Dopp Juice Archive

When I got off the train for work yesterday, I was already on the verge of tears with anger. I had spent the ride rolling work frustrations around in my head, and it had only made things worse. I couldn’t pinpoint the problems, and my entire job just felt impossible.

But I’ve learned a few things as a trial-by-fire project manager, and one is that my attitude affects my team’s ability to work. So I made the call: it’s better to show up late than to show up angry. I went to Target instead of the office, and called them to say I had errands to run.

At Target, I picked out a new notebook and a good pen. My plan was to go from there to a cafe and write until my situation looked less like an amorphous blob of insurmountable problems and more like a plan to get through it. On my way to the checkout line, though, I passed something bright that caught my eye.

They were only four-for-a-dollar.

I just couldn’t resist…

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BarCampBlock was inspiring and enjoyable. I reconnected with some key grapple-points in my work — business intention, project management, outsourcing, copyright, and market bubbles. The hallway conversations have been useful and relevant, and I even got interviewed for ATT’s Tech Channel
show with Hugh Thompson. What surprised me, though, is that more than once (including on camera), I hopped onto a soapbox that I didn’t know I had: The Internet is about anarchy.

Apparently I am very passionate about this idea. Who knew?

What do I mean by this? I mean that the Internet is about freedom, personal empowerment, self-organization, and lack of government. It’s a medium where people come together from all over the world and create their own experiences and communities. It is freeform, evolving, and self-directed. It is passionate. It is a collection of user-generated content that is localized, globalized, focused, far-reaching, and important.

It cannot be controlled.

I’m excited about BarCamp because it’s modeled after this energy. People show up, create their own sessions (I led one on “Project Management for Multi-Taskers”), and migrate toward what really matters to them. There is no profit to be had, no corporate structure to accomodate, no government to adhere to. Every attendee is a participant, and every participant is a volunteer. There is a culture of respect, but all structure and values are self-imposed and in constant evolution.

It has a life of its own.

So, there’s this little thing going on this weekend called BarCampBlock. Liz Henry from Socialtext is co-planning it, and sent me an invite a few weeks ago. When I signed up, there were less than 25 people on the list. I figured we were looking at WoolfCamp-style intimate gathering for discussions about new trends in technology and its social implications.

As I write this, there are now 583 people registered for the event. Holy Cow, people. Check out all these fancy folks.

So what the heck is BarCampBlock? It’s a BarCamp, of course. On a Block. Duh.

Okay, no, seriously. BarCamp is one of those renegade grassroots un-conference phenomena that pulls a whole bunch of brilliant independent socialtech-minded thinkers together into the same space for a day or two and lets them organize their own discussions. It’s free to attend (although you can buy a donor ticket for $100 or $300 if you’re feeling philanthropic), and it’s guaranteed to inspire the heck out of you. You can read more about the concept here at its wikipedia entry: BarCamp.

And the Block? The block is the Center of the Tech Universe in Palo Alto, including such office as Social Text, IDEO, Searchspark, and maybe Facebook… BarCamp is spilling out into the streets.

And I will be there.

Come along!