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Spurned O'Reilly 'Foo' Camp Attendees Create 'Bar'
theodp writes "CNET reports on this weekend's Bar Camp, an open-source alternative to O'Reilly Media's A-List Foo Camp, which CEO Tim O'Reilly explains employs a "Bozo filter" to exclude undesirable attendees.
Then again, alternative events (not "alternative" in the sense of the label given to certain rock bands, but actually created as an alternative to a more exclusive event) sometimes do develop into something worthwhile. First one that comes to mind is the Sundance Film Festival alternative, Slamdance.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Maybe a catchier headline would've been:
Foo 2 Bar Bozo
Now we just need a Baz camp and we're done. ;)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
furball
I feel an impending merger coming...but I imagine the result will be fubar
Didn't get an invite to the latest camp? I pity the Foo...
gigaom is appropriate for overall Slashdot filter, gigahenry is for high frequency, and gigafarad is for low frequency bozo filters.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Foo Camp 2005: Symposium on Virtualizing Sleepaway Camp Politics
Live streams of the Sebastopol live event will start with instructions on scratching bugbites, gathering your own dirt from a neighbor's yard for your sleeping bag, and fantasies about rowing across the lake to the girls' "Spa Camp".
Unfortunately, this Summer's presentation of "Telewedgies" has been cancelled due to popular demand from our nerd attendees.
--
make install -not war
What they didn't mention was that over 100 people on the invite list for CNET's BAR camp happen to work at Google. Apparently, all the RSVPs from Google had a common message scrawled on them: "Pwn3d j00 n00B"
Whoa, like, when you like, put the two names together, it makes Foobar.. what a crazy coincidence...
It's OK for Tim O'Reilly to invite who he likes, and it's a very difficult thing to do. Far from creating a rival camp being a bitter and evil thing to do, it's an extremely constructive and positive response, and it could mean that there are two creative geek hothouse conferences where before there was one. Let a thousand flowers bloom!
Xenu loves you!
employs a "Bozo filter"
I don't understand why people are upset about this. This filter should only apply to clowns, not IT folks.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
This is open source... its just a branch from the original idea, re-packaged by someone new for the problem that they want to solve.
Sure forks in the code/idea base aren't always good but I'm sure if Bar gets some good ideas that they will be incorporated back into the Foo release.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
my first thought was, "What the hell is Bill O'Reily doing with a camp called 'foo?'"
You have to understand the objectives of the event.
Well sure with names like Foo Camp and Bar Camp, who wouldn't be able to pick up on that.
That they are lowering the bar and letting any bozo in?
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
...the Bozo filter was his idea first!
"It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
These O'reilly events are insanely expensive, teh O'Reilly OSCON in Europe has a ticket price of £700 , thats over $1000 US or Euro - quite a huge barrier to access.
Especially as many FOSS people are doing it in their downtime - so they don't have an instituion to foot the bill.
Sounds like Tim is really coining it in, to the detriment of the community.
I take it any code produced there will be called "Bar Code"?
IGMC.
Xenu loves you!
Once.
So they're having an open bar? I'm in!
We apologize for the inconvenience.
A bozo filter? Sweet! Where can I get one of those for my life?
Hey. I'm here!
t ml
Make sure to stop and say hi!
http://www.feedblog.org/2005/08/see_you_at_barc.h
I cannot assign this article to the category "Stuff That Matters"... It just keeps jumping into the category "Stuff That is Totally Irrelevant".
Whoa, like, when you like, put the two names together, it makes Foobar.. what a crazy coincidence...
Or maybe it should be fubar. A US Military acronym for Fscked Up Beyond All Recompense.
There is no bar at foo camp?
My task is now clear. I will have to assimilate them! Their resistance is futile!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
700 pounds:
1266 usd
1042 euro
Since they are making a new better Foo camp why don't they make some improvements. 1. Strippers - (Women with no clothes on) 2. Live Music 3. Beer?,Skip the beer. Open Bar. 4. Lighting stuff on Fire. 5. Fireworks 6. Destruction 7. Weird Costumes 8. Strange forms of transportation Now that is something I would feel bad about not getting invited to.
mnewberg.com
Well, I'll organize my own conference! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the conference!
Everyone knows it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo
I know west nilean tribes are not the most technically apt people but this is just ridiclous, I suggest we boycott those elitist bastards at O'reilly!
Whoopie for you, I'm here too. Everybody is "here" (wherever they are) all the time.
"'Defcon' Attendees Raid 'Bar', Get Drunk"
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
...and about the other geeks secret club.
Fuck DAMN but if this article is not a big yawn, what is?
Fuck O'Reilly, fuck bar-camp and fuck the foo-camp.
Foobar is an abbreviation for "fscked out of order beyond all repair".
And was convinced someone had forgot the "l".
From TFA:
So how do we decide who to invite? ...
Then we put together a list of a thousand odd names that we have to winnow down as best we can...
Sixth cut: the bozo filter. Someone who has been at a previous FOO camp, and whom we had complaints about for some reason or another, or who has built that kind of reputation on the net. Unfortunately, you probably don't know who you are, but other people do.
Tim: Dude, no. Last time I invited you to a party, you broke into my parent's liquor cabinent, through half their furnature into the fireplace, had sex with the dog, and I was grounded for a month. You are most definitely not invited.
Bozo:ELITIST!!!
