Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Phillips BarCampNashville Descends Into Online BarFightNashville
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:34 AM
The Internet exploded in a flurry of angry typing Monday afternoon as Nashville's tech set discovered the existence of the BCN Critic twitter stream. BCN Critic (who either speaks in the royal "we" or is actually more than one person) has many criticisms of Nashville's popular BarCampNashville, an unconference of sorts devoted to all things tech. These criticisms seem to break down into three main categories: BarCampNashville isn't run like a true BarCamp, the organizers of BarCampNashville don't listen to constructive criticism, and the hard-core tech aspects are often overlooked in order to focus more heavily on marketing and social media.
After a series of "Are not," "Are too," "Do not," "Do too" and "Mom!" exchanges with various BarCamp supporters, the discussion seemed to be at something of an impasse. But then occasional Pith contributor Chris Wage chimed in:
To be honest, I can understand this sentiment. When you read about the history and make-up of the original barcamps, Nashville’s event bears little to no resemblance. But Nashville has never resembled other cities. Nashville is not Palo Alto, nor Portland. In all likelihood if we “followed the rules” to maintain the true barcamp spirit, Nashville wouldn’t have a barcamp at all, because it would have never happened: the demand (and resources) weren’t there. We didn’t have the pool of nerderiffic talent in Nashville to pull it off — certainly not in 2007, and arguably not now. Nashville does have “open, participatory workshop-events” suitable for the level we’re at: it’s called JJ’s Market on Thursday afternoons.
He ends up recommending that, if people think they can put on a BarCamp different and better, they should have at it. So then the BarCampers who didn't want to pay for their pews split from the BarCampers who didn't mind paying for their pews and thus was born the Free BarCamp Nashville Church. Oh, wait, no, that's how we ended up with Free Methodists. Sorry. These internecine incidents all start to take on similar flavors.
Is the situation resolved? Probably not. BCN Critic promises "Tomorrow's discussion will be regarding the venue."
So, if you're bored of following political fights, but still want a fight to follow, I recommend you keep your eye on this one.
Comments (20)
Showing 1-20 of 20
Bull. There are _plenty_ of nerds out there in Nashville. At my office alone we number in the hundreds, and we're just one of 30-40+ companies that maintain large technical teams skilled in software development and web technologies. I personally know people who have built large scale social networking engines in use by hundreds of thousands that live and work here in Nashvegas. We have a large core of financial services, health care, and technology companies that -- surprisingly -- are still hiring incredibly technical people.
The truth is, there are just very few who care to hang out at a second-rate bar with a bunch of failed blog hipsters more interested in what color their masthead is than writing actual, functional code. It only takes one meetup for the good techies to realize that when one must explain what CSS is to someone who wants to "build the next Facebook" that your time is better spent elsewhere -- like building model rockets. Or sleeping in.
There. I said it.
like
dislikeSession creation is open: the date is 0ct. 15. http://www.barcampnashville.org/bcn11/node…
I can't believe this twitter account is being taken so seriously. By responding and getting defensive, he wins. This is the sort of reaction he... or they, whatever... wants!
And to all you programming nerds bashing BCN (I recognize that not all the super techy peeps are bashing…one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch)... if you are so anti-BCN then quit wasting your time talking about it and go start your own event. Actions speak louder than nerds...I mean words. But, if you do start your own camp, can you please not promote it via social media? We blog-failing-social-media-hipster-geeks could do without it clogging up our twitter feeds.
Oh, and +1 to all the free press this drama is getting for BarCamp.
You know, I really hope Don't Ask and nashvillefilmsnob go to PhreakNIC 15. Because it would be a shame for a long-standing, super-technical conference to be ignored by folks who seem to want a hard-core, coding/programming/pure tech conference. Or maybe the focus on security and hacking isn't exactly what they want, so they complain about that one, too?
Don't Ask hit the nail on the head. (thank you).
There is definitely enough talent here, it's just the most visible Nashville Tech leaders are not...well...technical. They're business owners, or they're on the fringes of development but aren't actually developers themselves (analytics, content creation, social media etc.)
Once that changes and we have some radical/west coast style startups we'll start seeing the (abundant) technical talent of Nashville get the attention it deserves.
@AndrewDuthie: I have 15+ years doing almost exclusively infosec-related work. And have actually spoken at PhreakNIC in the past. Lots of those guys know who I am. Will I go this year? Probably not. Little assholes dicking around with hotel sprinkler systems for no reason other than personal amusement was the last straw for me. Hacking is about learning new things and applying them to a solution, not about yanking a fire alarm and yukking it up in a parking lot while people scatter.
