get invited to Foo Camp

Is it me or is this not a big deal anymore. To speak at TED, now THERE’s a goal!

Forget FooCamp, we’re gonna throw a BarCamp! :)

Thanks to connections at O’Reilly (thanks, Brady!) I got my first official invitation to the infamous (among geeks) invite-only, spontaneous and wacky Foo Camp. I RSVP’d today and hope that means I get to attend (there’s a chance that if too many people RSVP that a lottery will have to take place). But getting invited is all this goal required. Done!

Not a fun camp for Rat bastard.
All the snotty kids wanted to do was touch my tail.

Rat Bastard says so!!!

Yeah, that’s right, invite me, so I can turn down the invitation! Ha! What do you say to that!?

I can’t wait!

I don’t know if it is completley worth doing… but I got an invite! I’ll let you know after I go if it was worth it.

I got an invite.. because I’m writing a book about Ruby on Rails for them. :-D

We should just create our own camp! FoaFoo Camp (Friend of a Friend of Oreilly)

There are lots of conferences I’d like to go to – but being down here in New Zealand I really have to pick and choose. If I could choose this year – it’d be Foo camp.

It’s a great thing. I’ve been lucky enough to have gone to both Foo Camps and it’s a place that makes my brain hurt in a good way. I always feel like the stupidest person there.

Yes, it is an invite only party. It could be easy to criticize O’Reilly about this policy. But, it’s not fair. Why? O’Reilly doesn’t charge for Foo camp. You get an invite. You go to the O’Reilly campus. You sleep in a sleeping bag either in your own tent or in the building. O’Reilly pays for food (good food too), the big tent, other catering services, clean up, portable showers, and more.

There’s only so much space at the O’Reilly campus. And if Foo were somewhere else bigger, the cost would be higher. And then they’d have to charge. And then it’d be like any other conference.

So, if O’Reilly were to charge, peeps could be bitter. But not at this point.

If you want to go, you’ll need to do something cool and a bit of luck. And since the event is at max capacity, I’ve fully braced myself for not getting an invite this year. After all, to get new blood into Foo, they’ve got to not invite some of the old blood.