BarCampNYC2: Reflections, etc.,
published at 9:10am on 10/04/06, with 3 Comments
This past weekend I had the wonderful experience of watching the BarCampNYC2 event that I had helped organize finally come to fruition. When I attended the first New York City BarCamp in January (almost a lifetime ago with the way 2006 has been progressing thus far), I ended up having such a fantastic time at the event that I decided that I would help make the next BarCampNYC happen.
The interesting thing about the organizational aspects of a BarCamp (or any conference that utilizes some or all of the Open Space Technology techniques) is that the seemingly ad hoc, un-conference is actually planned out to nearly every last detail up until and during the event. Though the structure ends up being fairly loose for the conference attendees, and though the dynamic and the structure of the day may change at any given moment, there is always a team of people at the helm, steering the anarchy, ensuring that it ends up at (or even near) intended goal.
There is plenty to be said about what went right at the event, what went wrong, what could have been done better, and much of that is already broken down on the post mortem page, but I wanted to explore a bit the main thing that I noticed which was this very different “buzz” in the air compared to the first New York City BarCamp, which I will attribute to three things: Space, Communication and Context.
This BarCamp event was held at the Microsoft offices in Midtown Manhattan and the office was absolutely lovely to us, and they definitely just helped to ensure that the event could happen at all (namely, it was one of the only spaces, if not the only one, that allowed overnight stay for the campers). As the company’s sales offices, the space was a collection of conference rooms, surrounding a couple of center common areas, which ends up being perfect for an event like this where you want to be able to mingle with people in-between sessions. I think the only downside to the physical space itself was that there was actually just too much of it. Everyone was able, if they wanted, to find their own corner in which to hide, and I noticed many people grouping off, many times with the people with whom they arrived, and tucking away into a side room or down a hallway, never interacting with other participants.
Now if we were to fully embrace the spirit of BarCamp, we would argue that people are allowed to make of the conference what they will and should be allowed to tuck off into a corner if that’s how they feel they will best experience the event, but at the same time, I would argue that we are going to have to filter out people who are just not interested in fully participating, and participation is a large component of why one would attend, and why the sponsors are paying for, a BarCamp.
Which actually brings me to the next point about the space itself: the draw. The draw that the name “Microsoft” has versus a secret meeting place in downtown Manhattan (which is how the first event was billed) is markedly different. I will simply offer the shoe closet as an example of this difference: I decided not to wear my black, Chuck Taylor Converse All Star sneakers to this event for fear that they would get lost in the pile of other hipster shoes, but what I found instead was a collection of sensible sneakers and loafers, indicating a very different crowd than the one I was expecting. I will not want to blame the space entirely for this, but I do think that an event in Midtown Manhattan will bring in a very different demographic than a downtown one.
In addition, the space brings with it its own group of attendees. When I arrived to set up on Saturday morning I encountered a cluster of MS employees sitting together in the main lounge area. This was a group of engineers who, from all outside appearances, had no idea what they were doing at this event, and were not actually interested in embracing the (arguably froofy) underlying motivations behind BarCamp. One individual had gone as far as to, with a smirk, fill out his nametag “I am a MAN, I am interested in SEX” (the “I am a…” and “I am interested in…” were pre-printed on the name tags). To me, that small gesture, along with the aforementioned exclusivity, and the behavior I witnessed in the actual presentation sessions, was indicative not of any personal shortcoming, but simple a failure to truly internalize, before the event, the type of event a BarCamp really is.
Which of course brings us to my second point, which is one of communication, which I do believe was lacking on the part of the organizers. Again, while an event like this is supposed to be organic, there is some point at which the people making it all happen have to take a step back to see what the attendees are actually seeing and to help get them as engaged as possible leading up to the actual event. In our attempt to keep things loose and free, I think that we missed an opportunity to actually get our hooks into people and make them really excited for BarCamp.
