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Hadn't heard of this conference before. Sounds like it will be a lot of fun, and worthwhile. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

I saw this on the schedule for 3:30 today:

"turning off tvs in public places is fun!"

Haha.

Noticed that alternative energy people are invited.

So, David, what were your 3 words? I like that idea. I have trouble speaking in large groups, but name, affiliation + 3 words, I could do!

Sounds cool. I'd like to be there :)

Hi David! We just finished BarCampLithuania http://barcamp.org/BarCampLithuania http://www.ms.lt/stovykla/ which was open to everybody! and was more exclusive with only 28 people.

Here is my report: Friday was our preparation day. In the morning we had two international guests swing by, Markus Petz from the UK and Ania Dymarczyk from Poland. They made a detour from their hitchhiking trip http://www.eurizons.net to promote the United Nations Millenium Development goals to address world poverty. Then in the evening we had two guests Zenonas Anusauskas and Onute Labukiene come from the villages of Eiciunas and my friend Raimundas Vaitkevicius from Kaunas and we worked out our ideas for how it would go.

Today we had people come from the cities of Kaunas and Panevezys as well as different parts of Vilnius. I was quite hands on as a facilitator - I ran it in "sessions", five in all, from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm. We would start out each session all together introducing whoever was new and making sure that each person had a project that they had brought to present and work on that we might help with. Then I'd ask how the subgroups of the previous session had went, what they had achieved. And I'd point out how the progress related to other projects and what new steps they suggested. And then I'd suggest two or three subgroups that we could form, and consider input regarding that. Then the subgroups would split up and work for a good half hour. And then we'd get back together for the next session. The advantage of this was that I could have us focus on the most concrete projects and give them priority, the ones that had value in and of themselves. And the more abstract projects or tool building projects could come in later once it was clear why they might be relevant.

So the first session started with Onute Labukiene's wish to start a club for alcoholics in her village. And with Mudis Salkauskas's work to organize a new approach to teaching chemistry. And with Simonas Jusas's wish to organize programmers to help each other. And Robertas Greicius's project to understand his own behavior. And when we came back together I would keep adding to a diagram showing the ideas that we're becoming relevant from each of our projects.

For the second round I asked what supporting projects would be most immediately helpful so they chose Irena Buinickaite's work on "how to help people solve their own problems" and Raimundas Vaitkevicius's on "psychometrics and mapping key concepts". And Svetlana Scigol read some poetry in Russian. So, for example, there was the idea that just as alcoholism is built on immediate gratification, so is lyric poetry based on immediate impact. Or that teaching chemistry requires a common language and so it's helpful to consider a universal language.

In the third round then Alvydas Cepulis introduced his game for teaching communication which has people become conscious of the different positions they are taking (affirmation, negation, question, answer, remark, agreement) and how we can move from "a sum of all monologues" to "a sum of all dialogues" to a polylogue if we are willing to slow down our conversation. And Monika Jasinskaite spoke with artists and programmers about their interest in a virtual art gallery she is working on. And we could keep building on the original subjects of alcoholism, education, personal growth.

In the fourth round Rimas Abromavicius presented his vision of a modern high school (KTU Gymnasium, the best in Kaunas) which is embracing Moodle for work to have discourse within the school, have teachers supplement their own education, and have distance tutoring for children from other schools. Others worked with Algirdas Zokaitis on how they might help our Folk Creativity Club "Atzalynas" where our lab is based and our BarCampLithuania took place. One teacher decided to start a drama club and some artists talked about how they might become active.

In our fifth and final round we applied Alvydas Cepulis' communication game to have a discourse about education, including a comparison of the elite high school as the model of the current system, and an approach based on self-education on demand as elaborated by Alfredas Gabrielavicius. People were happy with the event and Zenonas Anusauskas has started planning our next event for October in the village of Eiciunai with special focus on "synergy in creative work", and Alfredas Gabrielavicius and Irena Buinickaite will organize one in December in Riese, a suburb of Vilnius, with special focus on "a self-reliance system for helping each other". It seems that people want to focus on their own interests, but I'm very interested in regularly having general events that show that we can really support and integrate all kinds of projects. So we'll be doing specific events but I also look forward to doing more BarCamps!

"Social networking inevitably happens ... the old boys will just naturally become better friends ..."

