NOMADISM!

This conference is off the hook.

I showed up 2 hours late and no one else was here yet. Chairs still upside down, two guys in the kitchen cooking, most attendees still asleep, some upstairs at the conference location (an open-space / tea house that organizes skill sharing workshops, free language classes, open dinners with a 2-euro suggested donation, etc.), and a few attendees on-line but not yet in attendance.

The open format and the four rules and one law all serve to contribute to a perception of disorganization (if you've had a generally American, traditional university- and industry-conference experience). The four rules:

- Whenever it starts is the right time

- It is over when it is over

- Whoever comes is the right people

- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened

The law (heavily paraphrased) if you aren't currently learning/contributing, move to a different space or group.

However, things are getting done and content is getting generated, perhaps even more efficiently than larger, "more organized" conferences, and regardless of the number of attendees. Open your mind...

http://sharewiki.org/en/SHE_goes_MAD is almost entirely a result of the conference.

http://nomadbase.org/ (the project for which this conference has been convened) has meeting notes, ideas, and other posts on the front page at the moment, and the functionality has been improved by Mark B. and others during the conference.

On a more personal note...

I learned a ton about cooking with limited ingredients this morning, collaborating with those two guys in the kitchen (A Polish guy named Pavlik? and another guy named Igor?)

I heard about an amphibious human-powered-transport-only nomad who packs his stuff into his canoe and tows it behind his bicycle, until he gets to a body of water, at which point he puts the bike into the canoe and rows around. No planes/trains/cars/gas of any sort and he has gone tens of thousands of miles.

As a side-note, it's funny to try to type this in a way that makes sense to people back home, people in Europe, and people in Egypt. The context in which I frame it would normally be entirely different, so instead I'm trying to keep it as "objective" as possible, whatever that means...

Finally (for this post) there is currently a meta-discussion going on about the best way to hold a discussion. Scheduled? Announcements of talks? Non-mandatory announcements?

And now we're getting derailed by a discussion about dumpster-diving...

PS - the re-organization of the conference went incredibly well. I am happy to have contributed a small piece - the "NOW, SOON, LATER" categories on the schedule instead of a set schedule.