Three (Maybe Four) Degrees of Seperation

Social networking has multiplied the number of connections people have and the number of channels they have to build networks. Thought the connections through these channels are more tenuous, there are far more of them.

Surfing through friend’s profiles on Facebook, I was struck by the numbers of high profile people that were connected to my friends and friends-of-friends. It’s no longer six degrees we are separated by, but three, maybe four, from any person on the planet.

Is it more valuable to have a chain of six strong links or be connected by three weak links? I suspect three links is more useful because in a short chain the odds of finding that you are connected to some person is far higher.  Connections six degrees separated are all but useless and the social capital that remains after negotiating that chain has dropped to approximately zero. So finding the person, no matter how tenuous the connection, is probably more useful overall.

Barcamp Bangkok Wrap-Up

Barcamp Bangkok is over. It was a huge success. 200+ great people, lots of great conversations. Barcamp carried on until well into the night; the after party had about 70 people eating, drinking, laughing and talking until 10:00pm.

The topics were eclectic, the audience was intellectual, the whole place was energetic. You could feel the excitement in the air; the geeks were having their Woodstock. What struck me was that Barcamp was more than a tech conference, it was a cultural event, a coming together of people that are inventing a new culture. That was tremendously exciting.

The morning started out filled with dread and fear; the venue was a mess from a party the night before. As much as we had all planned out what we were going to do, nobody had done it before and we ran into a cartain amount of problems as the unexpected and unanticipated reared it’s ugly head. But people just appeared and pitched in and things unfolded rapidly and extraordinarily well. We started the first sessions on time and things got easier from there on. Amazing!

I did one presentation. Drupal App Development with CCK and Views. I did not start preparing until after the topic was selected (it was one of the most highly voted topics). Running on 2 hours sleep, un-prepared–it was going OK until my web broswer froze. 25 minute topics don’t give you much time for recovering from problem! At least a few people (Julie, Sajal, Anoop) threw me a rope and asked some questions while I was restarting my browser. Thanks guys!

I did not even sit through one presentation! Not that there were not topics I was interested in, it was that I was occupied with other things; it was partly because I was so busy running around and checking that things were running smoothly, partly because the people there were so interesting I kept getting drawn into passionate discussions and I could not tear myself away.
Lots of requests for a second Barcamp Bangkok. I think everybody is up for that.

There is a lot of talk about a BeachCamp: throwing an International “Pacific Rim” Barcamp at a beach resort here in Thailand. I am really excited about that prospect and starting to take Barcamp to a new level and make international connections.

Now it’s time for all of us organizers to start a post-Barcamp analysis of what went right and what could be improved. I think we all see lots of areas for innovation and improvement and we are a little shocked at how “right” a lot of it went despite the concerns we have up until about noon the day of Barcamp!

Thanks to all the organizers and to all the participants: you made it a great Barcamp!