FOO (Friends of O’Reilly) Camp is perhaps my favorite conference because it is more like a camp than a conference. Tim O’Reilly invites a couple of hundred people (it’s getting bigger as it gets older) for an unstructured 2.25 days. If you want to lead a session, you write it onto the paper-based wiki. The sessions are almost universally highly informal, and the structured ones tend to be well worth the structure. Plus, perhaps because there are something like a dozen simultaneous sessions, skipping one to hang out and talk with the incredible people here doesn’t seem like a lost opportunity because you were never going to see everything you should anyway.

Last night we began with the traditional introductions: One by one, everyone in a large room — a tent this year — stands up, says her name, affiliation, and three words. The intros ranged from the listing of technical areas to three-word world overviews. Although my perception is inevitably skewed, it seemed to me that this year there were more social activist technologists and more women.

So, here’s why I love FOO: Last night, after a looong drive up from Oakland, which the presence of Ron Hornbaker (Bookcrossing, Propsmart) as a passenger made seem short, I immediately went to the back lot to pitch my tent. By the time I made it onto the main backyard, I had had conversations with amazing people about digital rights in the UK, why evaluating to a curve suppresses productivity, open source politics, and the state of PR’s adapting to networked markets. All of these are for me listening topics, especially given the caliber of the people I got to listen to and ask questions of.

And there’s the rub. FOO is by invitation only. I feel privileged in both senses to be here. More than just feelings are at stake. Social networking inevitably happens at FOO. If FOO doesn’t make an effort to be diverse, the old boys will just naturally become better friends because they spent 2.25 days camping, eating and peeing together. O’Reilly has been making an effort to be more diverse. Enough? Nah. But what would be enough? As with any institution, they are stuck with a starting point that doesn’t fairly reflect the population’s talents. It’s not an easy problem. Taking it seriously, making steady progress, and always feeling that there’s more to do seems to me to be the requirement. Also, this year, campers were asked to list people they would like to be invited to next year’s FOO. Good idea.

There’s value to an invitation-only party, but it’s not the only sort of party we need. That’s why I’m so happy that the original FOO Camp spurred the invention of unbarred BAR camps that are structured like FOO but are open to anyone. There’s a place for both.

But I don’t trust my judgment because I so love being at FOO. Getting to hang out with this community — makers — is deeply satisfying to me. Deeply.

So, I’m feeling very happy to be here, and only a little guilty. [Tags: foocamp06 foo oreilly conferenza]

Categories: Uncategorized dw