Kudos for posting on the social networking effect. It's especially relevant given recently there was yet another round of sneering derision directed to Z-listers for the observation that there is a social networking effect :-(.

David -- I'm curious about the ambivalence you express here. It sounds to me like you're trying to curry favor with the well-known critics of FOO (and obviously, you failed -- see http://www.scripting.com/2006/08/26.html#whyCarryTheWaterDavid) rather than giving us real insight.

Yes, FOO Camp is exclusive in the sense that it's invite-only, but if you're honest, you'll have to admit that it's one of the most diverse technical conferences you're ever likely to attend. We make a real effort to invite people from different technical communities, people who ought to know each other, but don't. One of our goals is to create new synapses in the global brain, so to speak. This is way more diverse than an open-to-all comers event that draws from the same community. And it's precisely because we limit attendance that we're able to manage that creative mix. Do you bake a cake by using whatever amount of flour, eggs, sugar, and chocolate you happen to have in your kitchen? There's a range of experiment, but in the end, you control the mix because you know that some combinations are essential for the cake to work at all.

This is not to say that an open-to-all comers event can't also work (assuming you have either a narrow topic that doesn't draw a huge crowd, or else a venue that can hold all comers, and a set of goals that will work for a very large event.) But it would be a very different kind of event, and for our purposes, much less successful.

Stop worrying about what Winer thinks. He's perfectly happy to attend exclusive events (see http://davenet.scripting.com/2000/01/29/twoDaysAtDavos), as long as he's invited. He has a grudge against me, for reasons only he understands, and despite his many other virtues, on this subject, he just needs to be ignored.

There are lots of ways to do great events. FOO is one. Bar Camp is another (and we're honored to be imitated, and in fact have invited some of the Bar Camp people this year to be sure that they learn as much as they can about how we do it.)

Andrius, sounds great!

Tim, my ambivalence is honest and strong. Both sides of it. Please credit me with that. Thx.

Having been invited by Tim O'Reilly to Foo Camp 1, and then a year later to Foo Camp 2, and then a year later to Foo Camp 3, I was hoping to be invited to Foo Camp 4. No such luck. Oh well. Sounds like it was another great conference this year.

No, no, no. David is trying to curry favors with the Z-listers :-) [that's a joke!]

Repeat after me: It's not always all about [you-know-who]. It's not always all about [you-know-who].

P.S.: "one of the most diverse technical conferences you're ever likely to attend" is a great straight line, given that there are so many ways it can be parsed.

thanks, Dave, for pointing out the lack of diversity/exclusive nature of the gathering. Sounds like nothing's really changed since danah boyd raised that issue last year (or the year before) when she noticed the derth of women in attendance.

I hit 9 cons in 12 months, covering tech, journalism and business, and most of the conversations were dominated by the white guy factor. So, my sense is that it's really nothing new with most cons or meetings anyway. But how many actually want diversity? Their efforts demonstrate the reality their lip service denies.

The only gatherings that host a *modicum* of diversity are meetings/cons that are cost-effective and easy to get to. Otherwise, invitation or not, there's always stratification--east coast vs. west coast, ivy league vs. corporate culture. It always leaves me wondering "do they really want to know what they people think? or are they happy with theories about the people?"

Seems to me that it is, unfortunately, more about the latter than the former. The latter is, after all, much less messy.

Tish, gender balance only an issue at a conference because as an issue it's way bigger an issue. So, for me the question is how well a conference deals with it. Foo seems to me to have gone up a big step this year. Foo got bigger - 325 people, up from the under 200 the first year - and I believe the organizers are making more of a conscious effort to be inclusive. I don't know if the percentage of women was up this year, but the number was and, it certainly seemed to me, so was their presence. This year no one could mistake it for a bunch of white guys interacting and watching their stubble grow. This year, women were everywhere, and were in every conversation. It felt much better.

Perfect? Nah. But this is a problem that is never solved because the imbalance is in the culture at large. So, I give O'Reilly marks for taking it seriously. Foo was better for it, immo (in my male opinion).

It would, of course, be more important to know what the women attendees thought.

For what it's worth, I don't have a grudge against Tim.

Yes, I have been to Davos, and if I was invited again I might consider going. I don't think that's inconsistent at all with what I said on Scripting News this weekend.

