bottom line: less noise and a bit more 'structuring the unstructured' and BarCamp Tdot aka Torcamp2 would have been even better

I heard people say the following (no, really): “what the heck does
'wildcard and beer' mean?” (on the schedule); “I wish I'd understood how
it worked, it took me hours to figure it out”; “I wish people would have
had more time to prepare, so they would have had better slides”; “blah,
blah, blah for 30 minutes. so that's it!” (huh?); and “somebody moved my talk. no, *I'm* the convenor!”

I offered a couple of the organizers my services as facilitator,
explained carefully the pattern I used (which is really quite close to
what we did, except for expectation setting and sharing results). They
didn't answer my email. I asked for feedback. They didn't answer. Nice.
So I sent a note saying “I assume the answer is no, so I'll put my
energy elsewhere”. Oh well, I tell myself they're young and brash. the
down side of being young and iconoclastic I could have my offer to a
largeer number of people, but this event definitely, by the very way it
was created, had a perceived power structure, even to me.

Information lowers the intimidation barrier and levels the playing field & we all know the rules, we all are tasked with the same mission: make this event for yourself. We all are given the tools to do so & a
scheduling system that is not cryptic, an understanding of what responsibilities (and privileges, like changing the time or location) of
the convenor, that it's ok (necessary) to self-organize. The avantgarde
don't need this prompting & that's you and me. But the “early majority”
do, and I think that's who came out this time.

I must admit, although TorCamp2 was ok, I was disappointed. It lacked passion. And it was uncommunicative & I couldn't tell what half the
schedule items were. In Open Space everyone gets to stand up and state
what their topic is in a whole sentence, and people get to see their
face. Also, if there end up being 5 topics in one slot, it's ok, it is
encouraged, and it will self-organize to a hallway or courtyard or
whatever. Because this wasn’t discussed, only 4 items appeared in each
of four apparently limited spots. As I teach my Agile teams – Perception
is Reality – it doesn’t matter what we meant or wanted – what eventually
happens is going to be informed by *people’s perceptions*, and if we
don’t communicate well, these perceptions will have to rely on
preconceptions.

If you want to know how I run a classic OpenSpace, you can read it here:
http://vitalbrew.blogspot.com/2006/04/openspace-for-collaborative.html.
Perhaps we'll have an opportunity to try it some time. Whatever. If
TorCamp dies, as someone noted, something else will spring up. But I'd
be happy to help people experience the incredible empowerment and
synergy of a huge collaborative party Why? Just because I'm an
inveterate collaboration-evangelist and can't help myself )