275 or so people congregated on the small town of Sebastopol, located 60 miles north of San Francisco in the heart of wine country, for the 2008 Foo Camp this last weekend. Attendees included technologists, professors, researchers engineers, major company executives, billionaire entrepreneurs, students, press and the odd astronaut.
They all had one thing in common - a love of technology. Foo Camp, which stand for Friends of O’Reilly, is an annual three day tech event put on by O’Reilly Media at their Sebasopol headquarters. They supply a huge lawn area where attendees put up tents, food and drinks, bathrooms, Wifi and one very large blank piece of paper marked off in a grid.
There is no structure to the event - if an attendee wants to hold a session on anything at all, they simply write the name of the session somewhere on the grid, which tells people what day/time and place the session will be held. People attend any sessions they like, and with 15 or so happening at any given time, there may be 2 people, or 75 people, in any particular session.
Sessions this year included, to name just a few: “how to fly the space shuttle” by a former astronaut, “the future of news,” “user generated meta data,” “the metrics of virtual worlds,” “decentralizing social networks” and “online hate/trolling.”
In one session on Sunday that I co-led with Tim O’Reilly and Danny Sullivan, we debated the need for competitive search. This was an offshoot of a previous debate we held on our blogs, but this time with audience participation in real time (including people from the companies being discussed).
The sessions are in an unconference format, meaning the leaders are there to guide the discussion only. Audience participation isn’t just encouraged, it’s a well exercised right (in the picture to the right, you can see Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales behind the table with his hand raised to make a comment in the “user generated meta data” session led by Esther Dyson). With so many different types of interesting people in any given session at any time, the conversations tend to be fascinating, and occasionally explosive.
Everything said in sessions is off record, although people tend to Twitter most of the conversations anyway. Hallway/lawn conversations are also off record unless everyone agrees otherwise, which is rare. For the most part, people speak freely about their ideas. For bloggers and press, it’s like being in a candy store but not having any money. You can listen and talk, but you can’t write about the endless streams of tidbits you pick up.
Between sessions and late into the evening people talk, try out gadgets (I had my first ride on a Segway yesterday, and watched some 3D video on a huge LCD) and generally geek out. In the evening beer and wine is served, and the hard alcohol comes out later. People stay up talking and playing a social game called Werewolf into the wee hours. I got sucked into the hugely addictive game last year, and wisely stayed away this time to get a little sleep between sessions.
Past attendees eagerly await their invitation to Foo Camp in the Spring, but most are disappointed. O’Reilly tries to make sure that half of all attendees in any year have never been to a previous Foo Camp. That means most people don’t get in again after attending, and it’s rare to meet an attendee who’s been to more than 2 or 3.
Foo Camp isn’t perfect - it is invitation only and the exclusivity of it has caused extensive griping over the years. An open version of Foo called Bar Camp sprang up in 2005, and those events are held all over the world for anyone who wants to attend.
But the imperfections aside, Foo Camp is a special event that leaves most attendees charged with ideas for new things to change the word, and new friends to stay in touch with. It reminds me of everything I love about Silicon Valley, without all the annoying distractions that come and go with the ups and downs in the flow of venture capital.
Geez, Arrington, it’s past 3am. Don’t you ever sleep?
Geeks rocks ?!
@Richard, did you not know he is a human-robot hybrid?
sent from: fav.or.it [FID597704]
Eerr Mike it is Werewolf and it is darn cool. One of the highlights in the upcoming Barcamp Malaysia.
BTW nice car.
So it is basically like a huge bar camp where people sleep over? A geek love fest?
.. but why Shangri La?
Ô my God !
A fake or reality ?
@techcult, barcamp was inspired by foocamp
Not for me.
Is that a Honda Element in one of the pictures? And who is the style maven who put his/her special touches on that now hideous vehicle?
this is crazy, they sleep like that for something so boring…
brian
http://www.themostpowerfulcompany.com
I digg the picture of that car! van or whatever it is
Mike, Awesome post about Foo Camp. Being in Milwaukee, I heard all about Foo camp via twitter, but still didn’t have a grasp on what the event consisted of until now. Good work and thanks for keeping us outside of the valley informed.
What is your advice on getting invited to a Foo Camp in the future? I am a start-up founder (still very small) and would love to attend such an event!
Thanks.
Great meeting at Foo Cam, I was las week at WebCamp… so I think this was an interesting meeting, and lot of ideas come out from there…
Last post o Raavi:
http://raavi.ro/2008/07/webcam.....piedestal/
I would have loved to sit in on the debate you, Tim and Danny had.