David, we should care what other people think, I'm not telling you not to listen to Tim, but he is telling you not to listen to me.

That's really the difference. I've invited him to every conferenc I've put on. He even signed up for BloggerCon III at Stanford (but didn't come). I used to be invited to his conferences, I was going to speak at the OSCON in 2002, but couldn't for health reasons. Since then, something happened, and it wasn't with me. So when Tim speaks for me, saying I have a grudge, that's wrong, I don't.

I would speak at Web 2.0, I offered to do it publicly. I think he should go for it, to show that he's not afraid of hearing from the diversity he says he values so much. I won't talk about him or his company, I will talk about the investment model of the tech industry, to the tech industry, which whether Tim likes it or not, I am part of.

Now that we've got his attention and participation, what about this idea. Let's bury the hatchet, nothing is served by this grudge that neither of us admit to having. Come on Tim, let's get beyond whatever it is that's in our way.

It doesn't matter if Tim wants to have his own party, and his own invitees. I think Trish has an exceptionally good point in that if Tim wants to hear from only a select group of people, great -- but he's denying himself the richness of a diverse audience.

As for women, according to one of the women who attended, the count was 16.9%. I would withhold the high fiving with that number.

More importantly, aside from a couple, most of the women who went are not those who rock the boat, who aggressively push for women and diversity at conferences. I don't know if that's how things worked out, or if Tim is just not ready to have an open dialog on this issue. I respect that as much flack as I've given him, he still lets me be an author for his company, so I have some hope. Especially if he looks at having some more affordable conferences some place other than California (or Boston or New York).

The imbalance in the culture won't right itself -- it takes people making decisions that may not benefit themselves. I don't see this in weblogging. I have found for the most part many, too many, of the more vocal participants are quite self-serving.

It doesn't matter if Tim wants to have his own party, and his own invitees. I think Trish has an exceptionally good point in that if Tim wants to hear from only a select group of people, great -- but he's denying himself the richness of a diverse audience.

As for women, according to one of the women who attended, the count was 16.9%. I would withhold the high fiving with that number.

More importantly, aside from a couple, most of the women who went are not those who rock the boat, who aggressively push for women and diversity at conferences. I don't know if that's how things worked out, or if Tim is just not ready to have an open dialog on this issue. I respect that as much flack as I've given him, he still lets me be an author for his company, so I have some hope. Especially if he looks at having some more affordable conferences some place other than California (or Boston or New York).

The imbalance in the culture won't right itself -- it takes people making decisions that may not benefit themselves. I don't see this in weblogging. I have found for the most part many, too many, of the more vocal participants are quite self-serving.

This history explains a lot.

It's too bad that with all the discussion points raised, the potential for discussion, the possibilities, this thread has been reduced to "Tim is exclusive because he doesn't invite me", from Dave Winer and "Dave doesn't like me, I don't know why" from Tim.

So much for the great awakening.

Really silly, isn't it. From this perspective, it doesn't appear O'Reilly has done anything wrong. Not quite sure why Dave continues to fly off the handle. Bury the hatchet, guys. This sort of thing is beneath both of you.

My 2 cents

Really silly, isn't it. From this perspective, it doesn't appear Winer has done anything wrong. Not quite sure why Tim continues to fly off the handle. Bury the hatchet, guys. This sort of thing is beneath both of you.

"...conferences some place other than California (or Boston or New York)."

A reminder that there is always going to be someone left out, and invariably there will be a lot of people left out who would have contributed a great deal. It is an important conundrum, with only partial answers. In case that wasn't obvious.

To be clear, what Shelley put in quotes and attributed to me, isn't anything I actually said.

I've found this discussion clarifying, so thanks to you all. It's made my ambivalence's roots clearer to me. And I would strike the phrase "Enough? Nah." from my post because it seems to say that Tim in particular should be doing more, when I really meant that no one can ever do enough, and that we all need to try harder, always. Bad writing, tinged with a soupcon of bad thinking.

Let me try again...

Invitation-only parties hold a danger, especially if the invitees are in positions of authority. But that doesn't mean that invitiation-only parties/conferences are bad. It only means we need to be aware of the dangers and try to avoid them.

So, then the question is: How does Foo do?

