Exciting stuff is happening in the BarCamp, the Toronto BarCamp. DemoCamp now has a stable home at MaRS until Democamp15 — hopefully by then we are not all bored of it. David and Mark are looking to get DemoCamp/BarCamp some funding and Estelle offers her insight. People like Oshoma, Michael McDerment and Jerry King offer suggestions on how we can improve the DemoCamp experience.
If money is going to seriously enter into the scene then I have two suggestions of my own that may be a little out there:
- The first one is that we could start taking donations at DemoCamp every month so we could fund a special event either quarterly or biannually. This event would be something that we could all agree on and one that would be difficult to get sponsored. We could fly in a special speaker ;-), take a group roadtrip (DemoCamp Montréal — Buses & Bagels) or fund a development or community project of our own. Donations would obviously be “give what you can” maybe a $2 suggested amount, something small so it is practically Free, as in Speech or Beer.
- I have always like the idea of the un-workshops, un-facilities and un-tutoring that Dave Eggers and others started at 826 Valencia. If TorCamp could get a stable location then we could offer un-learning :-) to the community of our own. One of the aspects I feel we are missing from our community is helping rookies and other beginners develop skills and learn best practices of the industry. It would be great if experienced practitioners in our group could offer a HOWTO class, whether it is on CSS, Ruby, SourceControl, or Web Accessibility, and had the facilities to be able to house 12-20 people. Now we all know that very few souls enjoy teaching fundamentals out of the goodness of their hearts so instructors should be able to charge a small fee, like $5 a head. They could also extend their courses online through our friends at Nuvvo. I think this could be a valuable offering from our group to the community as it would help with the development of practitioners for our industry.
With all this talk about money I do have a few concerns about how a “un-organization” can handle a treasury but there are a lot of smart people who probably have ideas on that. C.R.E.A.M.
WU-TANG!
This week is shaping up to be busy. First, on Tuesday there is the Admit it. You’re Creative! Workshop at OCAD, and then there is ICT Toronto: An Information and Communication Technology Cluster Development Strategy on Wednesday. On the weekend there is BarCamp Ottawa which I’m really looking forward to. I’ll get to hang with DerekF, meet some new people and see some cool presentations. Now if we could just figure out the car pool… :-)
[tags]DemoCamp, BarCamp, TorCamp, Toronto[/tags]
4 Comments
It’s all about the Benjamins!
There are some interesting philosophical questions that we need to address. Do we need to incorporate as a not-for-profit? Does this take away from the “un-organization” that we are? Can we do this with out the need for traditional corporate structure? What are the legal, liability and other issues?
Sponsorship versus donation. Interesting questions. I think that sponsorship should be non-exclusive, this is an open community and sponsorship does not close it off. This will probably mean that we loose some sponsors initially, but those that believe in the ideas and openness should be understanding. This is not about control or exclusivity, it’s about providing an environment for all designers, technologist, entrepreneurs and others to participate.
Is DemoCamp/BarCamp/TorCamp just an outgrowth of existing Toronto groups? Are we different? How should we be different? How are we the same?
Bryce – I think you’re right on the money as it were. Or will be. One of the best parts about this whole thing is that it grows in a completely organic way, but we’re all looking forward and planning to help it grow in the right ways.
1) Rather than accepting donations in cash form at DemoCamp, maybe we can setup a PayPal account and link it off the Wiki? As long as we maintain complete transparency over the funds (i.e.: list off all the donations post event and explain what the money gets spent on), then I think people would have no problem throwing $5 (or whatever) into the pot.
2) Based on the success of the recent wireframing workshop, I think this is a great idea. We’ve got a bunch of contacts with space now – maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a few ideas of where we’d want to run it? Maybe the City has something at Metro Hall that we could look at for running sessions in evening/weekend timeframes?
Thanks for setting out your thoughts Bryce!
I keep getting hung up on the whole idea of money in the system, I just don’t see how it makes a community better.
Your suggestion for the educational camp, where instructors could make a few dollars to train a group in the basics sounds like a good idea, but is rather non-un-conference. I think a better way would be ask how can we get a group who have just learned the basics, and feel they can’t contribute to spend time teaching the next generation.
Taylan Pince who was on my team for Slamcamp only attended after beseeching from David and I. Taylan specifically cited his lack of experience as a reason he wasn’t going to attend. I’m sure there are many other out there who consider their lack of experience handicaps their ability to add value to the conversation.
How about an education 101.1 course, “.1″ indicating that the educator is just past the 101 stage themselves? Under that circumstance the “teacher” might come away with more than the students, and certainly more than the $50 they might get as an incentive.
As for the other suggestion, I would think a pay-as-you-go model would work better for an event that couldn’t get sponsored. Want to bring a speaker in? Find out the speakers fee and propose it in an email thread. Set up a wiki page (and an escrow account?) and try and collect enough donations. Not everyone will donate the same amount, but then not everyone will put the same value on the speaker. Field trip? Just get everyone to split the cost, or optionally we could sell candy bars at our parents offices. ;)
I’m not trying to call out your ideas specifically it’s more the bigger idea of money inside the system that I’m struggling with. I just don’t see what value it adds and trying to point out there might be other ways to the same ends without using it.
By contrast I see how getting a regular home adds value. Landing in MaRS means there is one less job that needs to be taken care of each month. One less job means the community can operate more autonomously.
The problem with collecting money is not only does someone have to keep track of it, but someone has to spend it. If the community didn’t come to an obvious consensus on where to spend the money, how would it get redistributed? Those in control of the money might begin to have more influence on the camp program than others. That could lead to cries for accountability and things just spiral downward from there. Ultimately you are left with something that more closely resembles a traditional non-profit than a camp organization.
I certainly don’t propose that I have the answers, in fact until I read this thread and David’s I hadn’t really spent much time pondering what effect money would have on the camp thing. I also don’t have any issue with money, I just don’t think it’s the right tool for the job in this case.
Michael hits my thoughts dead on. What would we do with more money? Space is always the biggest challenge for these events, with Allen Gelberg and MaRS stepping up to the plate and sponsoring/donating the space what do we really need. The ICTToronto is about building a local infformation and communication technology cluster, that would probably exclude a mass exodus of Bar/DemoCampers to another locale. It doesn’t exclude bringing in outside individuals. We already do a little bit of this, we have friends in town visiting, people travel to Toronto for other conferences and events. Do we need to make this more formal?
Incorporating as a not-for-profit, or as a for-profit, professional organization. The goal is to facilitate the community. To get together to share our experiences, learn from each other and get excited about design, technology, entrepreneurship, and things going on online. Do we really need more structure? Because we’re lightweight, we’re open, it’s easy to grow, it’s easy to participate. It’s about the people who attend and present.
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[...] That said, I do want to I point out a comment I made to a post on Bryce’s site, but that’s equally inspired by a topic David began. If you are a part of the Toronto camp community you need to spend a few minutes thinking about what effect money will have and chime in on the discussion. This issue will have a significant effect on what kind of organization this whole camp thing grows up to be. [...]