Ubergeeks from across the globe streamed into Sebastopol, California last weekend for FooCamp, the in-tents O'Reilly get-together (sorry). It's like a music festival for hackers, programmers, technology thinkers and developers. And without the bands.
The list of FooCampers is pretty heavy duty: names that Online readers may recognise include Caterina Fake, Dan Gillmor, Dave Sifry, Esther Dyson, Howard Rheingold, Jimmy Wales, Joi Ito, Josh Schachter, Quinn Norton, Stewart Butterfield and Tom Coates.
The result? Coates sums his experience up by saying that "frankly it's been pretty astonishing", while others call it Best. Conference. Ever. Meanwhile, some clever chap has constructed a mash-up of all the attendees blogs. The whole thing is geek-fu of the highest order.
However, it's invite-only, so some enterprising democratisers started BarCamp in Palo Alto, an open source equivalent where anyone could come along. By all accounts, that too, was fairly successful.
Now Suw Charman, one-time Online contributor, is wondering whether there could be a Bar Camp in Britain. Well? Can we manage it?
