I realize that Tim O'Reilly currently has to cope with a lot of emotional reactions to the way Foocamp is organized, and I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

But I can understand most of the reactions, and still stand by my posting, even after having cooled off a bit.

You can't participate in a community that builds on the open sharing of ideas, then hand-pick what you deem the "most interesting" people of this community and build a little boy's secret society, brag about it in public, and seriously expect that nobody responds.

So to answer your question: I wouldn't want to.

It's just a small event, but their approach to invitations bugs me a lot. I was already wondering how O'Reilly could keep up their seemingly altruistic behavior on such a massive scale, to the point where they're now more talked about for their community involvements and conferences than for their books. Apparently they couldn't.

It should have been clear that their main interests are not simply to advance technology, to help create new ideas, but that these are just tools to earn money. I simply forgot about that, and liked them a bit more for their apparent openness and enthusiasm. For the apparent attitude of leaving behind the old economy, and for creating a place where ideas are exchanged for the sake of ideas.

Well that has changed; at FooCamp, ideas are exchanged for the sake of money, and first of all O'Reilly's money. When I now read Tim O'Reilly's list of "cuts" of the invitation process I get really pissed off. Every step of his description reads like blatant old capitalism, hidden under a guise of altruism.

Maybe I'm just annoyed because I dislike such quotas. I believe when you select all the guys that generate large numbers on your spreadsheet that you're missing out on important stuff. I have the suspicion that innovative ideas and monopolies don't play very well together.

I loved the Fuckparade, and I welcome the idea of BarCamp. I'm all for the opposition.

See also: "I’m not a FOO anymore either…", "Why I'm not going to Foo Camp", and a gazillion other blogs.