May 15, 2006

Totally wiped out. I don't know how people travel to these things. It's like going to a job interview with 400 people, and you're supposed to act like you are having fun.

Okay actually I did have fun, thanks mostly to Jason Diceman's hard work, the Boys of Bryght, and a small pitcher of g&t's.

Hey! I just figured out how to set up yet another online account so now you'll be able to see the dramatic pictures of firemen rescuing a suicidal mattress from the roof of Bookcity on Bloor. I like 'moblogging it's going to capture even more accurately than this blog the way I waste most of my days, and isn't that really what's at the heart of web 2.0?

Some serious reflections on camps and (un)conferences

- [all] Camps good, unconferences not so good.

- [friday] Camps should involve one outdoor moving component, because 8 hours spent on a single activitiy (in this case listening) is difficult for some people. At least those of us who skipped at least 2 periods a day in highschool and now work from home. I am used to focusing for longer than 8 hours only when I am involved in the production of material. By the end of the day I was like a little deflated hacky-sack of intelligence.

- [friday] It might be good to experiment next time with more intimate formats for discussions. Since there was a wide spectrum of familiarity with drupal between attendees it would have probably been beneficial to go into a buddy system. There could be a rotation so everyone gets to spend one hour with someone who knows more and one with someone who knows less. I firmly believe everyone has expertise to offer in some domain of web practise, so it's dis-ingenious to privelege just the people who know the code inside out. Besides putting everyones expectations for learning on only a few people means the experts don't spend as much time trying to learn stuff they may feel is lacking in their own repertoire.

In addition, I am not an expert but compared to a newbie I am. Why take someone who has an incredible amount of expertise and waste their skills explaining primary links? I can do that, someone who is new/not a coder really only needs the first level training to get started. So if we distribute responsability for learning in small groups peoples needs are better met.

- [saturday] Never have an unconference in a room with no sound-engineered wall coverings. I couldn't hear a thing, which limited my participation to a considerable extent.

- [saturday] If you are non-organizers of an un-conference don't introduce the whole thing while standing 7 feet higher than everyone else on two giant rolling step ladders. It looks kinda hyocritical to those of us who are senstive to the way event design can sometimes promote the status-quo. (See above comment for related issues).

- [saturday] When making up the schedule leave larger pieces of paper with more space for writing, if you are writing down a session describe the session a bit and describe who the intended audiance is. I felt like a rat leaving sessions that didn't interest me, if I had known in advance what the difficulty level or the main focus was, I wouldn't have had to creep away so often.

- [Bloghernorth] I like our session it was interactive as much as possible given the setting, and the discussion was interesting. It actually left me pondering what the point of all this tech/gender activity is in the long run. Is it getting more women involved in the technical/ social infrastructure of web communications as it exists now? Or is developing a way to critique technologies that impact everyone- not just women, from the inside so that they can begin to be less of a playground for people who already *get the metaphors and the reasons why*. and actually become useful tools for building long-term social change into the way people communicate with each other?

- [Bloghernorth] Of course really what I worry about is getting away from this notion that the raison d'etre of any gender based advocacy on Web2.0 is to get access to women as a market share. That's just not a goal I embrace or will ever embrace - which makes it tricky business negotiating these web2.0 sessions which are for the most part about building and selling bubble 2.0 technologies to the general public. It's like if I titled a session "gender politics for business" and taught gender sensitivy to marketers I'd be doing as much of a service as I sometimes feel making a gender specific conferences is doing. Which makes me sad.

- [Bloghernorth] The good news is that, Albert from bubbleshare added a second session titled designing software for women- quickly retitled "Designing software for novices" by Jen and Sandy that quickly turned from a discussion of "making apps so easy even your ditzy mother could use them" to how to design software that really responds to the needs of an end-user not the designer or the contraints of the programming environment. Okay I'll be the first to admit the one about moms sounds way better - but the discussion was great, and I like that it started the way it did..

Jen is sending me skyp-ey messages about work, and I am feeling my buzz starting to fade. Better get back to it.

tags = Torcamp, Drupalcamp, Bloghernorth

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