Montreal Tech Watch

First, this post is not a report about the sessions at RoCoCo Camp, I don’t think I can write one; and you will find why later.

First, let’s *try* to define RoCoCoCamp: it is a (un)conference about collaboration, wikis and usage of technology in society. It gathers entrepreneurs, geeks, designers and even philosophers. But if you go to the official website, there is not even an official definition. The event is defined by the people who attend, contribute and learn. A good metaphor would be considering RococoCamp as a wiki page, that is edited live by the visitors.

In practice, this means there is no distinction between organizers and attenders. You are expected to help and share your knowledge. If you are bored by a session, you follow the law of two feet – which is go somewhere else, right away.

Now, I wanted this weekend to go to RoCoCo Camp/RecentChangesCamp. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there for all sessions and decided to go there on afternoons, after forcing my todos batch on mornings.

I went to SAT friday at midday, and I was invited to pick some stickers so that people could guess where I came from. There were stickers from all sorts of wiki initiatives, free software, open source, creative commons and any other variations you could think of. That was fun. Next, a guy from aboutus showed me around – I could pick a t-shirt, how the scheduling board and how the law of two foot worked. That was even more fun. I also saw Hugh McGuire and Matthew Forsythe. Matthew draws and travels. Cool. And then it was time for free lunch. Even more fun. Reminds me of ad-hoc events we organized back in college.

I went before to a couple of biology and maths conference but have never been to an official tech conference. And I think now I am not interested to. Altough things look anarchic, I love the spontaneity of RecentChanges camp and how problems are not problems anymore. I mean, if you go to an traditional conference, you expect top-notch service, you expect speakers to begin and finish on time, you expect powerpoints with bulletpoints, you expect *straight* people to talk about performance and business models. Here, you know that you can’t have expectations and it’s up to you to make it great. So problems cannot be problems anymore.

It’s time I talk about the sessions, and I think the best if for you to go to the frontpage which gathers reports about the sessions. I won’t pretend that I can report and sum up the sessions. A blog post is linear and the result of one man’s view, which is the complete opposite of Rococo’s philosophy.

After understanding that I couldn’t make a report about RoCoCoCamp, I tried to do a video from all sorts of videoclips I took and let me tell you it was even harder. Like a blog post, a video is very linear and cannot really capture the philosophy and the synergy happenning between attendees. RoCoCoCamp sessions are plural, live, with its highs and downs, and I am not sure what will Mélanie will come up with her capsulettes.

What I can say though is that I met a lot of great people at RoCoCoCamp. People who came from France, Germany, Ontario, East and West Coast of US, and of course people from Montreal. They were a tad idealists, a bit dreamers, somehow bohemians and free-minded, but they were mostly builders. They were ready to spend their time and energy to build a better society. I thought a bit about the first greeks and romans who thought about building a democracy through an open and participative model.

I might be going too far with the comparison but i like it.

To finish with this “report”, here is a short video snapshot, with two bright guys saying what they thought about RecentChangesCamp

A set of RoCoCoCamp photos

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