Attending Barcamp Portland

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Barcamp Portland. We started Friday night with networking and the creation of our sessions. I met some great people including Kara from White Lotus Design. Kara and I have similar haircuts and had on similar shirts. We decided to find out what else we had in common. Definitely a lot more than these superficial things. We posted sessions on User Interface and on Mapping/Visualization of Information. I hope we get to work together more.

I also met the owners of Cubespace and realized that they were the folks in Portland that my friend Lisa Tracy had wanted me to talk with about the Collaborative Building project for Chicago. We touched base and committed to reconnecting at a less hectic time. I took every brochure and pamphlet I could find of theirs.

It was great to see “old” friends as Habib Rose, Aaron Nelson (Meyer Foundation) and Ray King (AboutUs). It was also great to make new friends like ms James Keller and Dawn Foster. Despite there being a heavy imbalance of men to women, I still found myself yammering with the ladies more often (and yes, James is a gal with great style!).

Saturday, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions on graphics as well as Habib’s session on Network Weaving and the Network Weavers Network. However, my favorite sessions were probably Community Collaboration with Dawn Foster and Web 3.0 with Peter Mui. The Web 3.0 conversation ended up being a follow on to the community discussion. We talked mostly about currencies–as an option for how we might compensate people who make contributions but are not working “within” organizations that give them pay or health benefits. It was a great opportunity to present the material Eric Harris Braun has been working on from Open Money.

I also look forward to connecting to LaVonne Reimer. I spoke with her only briefly. She also has much wisdom and experience to share on creating the Collaborative Building, at least as it may relate to her Open Technology Development Center.

I forgot to mention, of course, that I attended with onetters Lewis Hoffman and Ethan McCutchen of Grass Commons.