BarCamp Boston 4

One of my favorite new trends of the last couple of years is the unconference movement and the *Camps, associated originally with BarCamp (an alternative to the invite only, highly exclusive FooCamp put on for “Friends Of O’Reilly”) but now extended to PodCamp, HeroCamp, TransparencyCamp, and even MooseCamp. (There’s also the inevitable CampCamp, though the name CampCamp was in use by another group since 1997).

Now BarCamp Boston 4 is coming up this April 25th and 26th at the Stata Center at MIT. Although ultimately the topics discussed are determined by who shows up, odds are that free and open source software, social media, voting, government transparency, robotics, hardware and software hacking, startups, and all kinds of topics related to openness, the web, and business will be common.

BarCamp Boston 4

I definitely plan to be there and I’d encourage you to register and attend, whether you’re a veteran or a n00b to the unconference world. It’s a fantastic opportunity to have a real conversation, in the absence of hugely expensive registration fees or overbearing sponsors.

BarCamp Boston 3

Shimon Rura’s email today reminded me that BarCamp Boston is fast approaching again. Third week in May we should easily avoid the snowstorm which put something of a crimp in BarCamp Boston 2.

In case you’ve been somehow able to escape the increasing presence of *camps, BarCamp is one of the earliest and one of the best. It was on the occasion of BarCamp Boston (the original) that I started blogging, though to be fair you shouldn’t hold them responsible for that.

Here’s an hCalendar microformat of the event info:

Read more about BarCamp, view schedules, and learn how you can participate, by visiting the wiki at http://2008.barcampboston.org/.