I think the primary shortcoming was simply in making sure that people knew what BarCamp is all about, at least in the broadest sense. While we were immersed in the day-to-day planning of the event, the participants simply had the event website to get all of their information, and up until the event (and even now) the site does not really convey what BarCamp is all about or why you might want to attend. It did not emphasize the attitude that you need to bring to the table in order to really have fun, and I think that it put too much emphasis on one particular part of the participation mantra, namely that everyone needs to present. It did not actively encourage people to help with another presentation or help lead a panel discussion (instead of just leading the typical slides-and-lecture style talk), which resulted in, anecdotally at least, in a number of people not attending simply because they didn’t have a full understanding of what was expected from them.
Finally, there is the matter of context, in a more societal sense, and I don’t think that anyone actually had control over this part of the day. We are eight months down the road from the last BarCamp event, and a lot in the world has changed. A lot of the people who were looking for work, who were exploring projects on their own or who were just starting their own companies are now solidly entrenched in the daily day-to-day of the work, and when that happens, a lot of the gleam can come off of one’s vision of the world. And instead of being stuck in the middle of winter, with the prospect of spring on the horizon, we are now at the end of the summer, with only the prospect of a cold and rainy autumn on the horizon, which too affects the overall mood of the participants. Again, this context was mostly unavoidable, and I’d be curious to know if there could have been any way of harnessing it, but I think that it’s important to at least acknowledge its existence as an outside influence.
BarCamp is a free event, and while it is open to all, it is really only open to people who are open to it. Attendees who are not ready to experience it, and who are not willing to let go of their preconceived notions of what a technology conference should look like will not only have a bad time, but will also bring down the buzz of everyone around them. While I do not think that this happened at this event, but I do feel like the energy level was not as high as it potentially could have been. I firmly believe that the un-conference aspect of the event applies to the planning of it as well, and I am excited to take the lessons that we learned this time and apply them to future BarCamps, either in NYC or beyond.
Filed under: Observations, with 3 Comments
lonelygirl15,
published at 12:09am on 09/20/06, with No Comments
Hoax
noun
something intended to deceive or defraud
(Dictionary.com Unabridged v1.0.1)
That seems right, but when I think of the word “hoax” I tend to think of something more malicious, less simply fooling someone, or playing a trick on them, but deceiving with intent to do harm.
noun
something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage
(WordNet 2.0)
That seems closer.
I’ve been thinking about hoaxes lately, ever since the collective Internet started wetting itself over the outing of the video diaries of lonelygirl15 as the project of three (male – has anyone else even started ranting about the fact that the filmmakers were all male?) filmmakers and not a teenaged home-schooled girl named Bree who was making and posting videos on the web under her parents’ noses.
People on YouTube seem particularly distressed about this realization, even though most of those who have posted response videos expressing their shock, outrage and disappointment all seem to have an inkling that the videos weren’t real in the first place. Or rather, let’s be clear on the terminology here. “Real,” in this case, means “actually made by a teenager with the help of her more tech savvy, but still teenaged, friend.” The thing that is so striking about a number of the videos that I’ve watched is that their biggest complaint is not that the videos were scripted, or that they were just a film production (though that complaint is certainly present), but that there was no longer any mystery to them. The outing of the project as simply a project, as opposed to someone’s actual life, meant that there was no more room for speculation – no more opportunity for people to convince themselves that what they were watching was actually a real life unfolding before their eyes, as opposed to the created story of a real life unfolding before their eyes.
As the great equalizer, the Internet/web has finally done its job, allowing everyone to produce the content that they all want to consume, and along with that comes the implicit (though mistaken) understanding (or perhaps merely hope) that living in isolation, physically, people are still able to reach out across the wire and actually connect with someone. That’s the crux of the matter – people that connected with lonelygirl15 felt like they made an actual connection to an actual person, not some kind of virtual connection, and that given the nature of the internet, that connection had the potential to be reciprocated.
