Breaking Down Camps

As the guy who pitched in for both BarCamp and MashupCamp, I should comment on the and wiki homepage: BarCamp, Kwiki and the barn raising. A couple of hours before the camp I started bitching in the IRC channel about how our DSL line wasn't going to cut it and within minutes we had an in-kind sponsor show up to put a dish on the roof. Jimmy Wales once pointed out that with Wikipedia people contribute more when they fail to be served. When there is goodwill to a common resource, it's almost better to have that resource be slightly broken or unfinished. Then volunteers can direct their own contributions. As ad hoc organizations and businesses alike are learning to leverage social software -- they are learning to work with volunteers. Practices that have more to do with running a non-profit organization than traditional community management for a portal. And practices that need to be shared. When breaking down a campsite, proper ettiquite is to take only pictures and leave only footprints. Like an avalanche search party, you line people up with six feet of spacing between them and walk the ground for trash. Even if you know the next camper could be a car-camping hick replete with a power generator, camper and a cooler as big as his truck bed. The wilderness is a commons and the only tragedy is when people don't respect it. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") | Yahoo! My Web Technorati: Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.