DrunkCamp

I'm rather impressed that one guy with a blog managed to surpass the attendance count of the final ADHOC.

I'm starting to think these micro-conferences may be the way of the future. They seem to be springing up more and more. Topic-specific, with small time commitments. Free or cheap. Pomposity levels low. Intelligence levels high. Usually committee-less: put on by one person or a small group. May or may not repeat -- there seems to be a lot of one-offs.

Blogs probably are helping with this phenomenon. A big hurdle for conferences is getting the word out, and blogs give individuals audiences like nothing previously available.

Big company-sponsored conferences (like PDC and WWDC) or vendor-neutral ones (like SIGGRAPH and ISSCC) aren't going away. They serve a different purpose. The micro-conferences tend to be about individuals and personal networking, while the big conferences seem to be more about industry checkpointing.

Sunday, October 16, 2005
12:00 AM