I think it does quite well and has been getting better every year. Yes, the percentage of women is low, but a) that reflects a broader problem, b) the felt presence of women was strong this year, c) the particular women present were overall a remarkable group anyone would be privileged to spend time with, much less to number among one's friends, d) Tim put in place a recommendation system that should up the percentage, and e) this is a party, not the UN.

It's Tim's party. He gets to pick the people he wants. He gets to not pick people for any reason he wants. If I didn't like the people he picked, I wouldn't go because the party wouldn't be fun. If I thought he was not inviting people because they're women, Black, gay or Republicans, I wouldn't go and I'd lose respect for Tim. But, I not only respect Tim, I admire him. He builds community. He reaches across his company's narrow interests. He looks way past himself.

I remain wary of invitation-only events, especially when there are implications for power and authority, but I'm not ambivalent about Foo (other than because of my generalized guilt about things I enjoy). Nor am I ambivalent about Tim. His generosity - economic, but more important, with ideas - is to be emulated.

David, suppose:

1. You enjoyed Foo Camp, and the company of the people who go to Foo Camp, and perhaps even like the ego-stroke of being invited to Foo Camp.

2. You had something critical to say about Foo Camp, the process by which some people are invited or not, or the fact that "open" standards work is done at Foo Camp, when the event is not open to all.

3. You knew that by saying something critical of Foo Camp that you would not be invited back.

Suppose all that (i.e. it's not germane to say it didn't or doesn't happen, this is just theoretical to explore the diff betw your values and my own) would you say what you have to say, or stay silent so you wouldn't jeopardize your invitation.

Now suppose all that were true, would that change how you felt about the event??

Now to be clear, I didn't say Tim doesn't have the right to put on Foo Camp. Further I've been very clear that I don't want an invitation to Foo Camp, and I wouldn't go if I was invited because I believe that in doing so I would accept limits on what I can say. I think that was very clearly stated, by Tim, last year in the thread on Om Malik's blog. He basically says the same thing here, by asking if you're currying favor with certain people. Well what if you were? (I hope you say what you think regardless of whether people favor it or not, you certainly don't have to *ever* say anything to "curry favor" with me -- I don't think that way of people I respect, they should say what they think, period.)

I think every journalist who went accepted a conflict of interest that no journalist should accept. Same with academics, such as yourself, btw.

Since I'm also inevitably interested in standards work, I can't support Foo Camp. Note again, I didn't say anything about Tim or his company.

This is my theory of where the disconnect betw Tim and myself has always been. And that's fine, but it is a problem when Tim puts himself in the role of "decider of who's included and who's excluded." My belief is that I certainly have suffered because of this, frankly the collegiality and conversation at Foo Camp sounds like something I would enjoy and benefit from, I certainly like talking with many fo the people who go, and I think the opposite is true as well. We can only grow so far if we all have to be worried how Tim is going to interpret what we say.

And I've heard from people that open standards work *was* done at Foo Camp this year, and David, that's a problem for EVERYONE including the people who were invited. Tim should really make that clear up front, this is a party, a social event, and you should not try to do open standards work at such an event.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts (and try to remember that I'm typing this into a tiny little box and didn't have this reviewed by my lawyers and am not drafting a U.N. Security Council Resolution).

Have a ncie day.

"To be clear, what Shelley put in quotes and attributed to me, isn't anything I actually said."

It's in code, Dave. After all these years, I finally found the cipher, and can read your hidden message.

"It's Tim's party. He gets to pick the people he wants. He gets to not pick people for any reason he wants. If I didn't like the people he picked, I wouldn't go because the party wouldn't be fun."

David, that's fair enough. Tim is holding a private party just like everyone on this list holds the same from time to time.

To be honest, I don't see that this event helps anyone's career, overmuch, nor does it lead to any really significant advancement in tech, so I'm not quite sure why the event is so talked to death publicly. For all the 'open standards' work talk, I've seen some of this reflected in weblog posts, and I don't think any of us need feel worried that a consortium of FOOS have redefined the internet.

Perhaps next year, we'll not even notice that FOO is happening. Wouldn't that be nice for one and all?

Shelley

PS Dave said, "Have a nice day". I don't think you want to know what this is, when decoded.

Shelley, there you go again! :-)

I said "Have a ncie day" which actually means have a nice day, but my fingers got crossed as I was typing it.

"I'm not quite sure why the event is so talked to death publicly."

