Maybe we're a little late on this one, but it seems like "unconferences" have recently come into vogue. A total of 391,000 hits on google isn't small change considering it wasn't even in their search corpus before 2006; that's noteworthy. How did we miss CNN's 2004 coverage of barcamps, bloggercons, and foo camps (written by tech-blogger-turned-media-magnate John Batelle)?
Asleep at the wheel we were.
Forgetting the unreliability of our trend radar, we at Bigfathuge have to conclude that unconferences are no longer edge experiences for geek hipsters. To wit: big business has commandeered the format.
We are speaking specifically about marketing services giant WPP and their recent announcement of Stream08. In an email to invitees, WPP Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell and tech entrepeneur Yossi Vardi put it this way:
"You are invited to WPP's second free-form, camp-like, super-democratised, extreme (non-virtual) social networking, anti-conference: Stream08."
-Internal WPP email
Who could resist such an invitation? A staffer here at Bigfathuge HQ was lucky to score an invite to the October event in Athens. We'll be sharing the goings-on here so stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out the 2007 happenings including the blogesphere reaction, the 2007 Facebook group, flickr pix, and vids.