wired News reports on BarCamp NYC.

★ BAR Camp: Flickr gallery.

★ Advice for Planning a Bar Camp, Fred Stutzman, ''Unit Structures'' (weblog), July 19, 2006.

★ Discussion @ Barcamp Hyderabad 2, Rajat Gupta, ''http://rajatgupta.wordpress.com'' (weblog), July 17th, 2006.

★ What the hell is a BarCamp?, Jay Dedman, ''Momentshowing'' (videoblog), July 2, 2006. Includes video of BarCampSanFrancisco June 24, 2006.

★ At the Barcamp Bangalore (Yahoo Office), Gitu Krish, '' laout: the fun develops instantly!!!!!!!!!!'' (weblog), April 26, 2006.

★ Dummies Guide to organizing a BarCamp in your city…, Amit Ranjan, ''amit ranjan'' (weblog), March 17th, 2006.

★ Announcing BarCamp Chennai, Kiruba Shankar, ''kiruba.com'' (weblog), March 10, 2006.

★ Geeks to hold open-source campout, Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com, August 19, 2005.

★ BarCamp concept and planning background, Chris Messina, ''FactoryCity'' (weblog), August 18, 2005.

★ BAR Camp!, Tim O’Reilly, ''O’Reilly's Radar'' (weblog), August 17, 2005.

★ Foo(camp)Fighting, Om Malik, ''GigaOM (weblog)'', August 16, 2005.

★ BAR Camp, Andy Smith, ''reoriginalize'' (weblog), August 13th, 2005.

★ BarCamp Portugal 2007 - a movie made in Coimbra from BarCamp Portugal 2007