Hard News by Russell Brown

Judith Tizard played Werewolf?

Maybe we can get her to play some real LARP sometime...

Juha has more pics:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2149

It was very, very, very inspiring - tiring, too, but in a good way. The coffee machine helped a lot. :)

Everyone were really as you say in "Foo Mode" in that you only needed to appear and the discussion would start. Or, the demo of an app someone was working on, minus the sales shpiel of course.

Talking to Cunliffe minus the filter of officialdom was great. I would say that he too benefited enormously from having unfiltered access to people and it kind of cemented my impression that consultants and policy wonks/lobbyists distort the democratic process by adding an unnecessary layer of sometimes intentionally incorrect interpretation of factual matters.

Here's hoping Baa Camp becomes a regular event. My hand is up already to help out in any way I can to make sure it happens again.

Inspiring weekend! I blogged briefly about it on my blog but plan on blogging about it some more when I recover.

Big thanks to Nat and team for the organisation, as I said to him before leaving, I learned a great deal and hopefully contributed a little too.

Russell seems to have the greatest hits nicely accounted for. A particular highlight for me was an impromptu discussion with Robert O'Callahan and Shift's Che Tamahori and Ross Howard. Talking with the chief Gecko engineer from an interaction designer/typographer's point of view was both fascinating and instructional (for both sides), and to think, he does it all from his sun room in Mt Eden.

It sounds like a brilliant weekend. I'm been eagerly following along with people's blogs. I hope the ideas from Foo weekend will inspire many choice things.

Only hitch so far: a ridiculous Wikipedia edit war yesterday, which began when someone hit the new article on Kiwi Foo Camp with a speedy deletion tag (which should be reserved for spam, vandalism and "utter rubbish") and then ignored the "hangon" tag to contest deletion and deleted first the text and then the whole article.

The same person then appeared to be threatening to go after the main Foo Camp article on the basis that it was "spam", while offering a string of different justifications to Juha and I for the Kiwi Foo Camp article's deletion.

Eventually, a grown-up came by and put it into the "articles for deletion" process, which at least allowed some proper discussion (at which point our hostile editor disappeared, hopefully for good). The upshot looks like being that the Kiwi Foo Camp article will be merged into the main Foo Camp article, which I guess is fine, but Juha and I still haven't been able to get anyone to acknowledge that what happened to us yesterday was ridiculous.

If you enter "Kiwi Foo Camp" into Wikipedia you can follow the whole thrilling story in the Talk pages ...

It was several hostile Administrators/Edtors, all anonymous, plus someone from NZ who deleted everything within minutes - and accused us of spamming. Looks to me like a vendetta of sorts, as there was no good explanation given.

This wasn't quite how I thought Wikipedia works. :\

Here's the link to the AFD page for the Kiwi Foo Camp article. Note that you should not post anything in defence of the article or otherwise comment on things there, as it appears that that is frowned up on by the Wikipedians.

Damn - something I'd have loved to have attended - except that I'm in Seattle for a couple of weeks and um wasn't invited anyway (puts up hand for invite next year, want someone to do a how-to-hardware-hacking talk? :-) - and I could have said 'hi' to Quinn

Anyway sounds like you pulled it off really well congrats!

Note that you should not post anything in defence of the article or otherwise comment on things there, as it appears that that is frowned up on by the Wikipedians.

Yes. When I went back to the page and saw their big box reading ...

ATTENTION! If you came here because somebody asked you to, or you read a message on a forum, please note that this is not a ballot, but rather a discussion to establish a consensus amongst Wikipedia editors on whether a page is suitable for this encyclopedia.

... I thought, damn, there must be some flaming or something. But there was one perfectly reasonable message from a new entrant to the discussion.

I've tried to be measured and reasonable, but there's a defensive and proprietary element to the Wikipedians' style that doesn't seem very helpful.

(puts up hand for invite next year, want someone to do a how-to-hardware-hacking talk? :-)

Oh yes. We like the hardware hackers ...

Wiki update: I think we're alright now. gadfium, a prolific NZ-based editor, has come in and been helpful and constructive, and there's no sign of our hostile editor from yesterday.

Essentially, we have five days to improve the article to the point where no one will want to delete it, which I think we can do. Campers who feel confident with editing are welcome to add external links, and add names to the list of notable campers.

Phew. It was getting weird there.

Found this Edit Wars article on Wikipedia, courtesy of one of the Administrators... illuminating.

ah I see .... so we I think we should all go away and work on 'improving' the wikipedia "pavlova" entry ....

Russell, many thanks to you Nat and Rod. I have a day one write up over at planet.catalyst.net.nz.

I plan to do a complete write up by the end of today (Wednesday).

David Cunliffe was good but I fear that the filters of officialdom were girding their loins prior to the end of the conference. Having made the progress we did with the Minister that was the only disappointment of the weekend.

Great to met Davids Slack and Haywood as well.

Having followed the links and read the "discussions" at Wikipedia.... it strikes me a slighlt bizzaire/ironic, that one of the main things that will help justify and ensure the continued availability of the kiwi Foo Camp wiki entryl, is references to articles in the MSM that help to prove that a) the event did indeed take place, and b) is actually of note... and includes the comment along the lines of..."if the MSM hasnt reported on it in five days, then they probably wont".

It occurs to me, that the people who might actually write such an article about it in the MSM, are the very ones writing/promoting for the continued existence of the wiki entry...

Now, I find both you, Russell, and Juha, completely legitamate and "above board" and I dont want to suggest any improprietry on your behalf, but it seems a strange position for Wikipedai to be taking that essentially encourages "forging" of proof, to continue the existance of the entry.

I guess the only defence, is that Wiki doesnt realise the people making the entry are in fact two of our most pre-emineint technology journalists, and also I guess even if you were both completely bananas or in cahoots to comit some sort of fraudulent exercise... at least getting it past your MSM editors is some sort of test/proof of notability?

I guess all I'm saying is, I hope after what is obviously a bruising experience with the editors, you can see the comedy of the situation also...

Now, I find both you, Russell, and Juha, completely legitamate and "above board" and I dont want to suggest any improprietry on your behalf, but it seems a strange position for Wikipedai to be taking that essentially encourages "forging" of proof, to continue the existance of the entry.

I know, I know. Already one of the MSM articles in the external links is an Idealog story by me (I didn't post it, one of the helpful editors did, whilst admitting he didn't know if Idealog was credible), and I'm really wary of manufacturing another story to support my own article.

The other issue is that this is the kind of subject area where a good blogger is very likely to be more accurate than a MSM journalist, even one with editorial oversight.

You tend to assume that Wikiculture is in lockstep with Internet culture, but I'm discovering that's not necessarily the case. It's quite interesting, and I hope it will turn out okay.

I think the Wikipedians know who Russell and I am. The ones who called the article spam appear to be Kiwis, one of whom claims to have arranged government functions even.

Foo envy is everywhere...

So, to cut to the chase there are now a couple more foo entries in my blog. Also included is a PDF of the slides I presented. Given at least 112 folks missed my talk I expect there will be a lot of interest in this :-)

I've added a new entry to baacamp.org to get a record of the sessions given (and relevant links to supporting material on the web).

Obviously right now the wikipedia is a bit to unstable to commit this type of material to, only to have it lost through deletion. If any attendants remember presentations, room numbers and times please feel free to flesh it out.

http://baacamp.org/m/w/index.cgi?FooSessions

How did the subject of "melanotan" get mixed up in the initial post of this thread??

Cheers,
http://melanotan.org/ - afamelanotide