I believe this is what scientists refer to as "selection bias". My blogosphere pretty much didn't mention FOO Camp at all. But people seem to really like the new Justin Timberlake album.

Anil, yup. Most people don't care. Not an issue for them.

David, I heard that at the opening session Tim O'Reilly told the camp that recordings were frowned upon. I heard he mentioned me by name, saying that's why I wasn't invited back (because I had made someone uncomfortable by recording him/her).

Is that true? I asked Tim but he hasn't responded yet.

That certainly demonstrates the downside of these events. If you do something to piss off the host or someone else in attendance (sorry Tim) you don't get invited back.

Anil, I hear you, but, but: Justin Timberlake? Justin Timberlake?

He's still singing? I thought he was off getting treatment...Post Janet Syndrome or some such thing.

Isn't it ironic that Mr. Winer continues to complain about FOO; although, he has no desire to go, year after year. I believe the fox said it best, "I didn't want those sour grapes anyway."

My point - give it up. By your own admission many folks find you to be too controversial and intimidating with your direct (aggressive) approach to various topics.

The perception that others have of you, at least in my opinion, is by your own design and is well deserved.

You can't have it both ways and I find the more you speak on the subject of once again not being invited to FOO only weakens your position.

Ocomik

Anil, I checked the new Timberlake album out, listened to a brief clip of the song that's released. I must confess, it did not rock my boat.

I am curious, though: is a shaved head the new cool? If I shave my head, will I become cool?

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble that's what you both need to do: you both need to shave your heads.

Anil, I checked the new Timberlake album out, listened to a brief clip of the song that's released. I must confess, it did not rock my boat.

I am curious, though: is a shaved head the new cool? If I shave my head, will I become cool?

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble that's what you both need to do: you both need to shave your heads.

David, sorry for the repeating comments. I seem to run into a hiccup when publishing the comment.

Wow, that's some huge egos. How do you guys fit your heads through doorways?

I went to a Foo Camp and loved it. I liked it so much that I help start an internal company version with O'Reilly's advice. And I haven't been invited back to Foo and likely won't ever. Not because I suck as a technologist, but because new, interesting people are what's needed at Foo, not the same people invited over and over to soothe their egos.

This isn't about standards or openness, it's about the bruised egos of a few insecure individuals.

Those ad hominems sure are intimidating and chilling. No wonder people don't dare criticize O'Reilly, publicly.

O'Reilly suck! O'Reilly suck! O'Reilly suck!

There now, I frighted the big bad monsters away.

This is ridicuolous. Tim has every right to restrict who can come to his inviation-only conference. It appears to me the only people who are complaining are those who were explicitly not invited because they tend to be outspoken critics and/or complete assholes. Here's a tip: if you want to be included in an invitation-only conference, don't publicly trash the organizer or his company. Sheesh.

"Wow, that's some huge egos. How do you guys fit your heads through doorways?"

They shave their heads. Grease also helps.

Dave, to respond to your hypothetical: If I enjoyed Foo Camp, but I had something critical to say about it, and I knew that by "saying something critical of Foo Camp that you would not be invited back," then I'd say something critical about Foo Camp, assuming it was something worth saying, of course.

Now to take it out of the hypothetical: I've only talked to Tim a few times in my life, beyond waving hello, thanking him for putting on a swell event, or some such. I believe that every one of our substantial conversations has been about the issue of gender balance at Tim's events. We disagree somewhat, and I believe Tim sees me as a small thorn in his side. I've also posted in public a few times about the issue. Yet I've been invited repeatedly to Foo. That's not hypothetical.

I disagree with Tim, so I talk with him about it, a bit in private and a bit in public. We still disagree. It's ok. Failure to agree, even on a question of values, doesn't mean at least one of the parties has failed a moral test and deserves to be denounced in public. Denouncements drive us into dead ends. It's more important to build a habitable culture together than to be right all the damn time. IMHO.

Most of the time, I feel like I'm fumbling in the dark and never finding the light switch, and if I did, it'd still just be me standing there in my pajamas. Don't you feel that way, too?

A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
Somebody who has not been invited to a hot party is a discoverer of the power of social connections.

Welcome to our world. There's a certain amount of self-proving irony in the way this discussion has progressed.

