I noticed a post on Jeremy Harrington's blog about an event up in Ann Arbor, Michigan called "ArbCamp". It's a commercialized, sponsor driven variation "loosely modeled after barcamp."

Loosely modeled so long as you mean, you know, not frigging at all.

BarCamp isn't about writing on walls or deciding agenda's on the fly. That's an unconference (or, as the blog* format might suggest, a variation of one). BarCamp is about taking shared values, those commonly found in the open source community, and applying it to the unconference setup. BarCamp's an open source, user generated, conference. If someone isn't going to buy into the values that BarCamp establishes, then they're not throwing an event loosely based on barcamp. They're throwing just another unconference.

In this particular case, the event organizers (a marketing company, go f'n figure) are suggesting that its loosely based on the barcamp model, but yet they're selling $2,000 sponsorships that come with dedicated speaking time and charging $65 for "full day admission." This is, quite blatantly, a commercial rip off of whats intended to be a free event model. They're taking advantage of the incredible amount of hard work folks from the community have put into creating the barcamp brand, repackaging it, aligning themselves with the brand by suggesting they have something in common with it, and then selling it for their own purposes.

Loosely based on barcamp? Psh. It's the conference equivalent of a gpl violation.

People are free to do what they will. If someone wants to start a conference and make some coin, then hey, whatever. It's just a shame to see someone blatantly take advantage of the barcamp brand like that. If you're considering attending this event, then recognize it for what it is and attend it as such: An overpriced rip-off of the real thing. You'll be forced to listen to whoever paid the most money as they try to pitch you crappy products and services instead of listening to people engage in quality discussion over topics that they're passionate about.

Seriously. If you're going to spend $65 on this event, you're better off doubling up and buying a plane ticket to attend a genuine barcamp.

Another amazing event in Orlando this week. For those of you who made it out to Rollins on Friday, I hope you were able to find something to take away. Some of the conversations that we had were of a really high caliber. It's amazing what happens when a "conference" focuses on the people in attendance more than the folks giving the talk. Great stuff, and Josh -- thank you tremendously for working so hard to pull it off!

It wasn't even just the talks that were so much fun. The side activities for blogorlando were a blast. A handful of us got together for a tour of KSC on Thursday, which was probably the first time I had been out there since I was a youngin'. The visitors center was great and the guided bus tour was even better. I highly recommend it for folks around town to make it a saturday trip sometime. Afterwards, we went out and attacked CityWalk something fierce. We won't get into the "exchange rate" for universal cash, but let's just say we had a lot of it. We pooled our resources together and were able to eat/drink free. Margaritaville was closed for a private event, but Lone Palm across the way had a similar drink menu. Pat O'Briens was a blast and a nice change of scenery. The water/fire thing they do there is head scratchingly cool.

Funny story about Pat's. We got to talking with our waitress Brecken about blogs/blogOrlando/etc, and she said.. "I was reading this blog post about Spirit Airlines, and" -- I cut her off there laughing my ass off. She could have easily been on the verge of saying "and that kids a total d-bag," but I'm pretty sure she was about to say how amazingly awesome it was, and now she's a fan of alexrudloff.com for life. Talk about a coincidence. Crazy.

Friday night was equally as much fun with a number of us taking full advantage of the Slingapours happy hour. Tom, Alex, Chris, Greg and myself all went out afterwards for some old fashion fun downtown. For those of you not familiar with Wall St., if you're ever in town, it's a pretty cool night spot to check out. Saturday a few of us went to Epcot to hit up a couple rides and grab lunch. We didn't get to meet up with everyone as we would have liked (slow morning on saturday, I suppose ;), but it was still a great time. Saturday night, Gavin, Alex, Bill and myself hit up the ball game over at UCF. We had intended to head over to John's, but man, talk about an exhausting week. We called it quits and lounged around watching the UF/Auburn game instead. Fun times, indeed :)

Anyhow.. That's a quick social recap that probably skips most of the good parts. I'll post more on blogorlando itself, specifically our local scene discussion, later on. I got a slew of emails to catch up on!

Update: Post #2 on BlogOrlando.

Wow. What a great event. Gregg, Jason, and everyone else (update: larry!) who put in the time and effort to pull this thing off -- massive props.

Taste was packed. Not just packed, but standing room only packed, but in a not all that uncomfortable way. The presentations were of great quality and entertaining. There is a massive amount of talent around here, and it's a true joy to see everyone come out of the woodwork for something like this. Can't wait for the next one.

I gave a brief presentation on coworking, or as Chris Scott suggested, "cow orking", which I used for the title (and it still makes me giggle -- thanks chris!) It was sort of a local-centric warm up for Friday's blogOrlando local session track. I tried to show the co-working video with Brad/Chris/Tara talking it up, but couldn't get sound working (thats what I get for trying to be fancy). For those interested, here's a link to a Florida Creatives post with the embed of the video. Also, here is the direct link to the Coworking-Orlando google group.

Suggestions for future barcamps:

• Probably going to need a bigger venue ;) More space for side chats would be nice. Side room worked well, but there were a lot of us.
• More interactive presentations, less talk-at-you presentations. It's barcamp. Joke around, interact, ask questions of the speakers and from the audience. Heckle. If I had any complaint, it'd probably be that. I can only take so much powerpoint.
  
• Might want to break up the lightning talks/full on presentations and intermix them. Change the pace around to keep people active.

Overall though, a very successful first barcamp.

But wait, there's more! The week is not done yet.

Registration ends Monday at 10pm for blogOrlando. A bunch of great speakers from all over the country are coming here this week for an unconference Friday at Rollins College. It'll be a great time. I'll be leading a session on the local scene. Things I plan on discussing -- likemind, Florida Creatives, coworking, user groups, barcamp, local tech startups, community building/expanding, general Orlando/Central Florida/Middle Florida discussion. My buddy Alex Hillman will by flying down, which gives us a great opportunity to ask coworking related questions. I'd love it if you could join us :)

So, I noticed on Like it Matters a badge that read "BlogOrlando". I got pretty excited of course, with Orlando being the motherland and all. I read the date as August instead of September though, and was totally bummed that I was going to miss out.

Good thing I checked again. Sept. 22nd - 24th, with theme park days the following weekend.

I've been planning on going down for the UCF/USF game on the 16th of September anyway.. I figure I might as well stick around for another week. I've been in DC a total of 3 days for the last two and a half months. Why stop now, ya know? ;)

If you're in the Central Florida area and are up for it, check it out. Gavin and I will be there, and probably Celly too. postGorilla, Inc in the hizzy.