Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I get it. Foo. Bar. hehehehehe... We geeks are a funny lot.

There are actually quite a few gals at BarCamp, which is very cool.

Comments I attempted to leave at Tim O’Reilly's site here, addressed to him: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/08/bar_camp.html

I think what is upsetting to people on face value is not that you have an event that is exclusive. That's your right, you're paying for it, it's your place, etc. We all have events in our houses and businesses that are exclusive. But we take care not to hurt other's feelings when we do the invites, explain what's happening, etc. Rather, in your case, it's the way you do it. Socially, it's exclusionary to publicly list the attendees, have lots of flickr photos appear (you could ask guest to be sensitive about it and not post the tags and label it) and tell people to express themselves in ways that smack of McCarthy era divisiveness.

If your goal is to make people feel badly that aren't in your click, you’re succeeding beautifully here: http://gigaom.com/2005/08/16/foocampfighting/. Telling people you'll punish them for speaking out does wonders for that:

"The one sure way to prove yourself not a friend (and to make it really hard to invite you if we did make a mistake) is to make a public stink about it�"

So, we have to keep quiet lest we end up in the O'Reilly doghouse?

Or this one, where you are essentially saying you won't tell people directly what's up with them, but rather deal with them in a passive-aggressive way by simply not inviting them back or never inviting them at all. It shows an amazing tendency toward perpetuating high school popularity contests with yourself at the center:

"Sixth cut: the bozo filter. Someone who has been at a previous FOO camp, and whom we had complaints about for some reason or another, or who has built that kind of reputation on the net. Unfortunately, you probably don't know who you are, but other people do�"

These are human beings you're talking about. You don't have to like them or talk to them if you don't want to, and sometimes people are very unpleasant, but don't position yourself as the filter of the tech community (emphasis on community, where room must be made for everyone to some degree) and expect that people will like or trust you after you tell them that if they are 'bad' for speaking their minds 'you'll show them' by not letting into the next event, or if they are 'bad' for some other reason, you simply won't tell them. What happens if someone at Foocamp says something false about another camper? Do you check it out, or just add the mistaken information to some list, and send that 'bad' person off, wondering what happened?

I know there are people online and off that are difficult to deal with or sometimes unpleasant. I understand not wanting to spend time with them. But don't tell everyone these kinds of things, even if you do actually think them. The rest of the tech community right now is wondering how they've been 'bad' and is spending time getting angry with you for speaking this way, even if they've never had any dealings with O'Reilly at all.

My experience with folks in the tech community that are difficult is that they are much, much easier to deal with if you speak to the directly. If there is a problem, address it like an adult. This isn't sophomore year of high school. You don't have to invite them over. But passive-aggressive ignoring of them causes them to yell louder, bad mouth you more, and be more unpleasant to all of us. Be a bigger man than they are by acting like a man who speaks directly to them. And self-censor for God sakes, about the remarks like those above.

Quite frankly, if I were having people over, I wouldn't want you there because socially you have no ability to control yourself by keeping exclusionary ideas like this to yourself. You would succeed in alienating all my guests. But guess what, I'm going to tell you directly, and explain why. Do you really want to behave this way, as a technology community leader?

It's appalling. You should apologize to everyone now.

DW -- It should be made clear that Barcamp is not anti-Foo. Om's article made this up, Slashdot just perpetuated: http://slashdot.org/articles/05/08/20/159223.shtml?tid=99&tid=126

...and it's a real shame, the camps are complements. I love this comment:

> This is open source... its just a branch from the original idea, re-packaged by someone new for the problem that they want to solve.

> Sure forks in the code/idea base aren't always good but I'm sure if Bar gets some good ideas that they will be incorporated back into the Foo release.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=159576&cid=13362693

I linked to Tim's reply to hint at the complementarity. Thanks for making it explicit.

Well I think FooHer sounds fun. Next year Bev Traynor and I hope to have a BlogCrush in Portugal to introduce Portuguese women to blogging, held in conjunction with the wine pressing at a local winery. Probably camping as well.

It seems to me the act of hanging out together for more than a day: eating together, having a night for things to percolate while we sleep (even if very little percolation or sleeping) and seeing each other in the morning, as we really are; stripped a bit of our "conference masks."