When Geeks Go Camping 382
mikep.maine writes "CNN and Business 2.0 have an interesting article on Tim O'Reilly's Foo camp for geeks - not just any geek - people like Google founders, Tim Bray (invented XML), and venture capitalists. Stashed away in the rolling hills north of San Francisco ... Foo Camp, a new breed of geek gathering organized (somewhat) by O'Reilly & Associates. The idea: Get 200 or so smart folks with a lot in common together in one place at one time, let them pitch tents, toss in a Wi-Fi network, and see what happens. Turns out, quite a lot. You are as likely to bump into a founder of Google (both were there) as the vice chairman of Warburg Pincus. Yes, they had Wi-Fi and marshmallows."
Dupe from last summer (Score:1, Informative)
UF Storyline (Score:5, Informative)
Sebastopol is not San Francisco (Score:3, Informative)
And on a side note. I wish I would've stayed friends with the folks I knew at O'Reilly, Then perhaps I could've gone to geek camp
damn
Tim Bray's account of camp (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/10/11
Re:Geeks! (Score:1, Informative)
Get real. A sixpack is a Friday evening warm-up to the weekend!
I didn't invent XML dammit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I didn't invent XML dammit (Score:2, Informative)
And I'm about to take a class in it starting next Tuesday, so it better be good.
Re:Come on... (Score:2, Informative)
Quite true. On the Appalachian Trail this year, I saw many a geek with GPS gear, Pocketmail devices, cellphones, PDAs, etc., PLUS all the other cool camping stuff like white-LED headlamps, a whole spectrum of campstoves, Tyvek everything, ultralightweight packs and fabrics. Long-distance hiking culture is truly a geek culture. The hacker ethos is essentially unchanged.
Of course, there are many who would deny this, and so often hikers keep their tech toys hidden. There's even a guy ("Rusty") who will put you up for free in Shenandoah (or was it North Carolina...? it all blends together after awhile) UNLESS you have something battery-operated.
Check this [pcthiker.com] out. It's a denatured-alcohol burning camp stove made out of Pepsi cans. I hiked the first 800 or so miles with an MSR SuperFly (butane), but switched to this when fuel got too hard to find (and too expensive). It lasted me the rest of the trail, four months! Literally cost only several dollars in parts, and I could even burn isopropyl alcohol in a pinch.
I love hiking! I spent a great deal of time dreaming up better ways of sending email on the trail... :)
Re:I'm a geek, I like to camp (Score:4, Informative)
Giardia [google.com] Nasty stuff