Again: It's not all about (well, it shouldn't be all about) any particular A-lister and "ego". Rather, in this supposedly open, democratic, no-barriers, brave new world of the bogosphere - when it's *them*, when there's money at stake instead of a sales-pitch to suckers - all the people involved know that there's gatekeepers.

Seth, you're right to interject this reminder, imo. The Web isn't as democratic as it could be. We know that networks tend to form clusters and a short head emerges, but we can do what we can to keep it from becoming rigid and monopolistic of our attention. Attention will inevitably be unevenly distributed, but we can perpetually work on it.

And yet, who claims that in the brave new world there would be no gatekeepers? It seems to me that we now have lots and lots of gatekeepers but also far more choice about which gates we want to go through.

Does Janet Jackson have a new album coming out too?

David, I agree, and as you know, you and I have agreed and disagreed on some things, and (this is getting a little confusing) and sometimes I talk with you privately about it and sometimes publicly (when I think it's something that is of general concern).

Yet, in all the time I've known you (about as long as I've known Tim) as far as I know you've never told anyone to ignore me, or said I have a grudge against you, or said you won't invite me to your parties if I don't stop saying critical things about you.

We all have to put up with people saying and thinking things we don't like. A few years ago, when we were planning the first BloggerCon, the question came up of people who flame me, and how we'd deal with that at the conference. John Palfrey and I talked about it for about two minutes and I said to him "let anyone come" and that's what we did, and I've never regretted it and somehow we've been able to accomodate everyone who wanted to come, and while there have been "scenes" from time to time, in general the conferences have been positive and most people seem to feel they were worthwhile.

In other words I've dealt with exactly the issues Tim has said he has to deal with, and I know you don't have to keep people who disagree with you from speaking.

Anyway, I'm glad you and I are on speaking terms, and that you're not ignoring me. :-)

I'm not ignoring you Dave. Do you feel special now?

I'm not ignoring you Dave. Do you feel special now?

Ack! Ack! Shelley, Shelley, sorry sorry for for the the echo echo. I I don't don't know know what's what's going going on on, but but I I apologize apologize.

Ta ta ta ta for for now now

DW DW

Did you get bullied at school dave?

Bullying and ridiculing others is pathetic. Especially when they are correct about your attention seeking behaviour.

Sorry about the doubles David. I'll try to make this a single.

I wanted to thank you for going to FOO and talking with Tim about increasing the number of women. I also wanted to thank Tim for making an effort this year. It may seem I'm not grateful when I say that 16.9 isn't good enough, but I am. I look at Office 2.0 where one speaker out of 53 is a woman, and 16.9 looks pretty good.

I know I've given you and Tim both such a hard time, but when you look at something like Office 2.0, or The Ajaxian Experience conference in Boston, which also has only one women among many speakers, it's difficult not to get angry and discouraged, in equal parts.

I'm writing a book on Ajax and I almost quit it when I saw these speaker lists. I thought to myself, "Why? What does it matter? What could I possibly do that would make me a part of this new web 2.0 communities?" Of course I didn't quit--I wouldn't let my editor down, or O'Reilly, or myself, and I happen to think it will be the best book on Ajax coming out of O'Reilly (excuse the self promotion).

More importantly, I like this technology, I love to work with it, to write about it, it's fun! And I guess that will have to be enough.

The point I'm trying to make is seeing few women at these events does impact. But you knew this David, and you made an effort, and I appreciate it. And whether Tim is around still reading these comments, I appreciate the effort O'Reilly made for this year's FOO.

Now I'll return this thread to its previous programming.

Sorry, "...part of this new web 2.0 community"

Shelley, thanks for that. I appreciate it.

This is a problem for which no solution is ever enough, not because people make impossible demands but because there literally is no demographic proportionality that couldn't be fairly challenged. We can certainly agree on some proportions being unsupportable, but just because there's a wrong answer doesn't mean there's a right one.

So, I don't know what we do. Best faith efforts, systematic and ad hoc? Keep talking with one another to so we can find one another's blind spots? Appreciating the efforts made while pushing for yet more to be done?

And I should make clear that Tim and I don't disagree about the value of diversity at conferences. It's not like he needs me to tell him that. But within that agreement, there's lots to talk about, as you well know, Shelley.

