Roland Tanglao's Weblog

I'd really like to go to BarCamp TDot and the Mesh Conference in Toronto since I could slip in a visit to my brother and his family as well as learn lots and meet some very smart people from the rest of Canada (since most of the people I know in Web 2.0 are on the West Coast of North America) who get things done in the Web 2.0 space.

BarCamp TDot is more my style (and the organizers think :-) I am coming because I sort of suggested it in my CanadaCamp post) so I am trying to see if I can find a way for me to go to BarCAmp TDot (and money permitting the Mesh Conference) that makes sense to my family and Bryght.

While I love "normal" conferences (and Gnomedex is definitely one of the best and hopefully I will be there this year again as well!), I personally get more out of unconferences like Northern Voice Moosecamp and BarCamp Amsterdam (to gratuitously name drop the unconferences I have helped organize).

Net net as they say, Mesh has lots of great people so I am sure it will turn out great regardless of what myself and Boris pontificate online about it :-) !

Traditional doesn't mean bad though (and props to Mark Evans, Matthew Ingram, Michael McDerment, and Stuart MacDonald for taking the time to organize this; I know how hard this is to do in 12 months like we do for Northern Voice let alone 3 months like they are doing). I really enjoyed the "traditional" part of the Northern Voice blogging conference (why? just two of many reasons: Nancy White and Julie Leung) in Vancouver both in 2005 and in 2006. But I gotta admit, after helping organize unconferences like Northern Voice Moosecamp 2006 and BarCamp Amsterdam, as well as more traditional conferences like Northern Voice and the Open Source Content Management System and Blog Tool Summit, my sympathies are with the unconferences.

A plea for somebody in Toronto: organize a Bar Camp Toronto (should be easy given the success of TorCamp and DemoCamp4, maybe call it CanadaCamp and encourage people from Vancouver and the East Coast to converge in Toronto; I wish I had time to help organize this but other than throwing out crazy ideas I don't!) before or after the Toronto Web 2.0 conference at a place with lots of rooms, central location and good WiFi and convince some West Coast people like the following to lead sessions (the following short list off the top of my head shows omits many cool folks apologies in advance):

• Boris Mann - one my Bryght partners - could lead sessions on starting and running an open source company, open source product development and evangelism since he is Drupal evangelist #1 in my book. Boris could also be a session leader on Jabber, VoIP and web application platforms.
• Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton of Dabble DB could lead a session on Smalltalk and why it's relevant to Web 2.0 as well as why doing things differently makes sense
• Dave Sifry (not a Vancouverite person yay!) could do a leadership "hack" session - the one at Moosecamp was fantastic from what I could tell
• Paul Kedrosky (a sometime Vancouverite) could talk about On why you may not need Venture Capital for your startup, just do it with your own money!
• Alexandra Samuel on what tech companies can learn from non profits and activist organizations.
• Dick Hardt or one of his sxip folks could lead a session on Identity 2.0 what it is, why we need it. Dick also knows a tonne about running an open source startup!

From Stuart MacDonald | eBusiness and Marketing Geek.:

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Our Web 2.0 Toronto Conference date and location are set. Mark May 8 and 9, 2006 at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in your calendar. The keynotes and panels are shaping up nicely, and we will have a site up by mid-March with all the details.

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