Interesting half a day at the Guinness Storehouse on Sunday at the Mashup Camp Dublin. I caught some interesting discussion on the legalities of mash ups and met a few people and had a few conversations. Good to catch up with Ultan O’Broin from Oracle (loving the new look!) and Richard Hearne from Red Cardinal (and Amitan). But I have to say that the whole event left me cold. One of the concepts that Mass Labs promote as part of the UnConference genre is that the agenda is set by the participants and when a discussion is over, everyone moves on.
The agenda for the Sunday afternoon was written up on a board in the Arrol Suite. Everyone was invited to arrive when they wanted and leave as they pleased. I think it must have been my need to please that meant that I did just that. But then I decided to go to a session that just didn’t happen. And it just seemed incredibly impolite to go to a different one. So I sort of wandered around for a while and ended up talking with the organisers – they were really nice people – but I just don’t get it. I wonder how much of it is the cultural divide?
Meanwhile, over on Damien Mulley’s blog, there is a discussion about the Unconference. And I found this little gem:
Danger says: Conference cost vs. real tangible benefit = probability of attendance
The exact circumstances in which a company might justify going to mashup camp:
1. They had recently identified a need to quickly understand third party APIs, either to build one themselves, or to leverage existing ones
2. They heard about mashup camp and had not yet done extensive research on the tech involved, so it was agreed that mashupcamp would be a good way to kick start the whole process
3. They could convince a developer/developers to give up their weekend
4. Send developer, promising him 2 days holidays in return
That’s pretty much exactly how I’d view it. The organisers had been convinced that the weekend would be the best time to run it, maybe in the US – but not here. But nah, I still just didn’t get it.