FWIW, on the subject of FOO's diversity as an invitation-only event, I think that Don McAskill of SmugMug got it just right in his blog posting foo, nofoo, barcamp ("http://blogs.smugmug.com/onethumb/2006/08/28/foo-nofoo-barcamp/") Don likes them all, just as I do, and highlights what's best about each.

He didn't get to FOO this year but visited Scoble's nofoo and bar camp, and then reflected on what's special about FOO, based on his experience last year:

And it finally dawned on me why foo is so excellent and so difficult to replicate. It’s because Tim & Co. apply a filter to those who are invited. Now, before your hair catches on fire, I’m not talking about a quality filter - there were clearly quality people at both nofoo and barcamp. I’m talking about a diversity filter.

At foo, it’s not all Web 2.0 geeks. You’re eating dinner that first night with one of the guys on the original US spy satellite program to snoop on the Soviets - and he’s got photos, diagrams, and details of exactly how the cameras worked, how they’d get the film back, and how they’d get it developed. During the Geodata & Geomapping session, it’s not just Google Maps mashup artists like us - there are hardware guys asking the mashup guys what they’d like to see next year, and whipping out prototype GPS chips that can be embedded in anything. One session you learn about bioengineering and the state of getting your own chunk of DNA printed. The next, you’re watching someone show off their chocolate printer. Yes, we went from printing DNA to printing chocolate.

That's exactly right. A lot of people who should know better have complained about the "exclusivity" of FOO, or its supposed lack of diversity, but it is exactly diversity that we seek by limiting the invite list. As Don notes, it would be super easy to invite all the Web 2.0 geeks we know, or all the open source geeks, or all the makers and hardware hackers, or all the data visualization wonks, or all the cutting edge bio people. These are all fields we're following and know lots of cool people in. But we want to bring a mix of them all together, and to do that, we need to select a variety from each camp, as well as lots of new people that we don't know, but suspect will be really interesting.

The exclusivity is numbers-based, not status-based, btw. While there are some celebrities there, there are also lots of unknowns, so once again, the people trying to tar us with any possible brush are either missing the point or trying to get others to miss it.

FWIW, I believe the Bar Camp folks understand that we're huge supporters of the Bar Camp movement. It's a great idea, and we want to see lots more of them, and want to figure out how we can participate in bar camps around the world, since it's such a great way to reach out to new folks. But an open access event tends to be much more homogenous, because of the self-selection by the people who come and the communities in whom the meme has spread.

You can get an explosive mix when you reach out to people who wouldn't normally associate with each other. And that's what we try to achieve at FOO Camp.

As to the effort in reaching out to include more women, Shelley, I'm afraid to say that we made no additional effort that I know of to invite anyone just because they were women. We have reached out to interesting people we want to get to know, and we're pretty excited when we do find cool women in tech, but to bring people JUST because they were women would be a very different goal than the one that we have.

I really believe, with both you and Dave Weinberger, that affirmative action to bring more women into tech is a good thing. And I'll point out that fully 50% of the top execs at O'Reilly are women, and that I'm more excited than I can say that my daughter Arwen is finally involved in the company. But to say that affirmative action should trump other purposes, and we should get trashed because someone thinks we should have higher percentages of women than the high tech industry as a whole does, seems a bit much. As I've told other people who are concerned about this issue -- send cool women our way! That's the best way to increase the number of women at our events.

In general, all the heat about FOO's exclusivity seems over the top. Do your own events! (That's why bar camp is so great. They saw what we were doing, liked it, and did their own version. That's wonderful.)

I've made a fuss on the net about issues myself from time to time (Microsoft's 10-connection limit in TCP/IP, Amazon's 1-click patent, the current state of American politics) but these were important calls to action. Is the invitation list of a small company to it's summer "think" event really an important issue for activism?

I respect that you answered Tim, thoughtfully and in such a detailed way. I appreciate it.

As for general issues of exclusivity, I see no harm in you having your own gathering. As I said elsewhere, I don't see that it helps anyone over much in their career or redefines tech as we know it. People shouldn't worry so about it.

I have to say, though, that I am disappointed in your answer about diversity, because it seems to imply that diversity equates to lack of quality. I have more on this, but I want to separate this from the discussion of FOO because it really does go beyond FOO.

