Beware of an unhappy campers tale upon us. It’s like Gilligan’s Island sans the Skipper and Mary Ann. All these camps popping up everywhere: Foocamp, Barcamp, Mindcamp, maybe we need a Hmmcamp too?

The most recent camp: MashupCamp drew some criticism from Ryan King (who helped organize Barcamp) focusing on what he called a “puff piece” by MashupCamp organizer David Berlind. Doc Searls replied with a cleverly titled “jumping the snark” and then a rebuttal from King:

It could have been a great opportunity for all sorts of hackers to come and make cool stuff. But it wasn’t. The universal reaction from my friends who spend their days writing code was “too many suits.”

MashupCamp was unenjoyable for me for the same reason that the Web 2.0 conference was unenjoyable- they weren’t about technology.

Tara writes that Doc’s comments made her “so disappointed right now I want to cry” but it seems like in the comments area no hankies were needed. [Nearly a month later and I’m still waiting for that promised Riya invite, Tara, and I’m so disappointed about that I could cry ;)].

This unhappy campers exchange reminds me of what I had to say about the upcoming Mix06 with Neverending conference fee gouging. I agree with Mr. King that these code-related camps should be focused on the technology. I mean isn’t that the point of these camps? Let’s get together, exchange ideas and code something cool in a group setting? Or is the point let’s just get together and spam each other network with products/services (like most conferences)?

Actually, it seems like it’s let’s get together and have people pitch their own products/services/books speak to us. No thanks on paying (too much) for that ‘privilege.’ If you are organizing something cool where creative people can get together and swap code and build things and decide to give it a camp name, cool, tell me where that’s at (and I don’t mind pitching in a few bones to pay my way for decent power and internet). If you are just going to throw together another overpriced conference with a trendy name and the cool crowd of the moment, then I’ll pass. I graduated from high school many years ago.

Seems like Mathew Ingram is also part of assembling some type of conference:

We’d like to find a place somewhere in that spectrum where people can get together and have some fun and maybe learn something new, and hopefully we can do that.

Note to conference organizers: #1 rule is do not go much past $300 for registration fees.

Our conference registration fee budget ends around $300. If it’s much over that, then they better throw in some killer amenities. I was going to say sexual favors, but I was worried people would take me seriously.

I wonder what Smokey the Bear thinks about all this?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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