Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well, I consider myself a geek, but when I go out camping, all I need to take with me is a couple of gallons of gasoline and then I got entertainment for a whole weekend.
Do they all sit around the campfire popping pimples and telling network management horror stories while holding LED flashlights under their chins.
We'll go snipe fragging!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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!
put all the wi-fi access points in one spot :)
and you have yourself an outdoor lowpower microwave
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
This storyline on UserFriendly is about geeks camping. It's one of the best storylines, IMO. It continues until July 04, 2000.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Around the campfire sat the founders of Google when someone came around and tried to scare them with a SCOst story..
"It is pitch black, you are likely to be eaten by a grue"
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
It's always interesting reading his journal and here's his take on the camp.
/ FooNotes
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/10/11
You are looking at it like a vacation. Think of it instead as the ultimate telecomute:
:)
* You don't have to pay rent
* You don't have to shower
* You get to live off ramen noodles
* The company pager is futile
* You have the biggest most scenic office window ever.
Sounds like a geeks dream to me
Lesson 1: navigating in a wood-like enviroment.
Lesson 2: starting a fire without matches
Lesson 3: starting a fire with matches
Lesson 4: starting a fire with matches and gasoline
Lesson 5: preventing wild life from coming too near to your fire.
Lesson 6: How to extinguish a burning rodent.
Lesson 7: treating burn injuries
Lesson 8: How to leave a burning forest.
Lesson 9: How to look very, very innocent
There were 11 other people on the committee and a couple hundred more in the discussion group. Geez.
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
When I used to work at a small start up company, we weren't full of those stereotypical portly nerds that drink mountain dew all day long and have a goofy laugh.
Instead, we had nice upstart individuals that were well motivated and very athletic. (if it's any consolation to you, they didn't take showers after working out)
Whenever there were any sorts of group events, we'd have at least two individuals with experience with hiking, backpacking, rock climb, scuba diving, spelunking, sky diving, flying jets or planes, rocketry, maguyvering stuff(a lot of them were engineers in mechanical, electrical, chemical, etcetera btw), and even inventing little items for personal use with fellow hobbyists.
Yes, I believe it is the insatiable quality of nerds that keep them above the rest in society. Always prepared for any event. If you stuck them on an island without electricity or any signs of human life, they'd be able to make a quaint existence on it until someone rescued them.
For examples of weirdness and whackiness for self made items. Check out this forum for flashlight enthusiasts.
A bunch of them make their own flashlights, or even offer modifications to Mag-Lites to make them into hand-held HID setups just like the UnderWater Kinetics Light Cannon 100 HID Dive Light
Yes, nerds are too overprepared.