Worldchanging Chicago blogger Ted Ernst is on his way to Recent Changes Camp in Portland, Oregon, and he was good enough to give us a little history on the event before he departed. This blog entry was actually composed as a wiki article, with input from several Recent Changes participants.
The story of Recent Changes Camp (written on a wiki by a whole community) is the story of wiki, Open Space Technology, BarCamp, collaboration and passion for building community.
Recent Changes Camp is an un-conference or BarCamp, born from the wiki community, which is of, by, and for folks who want to "build communities worth having" both online and off. Participants arrive at the gathering with this passion for building communities, but no clear idea what's going to happen. RCC uses Open Space Technology (OST), a way to run high-energy gatherings without a pre-determined agenda.
When?
Portland, OR hosts the second Recent Changes Camp (RCC) February 2-4, 2007. There's another one in Montreal May 18th - 20th, 2007: Rococo BarCamp.
Wiki and Worldchanging
To illustrate just a bit about the power of wiki, see Worldchanging's excellent coverage of this emerging dynamic: Sept 1st, stating the need for the Definitive Guide to Bright Green Living. Sept 13: announcing a possible solution, the Bright Green Wiki. Sept 14: An update announcing more than 50 people are interested in the idea and that webspace has already been donated . Nov 1: A call for help. The wiki is up and running with bare bones content and structure and now needs the community. And check out the Bright Green Living Wiki today, more than two years later.
No one's in charge?
One might ask about both wiki and OST, how can this work with no one in charge? Worldchanging Chicago ally Michael Herman answers that question with this from Gregg Easterbrook in response to the question about what our most important tool might be for creating bright green cities:
… The economy is non-linear, and no one is in charge. There was a famous statement by a Soviet official during Glasnost in the 1970s. The Soviets were beginning to tour the United States and couldn’t believe that the houses were real, that the workers actually had cars. The Soviet official who was in charge of bread production for Moscow was said to have asked the mayor of New York where the man was who was in charge of bread production for the city of New York. The mayor responded, “No one is in charge of bread production for the city of New York.” The key thing about our Western economy is that nobody is in charge of it, no one giving orders, no one planning, and so far things have mainly been OK.
History of camps
From newassignment.net:
Around the beginning of August 2005, a group of progressive technologists modified the long standing exclusivity of the invitation-only hacker event “Foocamp,” and started planning Barcamp http://barcamp.org/. Armed with a venue to host two days of free flowing and open conversations, Barcamps circled the globe and spread the meme of Open Space Technology. They have since evolved to meet particular needs....
Other camps include Govcamp, Podcamp, Artcamp, Copycamp, Drupalcamp, Rootscamp, MindCamp, etc.
Criticism of wiki
One criticism often heard about wiki is that when anyone can edit, there's no way to know if you're reading "truth" or garbage. Critics ask, "What risks are there when so many people have such open-ended contribution permissions?" Many people that use wikis would turn that around and ask "What are the risks of relying on an 'expert' with credentials and thus turning off the brain?" Wikis as a reference remind us that we always much check our sources and not simply rely on an "expert" to get it right.
When the journal Nature studied both Britanica and Wikipedia, they found an average of three errors per article in Britanica and four errors per article in Wikipedia. And the errors in Wikipedia have since all been corrected as a result of the article! No word from Britanica on when the next edition will be released with their corrections.
The point is a paraphrase of Linus' law, when speaking about open source software, such as Linux. The law from software is "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." In wiki, it's "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow."
Another answer to this criticism is to note that there are many, many different uses for wikis. Wikimedia Foundation projects tend to be simply about the compilation of reference material, but most wikis are used behind corporate firewalls, or by project teams with no risk at all of bad faith edits. How great is it that I don't have to fix my typos? The people on my team that care about eliminating typos get to do that and pepole like me that don't care get to do work that matters more to me.
