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When Geeks Go Camping
mikep.maine writes "CNN and Business 2.0 have an interesting article on Tim O'Reilly's Foo camp for geeks - not just any geek - people like Google founders, Tim Bray (invented XML), and venture capitalists. Stashed away in the rolling hills north of San Francisco ... Foo Camp, a new breed of geek gathering organized (somewhat) by O'Reilly & Associates. The idea: Get 200 or so smart folks with a lot in common together in one place at one time, let them pitch tents, toss in a Wi-Fi network, and see what happens. Turns out, quite a lot. You are as likely to bump into a founder of Google (both were there) as the vice chairman of Warburg Pincus. Yes, they had Wi-Fi and marshmallows."
There's not a lot of difference between outdoorsy boyscout types and computer geeks -- I have several friends who enjoy both, and I'm sure there's a lot of overlap between both groups in general. Both camping and hacking require an ability to pay *very close* attention to relatively tedious tasks, and offer a similar feeling of relaxed accomplishment.
My dad and I go camping all the time, and he's the one who's encouraged me to get into computers!
Depends on how you camp. My tent is kind of high tech (if you consider aluminum poles and canvas high tech), as is the stove.. Sure, we've got a tent with fiberglass poles, but it seems like the dogs always crash through it in the dark, breaking the poles.
My reason for camping (which I do a lot of) is not to get away from the office. It's to get away from the noise of the city. It's to get back to the way I grew up. I don't take my peers camping. I take my freinds, and my family.
I sure don't need a gps to know where I am. A map, a compass and the sun seem to work pretty good. I sure don't have WiFi in camp. Can yell almost that far. I don't bring my laptop, because I don't go out there to do the same thing that I do everyday.
They brought Venture Capitalists to the picnic says to me that this was a purely bussiness meeting in an abnormal setting, nothing more. I'm sure that the folks who went will remember it for the rest of thier lives. I'd have run for the woods, personally.
josh