As it says in the article, this is an event that only works well if it is below a certain size, and where there are many more deserving poetential invities than there are spots for them. There IS NO PERFECT WAY to filter down a group like that. This is not high-school, where everyone but you got invited to the cool party, so now you're not talkint to your best friend anymore.
Also notice that this is "sixth cut"-- where they've already made five passes at trying to cut the guest list down to a managable size, but still need to cut it down further.
Creating the "Bar" camp is a cool idea. Bitching about not getting into the "Foo" camp is just childish.
Yet another testament that geeks can't spell. It's FUBAR (as in "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition"), not FOOBAR.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Nope. We need a quuxcamp.org, too.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Haha, loser! It's speled "spel", not "spell". You need to get a speling checkre.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
uhm, no more text :-)
So it has a bozo filter, eh? Does that mean that r0ml can't attend?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Speaking as a conversational junkie, I have to say I vastly prefer house parties over almost any other sort of organized event. Large parties typically aren't adequately hosted. So you get a lot of people standing near the drink and snack tables, refilling every once in a while, trying to look calm, cool, and content, when in fact they wish someone would introduce them.
Really good parties feature a clueful-host-to-interesting-guest ratio of no more than 10ish, in my opinion, because you want hosts to make introductions and facilitate conversations, particularly with accomplished geeks whose single-minded focus on the software that made them famous has left their social interaction neurons a bit withered and crispy.
If you want to network with megageeks and have a good time, I strongly recommend throwing a tasty dinner party and inviting a handful of quality guests. Once your dinner kung fu has improved, consider letting them invite a friend to add some randomness.
Even if you aren't in it for the conversation, I think it would come as some surprise to most geeks that even if you paid someone to cook the food and serve the drinks for you, odds are you'll recoup the cost later, because you were there at the right time to hear a conversation about an opportunity, and the relationship was in place to facilitate your involvement. This is how a great deal of business gets done.
I don't really understand what the big deal is.
There are basically two types of people in the world, people who do stuff (coders) and people who talk about stuff (writers). And then somewhere below that there are people who make money off of writers (publishers).
I don't have anything against publishers per se but who really cares? I mean _really_ cares?
A private party generates a flurry of jealous, petty bitching from a bunch of self-posessed technobrats? And this is a world-class, newsworthy event? People bitching against first, and then backpedaling and trying to brown-nose some Tim O'Reilly to get it? Grow the fuck up, already...
BTW, I know the O'Reilly name. It's just, who is he anyway?
> burning man comes to mind
It ought to; it is that time of the year, after all.
I went to Tim's first Foo camp, my gear still playa-inflicted,
but with the schedule shift, it's just too hard to do that and
also get set all the myriad things you need to think about for
the Burn. With no offence intended toward Tim, for I think
he's going a pretty cool thing, when it comes to making a choice
between Foo and the Burn, there isn't any and never was one.
--tom
someone needs to take a Digital Logic course..
When you put a bar over a term it inverts it. Thus FUBAR is a term, but FOO, being a general variable name, gets inverted (aka !foo) all the time. Thus, FOOBAR.
And since this is an anti-foo group, that kinda makes sense.
I can hardly wait for the chance to attend a conference where Richard Stallman handles the PR, Eric Raymond is in charge of safety, Dave Winer is group facilitator, CowboyNeal edits together the agenda, and David Siegel designs the web site.
I propose we set up a 3rd camp called Baz Camp for those who don't cut the mustard with the Bar Camp cognoscenti.
:P
Here is the agenda for the first meeting:
1. Keynote Speech: Why Foo and Bar Camps are a Bunch of Ninnys : Tom O'Rielly
2. Publication in the Crossfire: People mistake me for Tim O'Reilly and How I Profit From their Mistake : Tom O'Rielly
4. Bar Camp Luminaries: Why are we Bozos? or What does it mean if we are rejected from Bar Camp? or Hey - What Happened to Event Number 3? : Bill Gates
5. Recursive Development Studio: Definition of the Bar Camp Bozo Filter - Getting to the Quux of the Matter : CowboyNeal
6. Closing Statements: Why the Three of us Matter - even though they think we're Bozos : Tom O'Rielly
HHOS and Grape Koolaid(tm) will be served at the end of the event.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
If you were technical, not only would you know who Tim O'Reilly is, but you'd have a zoo of books that he published.
If you were technical, then you'd also know why I'm talking about a zoo of books.
I'd suggest that you google for more, but google is technical, you might not understand it.
It's a (rebellious) developer/author/advocate's best friend. :)
A real 'hack' of the O'Reilly fascism would've been to prove that the bozo filter doesn't work, get into the "Foo" camp, and simply go bozo.
...
Creating an 'alternative' is just falling even further into the Bozo filter trap. Only bozo's would knee-jerk insta-"fuck you", go off, and do their own thing. It's NIH'ism turned in on itself.
Is there a "Straight" filter at Bar camp, one wonders
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
[quote]Bar Camp is a play on the word "foobar," a common programming variable.[/quote]
Unfortunatly, the word is FUBAR, it is an acronym for F*cked Up Beyond All Recognition. Foo, as of my understanding, is the digital adaptation of Fu, as in Kung Fu. A programmer with great Foo is a skilled master.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
"...whatever you are doing, and no matter how many smart people are on your team, there are always more smarter people elsewhere".
To make matters worse, there were only a couple of interesting people at foocamp. The rest rehashed yesterday's news, overjoyed by the fact they can finally put on the resumes "Was invited at FooCamp".