Recently, I was talking to Kara about wanting to start experimenting with video. I noted that when using different media to document a particular moment in time, writing and photography can only ever be representations of the artist’s perception of the world, completely open to interpretation by the viewer. A page of written text can be visualized a million ways when read, and a photograph represents only a split second of the world, completely ignoring the moments immediately prior and following the image captured on film.
But video. Video, I said, was somewhere else, somewhere closer to the Truth. Video seems to capture so much more – more emotion, more feeling, more depth – in the form of movement, that watching a video is as close to Reality as you can have without actually participating in the artist’s world with him. Because our lives operate on a continuum, watching a video over time feels more real that looking at a photograph, and it is that much easier to be drawn into the assumption that we are already closely connected to the artists.
So are people upset because they were tricked? Or was it because they really believe that the advice they were giving was actually making an impact on someone’s life, and learning the truth rendered all of their connections moot? There was a perceived one-to-one connection between each audience member and lonelygirl15, aired in public, to be sure, but still intended to be a direct line between two human beings, and now all of that advice is all a lie, directed at filmmakers rather than a teenager. The fact that there is no girl on the other side of that computer, looking back out, looking for validation, is enough to make people feel that the energy that they invested in their time with Bree was wasted.
But let’s get back to the question of whether this was a hoax. Every time I heard this project described as a hoax, I cringed. I knew that the videos couldn’t be Real – they just felt too wrong to be what they claimed to be. But to describe the videos as a hoax, to attribute any amount of malicious behavior to the project, just seems to be dismissing it too easily.
I wonder whether it would have been considered a hoax if these were video diaries of an actual girl, but re-created by filmmakers, more like a staged reading of The Diary of a Young Girl Who Can’t Leave Her Room Because She’s Grounded. If the story was real, but the videos weren’t Real, would there still be this animosity? Or if the videos were Real, that is, produced by an actual teenager, but not actually real, instead scripted out of her own imagination? Would that have been any more palatable?
I wonder what bothered people more: the fact that the stories were made up, or the fact that they weren’t actually making the connection that they thought they were?
Filed under: Observations, with No Comments
What’s in a sound?,
published at 9:09am on 09/11/06, with 1 Comment
Abrasive noises are contextual. For me, on the inside of my apartment, the dissonant sounds coming from the multiple grinders and jackhammers on the outside of my building produce a cacophony that is not unlike having my teeth drilled for 8 hours every day. But for the workers on the outside of the building who must shuffle up and down the facade on their moving platforms, using those grinders and jackhammers just represent a day’s work, a noise that is controlled by them and them alone and that probably has associated with it some sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.
At least that’s how I always feel after I make or destroy something with my hands.
Today, there are sirens tearing up and down the streets of the city. From my apartment, they are part of the landscape of New York, for the officer in the car, for the firefighter in the truck, and to the person in the burning building, these noises all mean something different.
Filed under: Observations, with 1 Comment
Open Source: Not actually that ugly,
published at 6:09pm on 09/03/06, with 1 Comment
I’m no open source zealot, but when someone decides to talk shit about the methodologies that make up the core of open source software development to further an argument that really has nothing to do with open source at all, it kind of makes my blood boil. That was the reaction I had when I read “Open Source Gets Ugly” in Red Herring last month with this lead-in:
Proponents may believe that the movement can do no wrong, but could open-source tools and techniques be doing more harm than good?
A slightly inflammatory introduction, but one that I could probably have lived with, if it didn’t continue with this gem later in the piece:
Malware writers are using open-source development models and software to share malicious code and collaborate on projects, increasing the efficiency of the malware creation process… For example, cyber criminals are making available source code with documentation so that viruses can be easily modified to create more variants. They are also using open-source project management software, such as a Content Versioning system, to keep track of their nefarious projects, says the report.
