I’ve been writing about BarCamp, Unconferences and Open Space Technology — but how do you do it?
[Later. I realized I haven’t written about BarCamp or Unconferences, but intended to introduce them before publishing this. “A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment”– using the Unconference model, which itself is a looser kind of self-organizing meeting like Open Space. So far its mostly a techie thing, but there’s a skeptics BarCamp in Denver in August so the door has been opened to broader subjects. Got it? I’m thinking these might be good inspiration for the <snark> new “unaffilliates” </snark> and district and cluster meetings.]
I’d first recommend you read and bookmark/del.icio.us/Digg the following:
“Ten Steps to Organizing a Barcamp” (Clever, Clever Girl)
But since I found this link at the BarCamp site (BarCampsite?) you should look here, too. And share ideas you think apply here.
My thoughts on organizing a theological bar camp are here:
http://www.danielharper.org/blog/?p=163
Organizing it and running it seem pretty straightforward to me — just an organizational overlay over standard event logistics.
While my post generated absolutely no interest among the religious liberals who read my blog, I still think it would be a good event. Indeed, a decade ago I helped plan one or two UU young adult conferences (this was back when I was a young adult) which had some resemblance to this idea. It’s one of those things where if people actually tried it, they would realize that it’s so much better than the standard, dreary General Assemblies and district conferences.