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I want to extend my heartfelt (and belly-felt) thanks to the BarCamp organizers for setting up so many amazing culinary options for vegans & others with special diets. Kudos to Crystal Williams for her awesome work setting up the food side of the event (and for ordering vegan pizzas — huzzah!), and extra-special cherry flavoured kudos to Zak Greant for cooking the wonderful spread (ethiopian split peas, eggplant dip, roasted garlic & potato spread, olive tapinade… the list goes on!)

Thanks you two!!!

Tonight was the beginning of the first ever BarCamp Vancouver. From the BarCamp site: “A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants” (though that should probably read “born from the desire for, like, geeky/techy sorts of people to share and learn…”, because most of the conversations are about techy stuff). I’m excited to say I was there tonight to witness the beginning, and I’ll be there bright and early tomorrow to participate in what promises to be an incredibe day.

On a side note, I’m really interested in the way that the web2 community is gravitating toward an almost egalitarian politic almost by accident. It’s obviously not perfect — there’s lots of sexism, there’s class, there’s race… most of the folks there tonight were white men 18-35. Still, though, some of the ideas that have gained currency amongst the web2 crowd would be considered pretty radical in other industries: open-sourcing your products (think how that would make colonel sanders turn over in his grave!), fighting against digital rights management, allowing user communities to shape products and services — these are all pretty far-out concepts, but they’re the most basic of ideas in this ‘movement’.

One of the things excites me most about BarCamp, in fact, is the way it’s ‘organized’. It’s a very organic, bottom-up kind of event. Everyone who registers (for a $20 suggested donation) is expected to give a short presentation in the area of their expertise on the day of the (un)conference. On Saturday morning (ie. tomorrow) everyone signs up for a time-slot & the day kind of shapes itself (so radical!). Sessions can be about anything: an intro to a new tool you like, a conversation about the state of social software, a rant about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. The goal is to inspire conversation & explore as many new ideas as possible.

I can’t tell you how great all this sounds to me — I really can’t. I hope it’s as fun as I think it will be!