We’re developing a different way to access information at the University of Waterloo’s Tech Park and we share your views on the need for competition to drive innovation in the search space.
Hopefully we’ll have something to show within the next few months.
Unfortunately, it could NEVER really be Shangri La…. until it and other events like it attract many more Women and a more multi cultural audience.
Just look at those photos
Wow that seems like a neat event, wish I would have had an invite. Cool
so your call for the Silicon Valley downturn way back in early 2007 never happened, how can you now love the valley again? Sounds like you got things wrong (as usual) but who’s counting?
@Ryan Graves, @Mike Arrington
Same question Ryan had Mike — how can you find out info or apply for next year’s FOO camp???
Hmmm Missed it.
Mike, you should have told us that this was coming up.. .From what i read, looks like a very good one..
will try next year..
Cheers, Nag
This sounds like an awesome event. What was the best presentation? http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
Jack
Great article…
this sounds like a really fun event, getting all those valley folks up to our end of the bay is really exciting. seeing how exclusive the attendee list was makes me want an invite even more but reduces the sting of not being there in person.
Mike,
I totally agree with your take on Foo. This was my first trip and the breadth and depth of the conversations was amazing. Thanks for taking time to attend the OATV Startup Camp as well. It was great to hear your thoughts on how to work with the press at an early stage startup.
Recurring themes at my FOO were art, open politics, origami, do-it-yourself and do-it-local. Technology was ubiquitous and important, but as enabler rather than end in itself. It was fantastic!
I’ve been to FOO since the first, and I’ve been thinking about the ‘meta-FOO’–how FOO has shifted over these few years. Random thoughts on high-level changes:
1) There are more women attendees (note: attendee makeup does not perfectly track the invite make-up; many more are invited than attend)
2) Attendees are far more comfortable with the *camp (unconference) format. The first year, people stood around unsure about filling in the schedule grid; today, it’s a frenzied land grab and most session spots are filled in the first 5 minutes. BarCamp success has a lot to do with this.
3) Session mix has changed a LOT. Far more sessions now involve intersections of tech and art. Less business-y, more… interesting? Synthesizing from wide range of domains is an increasing trend in sessions, but then… this is one of Tim’s stated goal for FOO, so it may be a reflection of tweaking invite list more than anything else.
4) A woman I won’t name who has also been to every FOO noted that the attendees “look like they’ve been getting out more” than in previous years. I didn’t disagree, and the sessions also reflected that. Things about body, fitness, outdoors, even sports crept into topics with impunity. And people were commenting on whether other attendees looked “healthy” or “well-rested”. Not your typical geek-fest comment. Think about that. (must be a start-up opportunity in there somewhere : )
5) It was both odd and ultimately refreshing how many people there had no clue what the “A-List” was, let alone know of the people who are supposedly on it. It was a bit more work to start certain conversations because there weren’t the shared assumptions you have at, say, SXSW, ETech, FOWA (all events I love). Simple example: surprisingly large percentage of attendees had no idea who Loren Feldman and Shel Israel are, or what the ‘puppet kerfuffle’ was about.
6) Big shock for me: I asked for show of hands on how many felt it was acceptable/appropriate to do comment moderation and most raised their hand without hesitation. (attitude was, “Hello!?”) Even three years ago, that would have been different. Many at all levels of ‘profile’ said they’d done a 180 on this issue. People who’d once been strong advocates for allowing everything not only moderate but ban with abandon.
7) Mike Arrington adds a certain… spark…to the discussions that hasn’t always been there.
(and that was a Good Thing)
waste of time
Great article capturing the essence of Foo, Mike. Great to see you up there!
Foo 08 was great… really enjoyed the following sessions:
* Economics isn’t Physics (Bill Janeway)
* Search Debate (Tim O’Reilly & Mike Arrington, moderated by Danny Sullivan)
* Neural Hacks (Ramez Naam)
Mike & Tim going at it was fun to watch… twitter notes started here:
http://twitter.com/davemc500hats?page=3
first tweet here:
http://twitter.com/davemc500ha...../857374365
It must be great to mingle with all kinds of people with all kinds of backgrounds and having one thing in common can be great if it comes to technology.
Who drives that hideous car?! I think they live near me in the south bay.
In addition to the sessions mentioned above, huge shout-out to the Future of News Session, one of the most spirited sessions I’ve been to, hosted by Nick Bilton, Steven Levy and Monica Guzman.
More Foo impressions at:
http://blog.pathable.com/2008/.....o-smx.html
Foo was so incredible. Thanks to everyone who humored me in my rants about the news and helped me learn my way around my new iPhone
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