first post!
bokun...@gmail.com
venue, or really a defined set of organizers, so we're starting from
the beginning.
Some thoughts:
I understand there was a http://barcamp.org/BarCampWashDC earlier this
year that was focused on politics and, more specifically, net
neutrality. Personally, I'm not especially interested in political
topics, so I wouldn't want this theoretical BarCampDC we're organizing
to focus on politics, although I'd have no problem with a few
politically-oriented sessions. But I realize we *are* in DC, after
all; what are your thoughts about BarCamp and politics? (Also note
that a politically-oriented camp called
http://rootscamp.org/RootsCampDC will be taking place in earlier
December.)
I'm thinking of issuing a sort of Call for Organizers / Invitation to
Join This Group to a few mailing lists for the sort of people who might
be interested in BarCamp, like area Linux User Groups and DorkBot DC
(not to mention the people who signed up as potential attendees on
http://barcamp.org/BARCampDC, to the extent that I can figure out their
e-mail addresses). I'll think about what it should say. If you folks
think that sounds like a good idea, maybe we should make a list of what
groups we're sending that to. And once we've established a venue and
dates, we should certainly send an event announcement to those people.
So, for some background, I've never organized an event like this, *and*
I've never attended a BarCamp. How about you? I said "if you folks
think that sounds like a good idea" in the previous paragraph because I
imagine some line of reasoning would advise against opening up the
organizing to a potentially large number of people, lest the planning
get mired in chaos. On the other hand, this is open culture -- this is
BarCamp! -- and I tend to be skeptical of knowledge hoarding. So I'm
leaning toward letting people know about this (in an active way, I
mean; of course people looking for us can find us).
--
Katie
http://hoteldetective.org
amk
> So, for some background, I've never organized an event like this, *and*
> I've never attended a BarCamp. How about you?
My introduction: I was the chair of PyCon 2006 and am co-chair of PyCon
2007 (http://us.pycon.org), so I've done some conference planning
before. PyCon itself
is different from a BarCamp because it has formal presentations,
provides food, and charges a few hundred dollars, but it's also
followed by four days of development sprints that are more similar.
Last year there were ~80 people at the sprints, which is a
mini-conference in itself. I've never attended a BarCamp.
After the upcoming PyCon in February, I'm stepping down as chair and
plan on trying to organize a weekend sprint session somewhere on the
East Coast in late 2007 or early 2008. Perhaps this could be run
alongside the BarCamp; if so, the Python Software Foundation might be
able to contribute some financial assistance.
I don't personally know of a good BarCamp venue. When it was in
Washington DC, PyCon was at the Cafritz Center at GWU
(http://cafritz.gwu.edu). They have a number of conference rooms, but
I don't think they'd be amenable to people camping out; still, it might
be worth a try. Wireless was also expensive a few years ago, but maybe
they have saner policies now.
The Python conferences before PyCon were largely in hotels; one
workshop was at the USGS in Reston VA, but the contact who arranged it
left the USGS long ago. Government agencies probably have irritating
security requirements these days.
I'd suggest looking at schools: GW, GMU, U. of Maryland, etc.,
especially if a student chapter of the ACM/IEEE/etc. can serve as the
contact with the school. Last year I got one recent offer of space at
Johns Hopkins in Baltimore that turned out to be too small; perhaps
that's worth a try. Please let me know privately if that would be of
interest and I can e-mail my contact there. But that's certainly not
in DC...
--amk
Nikolas Coukouma
> > So, for some background, I've never organized an event like this, *and*
> > I've never attended a BarCamp. How about you?
(see below).
amk wrote:
> I'd suggest looking at schools: GW, GMU, U. of Maryland, etc.,
> especially if a student chapter of the ACM/IEEE/etc. can serve as the
> contact with the school.
I'm a student at UMD and have been poking about. The ACM chapter is
interested. I've already done some poking at the departmental politics,
but was really busy until recently. I'd tried delegating the department
wrangling to someone else, and they dropped the ball. It's time for
another round.
We have plenty of space in the CS department's building; I just need to
convince them to okay it. I'm also planning to prod the
entrepreneurship center of the business school. They have a nicer
building ;)
CS folk:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/
Floor plans:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/csic/floorplans/
Entrepreneurship center:
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/dingman/
Cheers,
-Nikolas