BarCampBlock

After moving to the bay area, I thought I would be running into people working on startups at every street corner. And my first day started off like that, when within an hour of landing in SFO I went to some coffee shop there which was teeming with people like that. But unfortunately, that hasnt happened again. I then realized that I might actually need to get out and find out where all this is happening. And sure enough, if one happens to go to the right street corners, there’s loads of people to meet and network with. And thats how I stumbled on BarCampBlock. Their official press release follows. I am not too sure about copyright and all that, I just copied and pasted whatever is on their page. On second thoughts, I probably shouldnt have done that. Hmmm..

Press Release

Submitted: Friday, August 3

Almost two years ago, a group of 6 San Francisco geeks in 7 days, using blogs, wikis and IRC slapped together a weekend conference with wifi, food and amazing presentations in Palo Alto, California. This was a different kind of conference, though. There were no superstar keynote speakers. There were no pre-programmed agendas. There was a brilliant agenda filled with content by and for the attendees. Everyone, including the sponsors, the organizers, the speakers and the audience were involved in making the event happen equally and were often one and the same. Over the weekend, more than 200 people showed up and people watched remotely from all over the world. This event was BarCamp.

Since that first BarCamp, there have been over 150 Camps worldwide, as far away as Chennai, India and Sydney, Australia. Nearly 10,000 people have participated in BarCamp and even more have been ‘touched’ because these events tend to lead to a longer term creation of a local technology enthusiast community in many of these locations. More than just an event, BarCamp has become the symbol of individual agency. It is also a powerful offline version of the democratization that happens online with many of the tools of the self-publishing generation. With the BarCamp model, someone who has never organized a conference can put together a highly exciting and informative event without a great deal of money or expertise.

This August 18-19, 2007, we are celebrating the success of BarCamp by bringing it back to its original space, the SocialText offices in Palo Alto…only this time, we are expanding it to the entire block to include the offices and boardrooms of many other tech startups who have benefitted from BarCamp. Startups like Edgeio, Ning and Intalio. BarCampBlock is being organized by two of the original BarCamp founders as well as two BarCamp leaders, Chris Messina, Ross Mayfield, Liz Henry, Tantek Çelik and Tara Hunt. The event starts on August 18 at 10 a.m. with group introductions and ends on August 19 at around 5 p.m.. The empty grid will be filled by attendees at around 11 a.m. Feel free to bring your tents to camp out on the lawn of the SocialText offices.

Sponsors are already lining up to be part of the event, so there should be plenty of food, wifi and everything needed to create the basis of a great event. Technology and thought has innovated incredibly fast since August 18-21, 2005, so the presentations should be incredibly interesting. Sponsors include Google, Yahoo, Lumeno.us, StrategicLee, Timbuk2, Web2Expo, TechCrunch, Leverage Software, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Laughing Squid and Citizen Agency.

Who should be there? Anyone working on a new startup that wants to get some great feedback. Anyone looking for talent. Anyone talented looking for work. Anyone looking to invest in brilliant new ideas. Anyone looking to find partners for their brilliant new ideas. Anyone who wants to practice a presentation s/he is working on. Anyone who has a passion for blogging, wikis, design, coding and the web in general. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is encouraged to present. It’s totally free and an excellent source of what is hot, new and upcoming.

For more information, please see the wiki (and add yourself while you are there!) http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampBlock.