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.

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.

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!

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?