I summarize Foo Camp 2008 activities so you don’t have to
Attending the O’Reilly Foo Camp
This last weekend I attended Foo Camp, which is a yearly O’Reilly event. It was a lot of fun because of the crowd – an eclectic mix of artists, philosophers, geeks, writers, and business folks. Special thanks for Dave McClure for letting me hitch along in his car and connecting me to the O’Reilly folks. Also, Bryce from OATV was kind enough to let me crash some of the Startup Camp sessions.
I wanted to link to a couple of the blog posts and photo galleries out there about the event:
Summaries of Foo Camp activities
I went to a large number of sessions – there were something like a dozen rooms with 10 sessions throughout the day, so over 3 days there were a ton of speakers and activities.
Anyway, here are some summaries of what went on:
Camping at the conference
Grab a spot to sleep in the O’Reilly offices – it’s cold and wet outside
Session on distributed social networks
Everyone at Foo wants data portability, companies resist it, and consumers don’t care
Session on economics not being a branch of physics
Lots of borrowing + forcing banks to mark-to-market the value of their assets + borrowing restrictions that are depending on assets means that banks catastrophically dump their assets in a spiral of death if anyone in the ecosystem has any problems
Showering facilities
With a half dozen showers at the conference and 350+ attendees, the only time to shower is at weird hours, like 2 or 3am
Session on granular measurement of carbon footprint
We’re all screwed unless we reduce our carbon footprint to 2500 somethingaruther
Session on Playboy’s existential crisis
Hugh Hefner got brought back as part of the playboy brand because of Viagra, but when he dies the brand will get hurt unless they appoint George Clooney as the next Hugh Hefner, kinda like James Bond
Day 3 of the conference
With a half dozen showers and 350+ attendees, a lot of people seem to choose to not shower
Werewolf
If someone has a grin on their face when they are telling everyone else they’re a villager, it means they are actually a werewolf since no one could be that happy to be a villager
Session on the future of news
Journalism is in danger because consumers want celebrity gossip and they won’t pay more for investigative reporting – Rupert Murdoch is to blame and Seymour Hirch is the best writer ever!1!!1!!
Session on hiring great people
No one in san francisco can hire anyone locally, it’s all about importing smart people from outside the city
Session on corporate sing-a-longs
No matter how many people you invite to attend a corporate sing-a-long session, none of them will sing
Conclusion
OK, please tell me if I missed anything ;-)
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