london barcamp

[Pedro Figueiredo]

On 10 May 2006, at 00:52, Simon Cozens wrote:

> Bar Camp is a spectacular study in missing the point. The point of  
> Foo Camp
> was that it was elitist. This made the knees jerk without realising  
> what the
> benefit of an elitist conference was. The benefit of its elitism  
> was that it
> functioned as a technical meritocracy; everyone who came to Foo  
> Camp was
> interesting in some way and had something useful to talk about, and  
> you could
> learn from them. In BitTorrent terms, all seeders, no leechers.

although i fundamentally agree with this, it seems funny that you  
think about something that is based on invites as a meritocracy. and  
in the next paragraph you speak of playing god...

> Hoorah. Now we have a conference for people who are not interesting  
> enough to
> be invited to Foo Camp but none the less think they have some kind  
> of divine
> right to have people more interesting than them entertain and  
> instruct them.
> In BitTorrent terms, all leechers, no seeders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

>
> But at least anyone can attend, and that's the important thing, right?

no, the important thing is that anyone can attend and share their  
thoughts on past experiences and new ideas. i'm sure the leechers  
will be easily weeded out.

and while we're on the subject of knee-jerk reactions, i wonder what  
you'd have said if the blurb read something like "in $weekend we're  
getting together on $venue to meet people, exchange ideas and  
generally have a good time", and it wasn't named barcamp. or, if it  
read something like the london.pm tech meetings announcements, which,  
according to your reasoning are all leechers (simon's newspeak for  
learners) and no seeders (simon's newspeak for simon cozens), as  
anyone can attend.

cheers,
--
http://pedrofigueiredo.org/
bgp is for those who can't keep it static long enough