Another THATCamp [1] has come and gone and it was, again, a lot of fun. I've grown used to the dynamics of an unconference in the past five years or so because that's the kind of event I attend most of the time, now. JCDL 2009 [2] was the first academic conference I'd attended in years, and though I enjoyed it as well and met a lot of interesting people and learned some useful stuff, it was missing the energy the mix of people at a good unconference can generate. And, though I feel like a self-important prig as I write this, I hated that though I'd made the effort to attend, there was no chance for me to get up and show off some stuff I'd worked on in front of the group. I use software that lets a user to become a committer; I value friendships that let a student become a teacher; I attend conferences that let an attendee become a presenter. Take out that dynamic and it's nowhere near as compelling.
Because it features this principle, as any good unconference does, the best part of THATCamp is the people. Both years I've met so many fascinating people and learned about so much amazing work that it's taken the whole week following for my brain to settle back down and follow up on all the threads left dangling on sunday afternoon like so many thesis topics. There's talk of franchised THATCamps to be staged in Austin and London among other places, and that's exciting. There's a #thatcamp channel on freenode that threatens to become a regular hangout. I've got about 50 more people I'm following on twitter all of whom already fill my screen with fascinating stuff to read and look at all day and some of them are even following me, too. What more could you ask for?
Well, there are a few things. I think there are a few tweaks to the formula that could improve the event a bit. I offer these only in the hopes of making THATCamp even better, not to complain or kill anybody's leftover buzz.
We talked about this a bit in #thatcamp on IRC last night - maybe if the sessions were a bit shorter and there were fewer concurrent tracks, one of the extra rooms could be a "hackin' room" or some such. Sorta like the chillout room at a rave with plenty of water and comfy couches where people can take a breather but, er, well, the exact opposite of that.
It might just be that I'm a little bit disappointed in myself for not prepping a hackier topic myself. I put a lot of time into hacks just for THATCamp last year and it was great fun pulling them off. I'd like to think that it was fun for the people in the room with me, too, and either way I learned a lot from the experience and I hope that was mutual. This year I was burned out on conference travel and work and didn't have the extra cycles to put something fun and new together, and I'm sorry I didn't. If I get to go again, I promise to do whatever I can to bring the hackin' back in!
By cutting out this dynamic let-the-people-do-it-themselves step you minimize opportunities for catchy titles to draw people in, for people to negotiate whether or not they should merge their own topics, and for people to simply get to know each other and decide which other people they want to be sure to hear from and hang out with right off the bat. And imho you maximize confusion about which sessions to go to and where you can find the people you want to hear from.
I'd advocate for filling out a big whiteboard with a schedule with people putting the names of their talks and their names with it and leaving a good 60-90 minutes to work it all out. On a real board or on paper (vs. online), so we'd have to occupy the same physical space. With drinks nearby.
I know Jeremy put a ton of work into scheduling because I caught him in the act when I arrived late so I know it was no trivial feat. I just think opening it up would be easier on @clioweb and @digitalhumanist and better for the rest of us too.
I don't want to be all "they do it better at Foo Camp" but these last few points really do reflect things that Foo Camp does a little better that I think THATCamp could adopt to make it just that much better.
And not to repeat myself, but I offer all this up with the hope of leading folks to think about various ways to make a great event even greater. I ain't complaining - the organizers do a great job making a lot of people with diverse backgrounds comfortable in a terrific space with plenty of coffee and wifi and surprisingly good food and nicely designed t-shirts and as long as they'll have me, I'll keep applying to attend again. It's just that I'm a bit of a hacker at heart and I'm always thinking about little optimizations, so take this as nothing more than that.
I hope to see y'all again next year, or even sooner - and next time you're in DC please stop by LC to say hi if you like.
Links:
[1] http://thatcamp.org/
[2] http://www.jcdl2009.org/
[3] http://history.uwo.ca/faculty/turkel/
[4] http://www.arduino.cc/
[5] http://omeka.org/
[6] http://processing.org/
[7] http://thatcamp.org/2009/06/building-a-better-web-by-linking-better/
[8] http://thatcamp.org/schedule/