I'm talked out on this issue, and feel I've cluttered David W's post with too many comments. Sorry for the 'jokes' earlier David. They were a snarky way of trying to prove a point. They missed the point though (and caused pain to a reader, I hear), which I guess we'll show that I do better with just plain straight talk.

Thanks again.

I guess WILL show...WILL show...

Can't type worth a darn when I'm tired.

Shelley, I assume you're using the word "diversity" to mean "male/female" ratio (which is not what it means to me, but that's another matter.) I didn't at all mean to suggest that there was any association at all between male/female ratio and the quality of attendees. I'm simply suggesting that elevating the sex of attendees above what interesting things they have to talk about, that we want to learn, is not the best selection criterion for our purposes. Given that the number of women in the CS and related fields is roughly the ratio of our attendees, I'd guess that we got it roughly right.

We do a lot to reach out and be inclusive, but we don't do it using the one axis that seems to matter most to you. I'm sorry that that gives you heartburn, but I'm not going to pretend otherwise just to make you happy (though I'm delighted to have made you happier by having a better ratio.)

I won't say that the grumbling by folks like you, and Mary Hodder, and David Weinberger, hasn't made the issue of male/female ratio higher on our radar. We're very aware of it, and are delighted when we find cool women to add to our radar, but we're not going to make a litmus test of some number of women.

What I do love is when we're able to reframe an issue in such a way as to make it more gender-inclusive. I think Dale Dougherty has done a great job of this with Make: by launching the companion magazine Craft:, which has a more female spin. Where this was most wonderfully evident was at the Maker Faire, where in one pavillion Dale had the swap-o-rama-rama, started by a woman in NY, in which people bring in clothes to swap, and then remanufacture them with sewing machines and silk screeners, with a fashion show at the end. Across the quad were Linux geeks with their biodiesel powered supercomputer made out of recycled pcs. That Dale was able to reframe hardware hacking with the broader meme of Make and DIY, and to include both these amazing projects, was very cool.

But Dale didn't do this because he wanted to reach out to women. He did it because reframing the issue in this way made clear the connections between these two seemingly very disparate projects. It's the very specificity of the connection (these are both makers) that is interesting, with the gender differences an interesting harmonic. Where if all he'd done was to go out and look for some way to have Make: be more appealing to women, that would have led to one of the Madison Avenue monstrosities that appear from time to time. Finding deep and essential connections, meaning if you will, is what we try to do.

If you're using diversity to mean something else, I'm not sure how to respond, since I was trying to explain how we consciously use "diversity" filters to enhance quality, by bringing lots of cool people from diverse fields together. There is no implication that people who are not invited are less qualified than people who are -- in fact, after every camp, we discover lots of new people who we wished we'd been able to invite, or invite back because they would have been great in this discussion or that, and so we put them on the consideration list for next year.

Tim, sorry didn't even know you had responded. David, here's that need for threadsml you had talked about years ago.

I don't know if one could equate a push for equality with grumbling. That's somewhat like saying, "That Martin Luther King, he's bitching again." I appreciate your honesty, though, because a lot of people respond with a lot of words that talk around the issue, and you've always been upfront with your thoughts on this.

I have a suggestion, and this is serious and not meant to be snarky. Invite several people in your offices, men and women, into a room and read them your last comment, and have a discussion based on it.

I'm going to borrow it and print it out at Bb Gun and invite the same discussion.

"More importantly, aside from a couple, most of the women who went are not those who rock the boat, who aggressively push for women and diversity at conferences."

I was one of the women at FOO. I don't see why there should be any relationship between aggressively rocking the boat on gender issues and being invited to any conference, FOO or otherwise. I rarely write about gender issues. Does this mean I shouldn't have been invited to FOO?

I would prefer to think that I was invited because someone at O'Reilly thought that I was interesting, that my voice would add to the conversation, and that both myself and other attendees would get something out of my presence. I certainly got a lot out of being there - had some fantastic conversations, had my eyes opened, had ideas. I would love to go back next year, but I respect Tim and the fact that next year some other unknown person might go in my stead.

Whatever is decided, the last thing I want is for conference organisers to start thinking "We'll invite that Suw person. She's a chick." And if they start thinking "Whassername aggressively lobbies for gender equality, we'd better invite her or else our balls will be served to us on toast", then frankly, as a gender, we've lost.

Smart women should be invited to conferences because they are smart, not because they are women.