We are all familiar about Cloudcamp (See previous Cloud Ave coverages on Cloudcamp Seattle, Cloudcamp London, Cloudcamp Newcastle, Cloudcamp Auckland), an unconference where users and potential users come together and discuss about various topics about cloud computing and wonder about its future. While writing about the interesting idea behind Cloudslam ’09, I was complaining about the conferences conducted in an old fashioned way.
I am a strong advocate of Conference 2.0 concept. The way conferences are
organized now is way too old fashioned. We have moved from the stone age to the
Cloud era but the way the conferences are held are still frozen in the stone age
ways. We still travel distances and gather around and talk about different
topics. Instead of Chisels, sickles and other stone age tools, we are attending
conferences with iPhone, Blackberrys, Netbooks, etc.. It is sad that even the
conferences on latest technologies are conducted in the old fashioned way. We
don’t even utilize the technologies we promote for our living.
Slowly, but steadily, we are seeing a shift in the way conferences are conducted and Cloudcamp has taken steps to follow what its members preach. Yes, there is a Cloudcamp to be conducted on Clouds this month. So far, Cloudcamps are held at various cities around the world from Seattle to Bangalore to Auckland. It gives an opportunity for local cloud proponents and users to get together and talk with each other. It was more like Private Clouds where the processing is confined to benefit only one tenant (local users). With the move to the clouds, Cloudcamp is presenting an opportunity to bring together cloud computing users, enthusiasts, evangelists, vendors, etc. to interact freely across the border without the constraints of human created country borders (much like public clouds). This is great and with the availability of low cost cloud based conference services like dimdim.com, we will soon be able to conduct many conferences in this way.
Coming back to the topic, the details of the Cloudcamp on Clouds can be found in this post by Reuven Cohen. You can register here. If you want to present in this unconference, you can add your topic here (It is a Google Groups Site and it is an open group). And, BTW, the Cloudcamp on Clouds will be held on Oct. 22nd 2009 between 11:30 AM and 3:30 PM EST. I hope to see you all there.