Oops… just found this draft that has been hanging in my wordpress limbo for a week or so. Time to shoot it out even if still a bit gross.
Last night (that is, last week) had a little chat with Feba, who kindly updated me on the RomagnaCamp, the latest Italian BarCamp.
She meticolously collected links to the presentations happened during the event, and also pointed me at other threads of conversation all over the spaghetti blogosphere… a natural born technorati, she is.
Following the event from the outside, and without paying too much attention on it, what I perceived on saturday was a general atmosphere of joyful relax, facilitated by the beach setting. I’m sure I missed a really enjoyable event (and a chance to challenge Amanda in a Wii-boxing match :P ).
Some of the participants though… palmasco, samuele silva, mantellini are introducing an interesting topic: Are BarCamps, in Italy at least, dying?
Orientalia, on the other hand, wonders if that was a barcamp at all, with the easy going atmosphere and the slow pace and people engaging in all sort of recreational activities (from long walks on the seashore to playing with and entertaining the “next generation” – barcampers’ children ).
Imho it doesn’t make sense to talk about the death of BarCamp. BC is a format, and one that proved to be successful and very flexible. Quite the contrary, it seems to me that the use of the format is simply evolving, being conditioned and interacting with the local environment and culture: as I often pointed in the last few years, Italy tends to be a self contained system in the global blogosphere. We see what’s happening outside, sometime we bring in conversations, memes and trends but seldom the other way around: hence the dynamics are unique to the Italian ecosystem, (almost) completely detached from the rest.
The way it evolved in Italy then is less about sharing achievements, intuitions and propositions, and more about creating a social circle, through which jointly explore topics of common interest.
So the bottom line is that, yes, the BarCamp experience is dead in Italy, but just because the original concept was composted through the interaction of the local culture and transformed in a new one.
Speaking of the BarCamp format instead, well, my (and Folletto’s) presentation for the ZenaCamp was supposed to be quite on topic, as the title (Dead is the BarCamp, Long Live the BarCamp) suggest.
My point there was (and still is) that this format’s strength is that, by the means of enforced participation and lack of structure, it creates a game space where the participants experience a suspension of formal social rules: everybody is peer, and all are (supposed to be) making an effort to contribute to the experience and share their knowledge.
So, in the end, a BarCamp is just as good as the people who make it.