Filed under: Observations, with 1 Comment
On Being American,
published at 4:08am on 08/23/06, with 4 Comments
The term “lazy” comes up far too often in conversations when talking about Americans for it to just be a fluke. Where exactly does this notion come from? After all, if you look at the amount of innovation that has originated in the States over the course of its history there’s no denying that there’s something happening here that’s going well. But there’s this underlying belief that we’re just a bunch of lazy slobs, and that the world is going to eat us for dinner. So what is it?
Let’s think about what Red Herring (08.28.06) had to say about the growth of Asia’s economy in the early 1980s:
The model also assumed certain putative elements of Confucian culture such as an emphasis on education, discipline, and harmony in the workplace…
Fascinating. That certainly doesn’t sound like the US at all. Maybe we’re onto something here. After all, half of my friends are going to law school these days, and the other half of them are already lawyers (leaving a remaining half of my friends who are just shocked that I am a software developer who can’t do math), and a country that churns out this many lawyers must have some pretty hard working individuals. Well, except that upon further examination, it seems like law school is the fall back position for people who have no idea what they’re doing. A friend of mine was telling me about her friend the law student who, despite being particularly bright, did not seem to have any ambition (and was subsequently moved from the “fun to date” pool to the “how do I get out of this” pool). “But he’s an engineer,” she said, “So it’s not like he’s not motivated at all.”
Oh really? Consider for a moment the work that one needs to go through to be a successful engineer over the course of one’s life. And consider that engineers in our society are really not pushed to the top of the earning bracket within a particular organization. And then consider that the average first year associate at a law firm can make, with bonus, far more than an engineer well into his career, with guaranteed advancement as long as you maintain your billable hours (and don’t royally screw something up) and it seems more to me that the primary motivator for going to law school is that it’s probably one of the easiest (and by easy, we mean least ambiguous) career path one can choose in this country.
So what’s the point? The point isn’t that Americans are lazy. The point is that Americans would rather not do work that they don’t have to do. We are all taught that we have options in this country. We have opportunities. And for the most part, we can, and are encouraged, to maximize in any way possible our own lives in order to advance, not the common good, but our own. After all, a society where everyone is picking himself up by the proverbial bootstrap can only pull up the entirety of society in the process.
Right?
Well, probably not. Along with selfishness in one’s own role in the world comes a general feeling of entitlement and selfishness that doesn’t go away simply because we’re talking not about a career path but rather, say, running to the subway.
The subway? Sure. The other day, I was sitting on the train, along with a hundred other people, and the doors were closing, and a man came tearing through the turnstiles and stuck his hand between the doors. As his friend was busy swiping his card through the machine, the man stood in the doors, preventing the train from leaving. After what was probably no more than a minute, but seemed much longer, both of them ended up inside the train car and the doors finally closed. For the sake of two people’s convenience, an entire train full of passengers was delayed. The train behind ours was probably thrown off schedule a little bit. The passengers waiting for our train were affected a bit. And while one could argue that the difference of a minute in the scheme of things does not really matter, the truth of the situation is that this is something that happens every day, on every train in New York City, and it happens simply because there is no regard for what one individual’s actions mean to the larger system.
Or take my fellow cyclists, for example. From my apartment I can look down at a particular intersection and see, on any given day, at any given stop light, cyclists riding through the red light, circling around cars that have the right of way, cursing at the cars, and then continuing through the intersection, leaving a mess of traffic in their wake. The consequences to the cyclist are nothing but positive (other than in the increasingly not-so-rare situation where a car and a cyclist actually succeed in sharing the same patch of road at the same time – in those instances the automobile generally wins the fight). The consequences to the drivers are two-fold: first, they are inconvenienced and aggravated, and second, they have their belief reinforced that bicycle riders are nothing but a public nuisance who should all be run off the roads. Subsequently, the consequence to me, as a cyclist, is that I am routinely told to “get off the fucking road” by irate drivers who know that I will probably do everything in my power to piss them off, which I probably will now that they are giving me shit, and so on and so forth.
So, no, Americans aren’t lazy. They just don’t give a shit about anyone else.
Filed under: Observations, with 4 Comments
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