@PlayNice: Y'all have fun. We'll try to keep the social media sites actually, you know... working for you while you guys nosh on hotwings and "network".
Here's the thing, folks. I look at the landscape of the supposedly "technical" meetups, and they're either led exclusively by non-techies, focused on a narrow vertical industry, shills for the bizpigs among us, or loosely configured anarcho-syndicalist communes. There's BarCamp, ISACA, NTC, TEC, PhreakNIC, SITE, ISECON, ITERA, IAE, IEEE local, CIT, ACTE, DevLink, ACM, SANS Nashville... and others. Of the ones I listed, the only ones to really appeal to a seriously technical crowd are IEEE and DevLink. The former is focused on Bioinformatics only, and the latter is essentially a vendor trade show now. And as nerd-centric as PhreakNIC is, it has a pretty high noise-to-signal ratio, if you know what I mean.
Picture this: nerds. comfy couches. beer. coffee. jolt cola. whiteboards. laptops. server rack. spare time. fast internet connection. one chosen area of focus.
You know, kinda like 1996 again, but without the dialup modems. Like Telalink before PSInet. Like pets.com before bankrupcy. Like when you first discovered what OO programming actually _meant_. Like the world before everything turned into a friend request and 150-character limit. Only with 200 times the computing power and technologies that would have made us drool back then. You dig?
Don't Ask is right -- none of you are *real* techies. not with *15 years* of experience.
Soon, the nerd messiah will come, and usher in an era of *real* tech events. with couches! there will be rejoicing and much jolt cola will be consumed.
Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your nerd lord doth come.
The lord of that nerd shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the marketroids: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As what most would probably consider a neckbeard, I can't agree with Don't Ask enough. You nailed it. Both posts. The Nashville "tech" scene is nothing but an echo chamber of tech fringe social media and "big idea" people who self-congratulate one another constantly, can't implement anything themselves, and seem to look down on those who can. I wasn't cool enough to be part of the Nashville tech scene, but hell if I would want to be a part, even if I was allowed to participate.
Oh, and then Chris Wage wades in with another condescending and snarky post for all those who dare disagree with him. Stay classy Chris.
Thus speaketh user "cwage" from the book of Snark, chapter 2, verse 14-20. The word of blog, for the people of blog.
Don't Ask, Thanks for the Telalink reference!
I think there is room for an alternate BarCamp that answers your concerns without conflicting with the current BarCamp. BCN may not be true BarCamp format, but it is successful. It may not be tech-heavy, but that seems to be improving in large part by the BCN organizers. Making dramatic changes to BCN would most likely hurt it more than help.
The problem isn't with the existence of BCN or how it operates, but the nonexistence of a tech-focused BarCamp. Many BCN supporters have repeatedly suggested an alternate, but no one has stepped up to do it.
On that note, Nathan Hubbard (ex-Telalinker with true BarCamp experience), and I are organizing BarCamp 0b10, a tech-focused, 2 day, traditional BarCamp to complement BCN. The current plan is to space it far enough from BCN (maybe Spring) to not force a choice between the two. If you like both, go to both, present at both. If not, pick your BarCamp of choice.
I'll post a link to more info later today.
See? The nerd messiah cometh!
@Tim: Good to see one of the Telalinkers buying in. If BarCamp 5420(octal, it's how we roll) is a serious thing, I'll bring the Jolt Cola. Or the server rack. Your choice.
Heh. Coming up on 25 years myself.
Who would've ever guessed that an Infosec kid would come off as a know it all? (Let those who have ears understand)
For me, I don't get the appeal of a "tech-ier" event . It sounds like the break room, with alcohol to me. You've never partied till you've seen the CCNAs in a drunken pissing match with the MCSEs .
Unless there's swag, of course. If there's swag, I'm there.
Don't Ask,
Sorry. That is confusing. It looks like it, but it's not hexadecimal. I was indicating the numbering system.
For anyone else, there are 10 kinds of people who understand BarCamp 0b10, those who get it and those who don't.
While I am a shy neckbeard, I am not shy_neckbeard.
Also, these guys out nerd me by a factor of googolplex.
Here's the link we posted on twitter earlier. Thanks for all the comments and passion everybody.
BarCamp 0b10 is born
Well apparently it striped out my HTML. The link is here:
http://mybrainhurts.com/blog/2011/09/barca…
