Manifesto

Mission

To educate, foster a sense of community, and remove barriers for webmasters and web developers, bloggers, podcasters, and social media enthusiasts.

Principles

Community. As humans we seem predisposed to self-select into groups. We identify with others based on commonalities, and we put up defenses when we stray outside our own groups. But this predisposition is often used to artificially influence who we perceive as being our friend, or our foe. The classic examples of Chevy vs. Ford, or Coke vs. Pepsi, are brand wars designed to influence and sway loyalty towards a particular corporate moniker.

In stark opposition to the concept of US vs. THEM, the World Wide Web was envisioned as a medium, “…to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere,” and since its creation, a spirit of universal inclusion and equality has been part of the ethos of the Web. Those of us who create and supply content for it are participating in a brotherhood which transcends boundaries of race, sex, religion, border or brand.

OpenCamp is therefore dedicated to the concept of removing both real and artificial barriers and bringing together webmasters and web developers, bloggers, podcasters, and social media enthusiasts, regardless of the tools they use, the medium in which they provide content, or the topics upon which they focus. OpenCamp is a community for everyone involved in Web content creation.

History and Challenges

In the past local volunteers, following the lead of the original BarCamp, organized community events centered around the content management systems (CMS) upon which they relied. WordPress users attended WordCamps; Drupal users attended DrupalCamps; Joomla! users attended Joomla!Days, and so on.

These events often include content that is CMS specific; however, they also cover a wide range of non-CMS specific topics including social media, podcasting, legal issues, revenue generation, and more. Indeed, often the majority of topics are appropriate for all webmasters, podcasters, bloggers, developers or YouTubers despite the single platform nature of these events. This points to the fact that web authors have far more in common than the differences that separate them based on their specific CMS.

In addition to the educational aspects of these events, one of the main benefits of attending is the ability to meet and network with like-minded individuals. While a newspaper reporter blogging on the WordPress platform may not be intimately familiar with the exact methods of a marketing manager blogging on the Drupal platform, these individuals will certainly feel a bond based on their commonality of purpose, a fact which points to a systematic shortcoming of the single-CMS event approach.

On a practical level, event organizers face several challenges when planning for these conferences. Since they are non-profit events, and are not supported or underwritten by the companies whose communities organize them, it can be extremely difficult to find a low cost venue, provide for internet connectivity, feed a group, and more. The challenges are compounded by the fact that there is no single entity behind the event, and therefore a benefactor must come forward and accept personal liability. The risks associated with this are demonstrated in Dallas WordCamp organizer John Pozadzides’ article An Open Source Look at the Cost of WordCamp Dallas.

Given the fact that each year the scale of the events increase, often by 50% or more, the problems associated with planning, financing and executing them become greater and greater. The logical conclusion is that individual events either become limited access or must step up to accommodate the growing demand. Given that the burden of organization falls on a local community, one can quickly exhaust local sponsors, volunteers and venues willing to play host.

The OpenCamp Solution

We believe it’s time to take a more inclusive approach towards organizing our Web Authoring community, and OpenCamp is the solution. OpenCamp is not designed to replace WordCamp, Joomla!Days, DrupalCamp or any other local community event. Instead it is designed to play host to a combination of platform or technique specific events in order to make more efficient use of local community resources.

By bringing together the various communities and focusing on the similarities, as opposed to capitalizing on the differences, OpenCamp will allow us to pool resources, attract top speakers, recruit sponsors, and hold an event several times larger than any one CMS specific conference could attract. It will allow Web authors to focus on our commonalities and broaden our exposure to other platforms and techniques that would otherwise be missed in a homogeneous environment.

We invite you to join us as we step back and recognize that although we each have a specific set of tools we use, it is not the tool that unites us but the practice of web-mastering and web development, blogging, podcasting, social media, or web publishing in general.