Fostering Cross Tribal Community in Seattle (parts 1 & 2) – Mind Camp 5

Posted by bryanzug - 2009/04/12

Here’s video I produced of a great discussion my pal Brian Dorsey facilitated on “Fostering Cross Tribal Community in Seattle” at Mind Camp 5 on November 22, 2008. We were gathered at Synapse Product Development in downtown Seattle (an incredible location). I’ve embedded parts 1 & 2 below.


Fostering Cross Tribal Community in Seattle (part 1)
From Mind Camp 5 from Bryan Zug on Vimeo.


Fostering Cross Tribal Community in Seattle (part 2)
From Mind Camp 5 from Bryan Zug on Vimeo.



Attencion! Camp — Starbuck vs. Samwise in a Fight (and what does that have to do with the Attention Economy?)

Posted by bryanzug - 2009/02/27

As I’m getting around to documenting some of the fun things I’ve gotten to do over the last year, this one was quite the blast. I updated my (Geek Fight * Attention Economy) talk with a new character — this time a woman who kicks serious ass.

At the very first BarCamp Seattle last June, we had a great turnout for “Starbuck vs. Samwise in a Fight (and what does that have to do with the attention economy)”. Here’s the session poster:

BarCampSeattle: Starbuck vs. Samwise in a fight (and what does that have to do with the attention economy?)

I’m not going to give away the thread of the discussion, because that makes it less fun if you ever get to drop in on one of these discussions — but I’ll tell you this, they are lively, fun, and get everyone to think.

I learn a ton every time I facilitate it.

Wanted to take a bit of time to note it because this theme of attention keeps coming up.

While at the Seattle Drupal User Group’s MiniCamp this last Saturday, Gregory Heller, Scott Falconer, Larry Swanson, and I began talking about how we need a camp about content that is tool independent and all about “signaling through the noise”.

Since “content” is such a boring word, I suggested an “Attention Camp“, which seemed to strike a chord.

Looking around for a domain, “attentioncamp.com” is being squatted — so I went with the next best things —

  • attencioncamp.com (we could all use a little revolucion! no?)
  • attncamp.com (140 char headline writing seems to be seeping into my thinking)

So we’ll see — I’m pinging possible partners in crime to see if this thing has legs. If you are interested, tweet me and join the discussion.



Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/11/21

Kendall Guillemette and I are gonna get a discussion session together at Seattle Mind Camp tomorrow on sustainable work/life patterns. We’re calling it “Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns (…is Calacanis a Saint? Something Else?)”.

See flier below. Some seeds for the discussion —

  • How do you structure your work?
  • Is banking on a buyout like saying, “I’m gonna play in the NBA?”
  • What’re your successes?
  • Your epic fails?

Also cool — we plan to use an iPhone audio meter to insta-poll the crowd on what we should talk about (if it’s a decent size).

Special shout out to all those who need a refresher on “All Your Base Are Belong to Us”.

Seattle Mind Camp 5: Sustainable Work/Life Patterns



Great Primer on Open Source Folkways

Posted by bryanzug - 2007/03/15

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that two good friends of mine here in Seattle were cross posting on their blogs about Flash/Flex momentum and how a healthy open source governance structure might be helpful in pushing momentum even further.

My natural question — have you guys met face to face? Wanna grab some food?

So last night I met Ted Leung and Ryan Stewart for dinner down at Ivar’s on the waterfront. Great time, great view, great conversation.

Though Ted and I both work in the tech industry and have been friends since Mind Camp 1.0, I had never heard him talk about his long history with open source communities and governance (Apache, et al).

All I can say is that I learned a ton about that and distributed project/team folkways in general.

Great, great evening.



George Budabin passes, receives, and goes long

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/12/21

My friend Andru Edwards’ dad died this week. For those that don’t know, Andru is a primary instigator for Seattle Mind Camp — a gathering near and dear to me.

In this post about George Budabin, Andru recounts how George and his wife adopted him when he was a NYC 16 year old — and how George’s unflappable intentionality of love and male leadership toward Andru changed everything.

I didn’t know Andru was adopted until I read that — and must say that I was moved by the simple story of how George invested the ‘venture capital’ at his disposal.

This is one of the reasons I love the professional and human sides of blogging so much — you never know the things you’ll learn and how many interesting stories are sitting right under your nose.

On the day you and I expire, may we leave a legacy that passes, receives, and goes as long as that of George Budabin.



Mind Camp 3.0 Video

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/11/14

I’m in the process of uploading video I shot at Mind Camp 3.0 here in Seattle last weekend. So far I’ve uploaded two video files from the ‘Discovery Slam‘ that Scott Berkun and I hosted.

From that session, Ben Livingston’s amazing ‘Blade of Grass Beatbox’ is at —

http://www.blip.tv/file/101016


Click To Play

The full discovery slam is here —

http://www.blip.tv/file/101030

Stay tuned for other sessions I’ll be uploading my raw video for — they are — 

<li><a href="http://blog.stewtopia.com/2006/11/13/mindcamp-30/">Randy Stewart's</a> Fun Web Session</li>

<li>The PhraseTrain session (forgot to get the session leaders name on that one -- if anyone has it, please shoot it to me).</li>
<li>

Intros — these will be up sometime next week — had to shoot those to tape and they will require a bit more turnaround time.

Will let you all know when these are ready.

Some caveats — full sessions are raw footage, so you may have to forward a minute or so at the beginning — also was playing around with shooting straight to disk in a web ready format for super quick turnaround on these sessions, so the video is a little bit too compressed for my taste — will be switching codecs/formats a little next time around.

Also — catching discussion audio is hard because nobody likes to use a mic — but things seem audible for the most part in the discussion sessions I shot — please let me know what you think once they are posted.



Research survey on tagging

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/05/04

From the Ma.gnolia newsletter comes a call to participate in a research survey on tagging via ma.gnolia.com —

Tell Baruch College Why You Use Ma.gnolia Tagging is an active topic in academics these days, and the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College in New York city would like your help in their research. The faculty of Statistics and Computer Information Systems are conducting a 10-15 minute survey about your experience with Ma.gnolia. The results will aid developers of all tagging websites create a better experience for you. The survey is anonymous and can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=450142014755. Please note that Ma.gnolia is not affiliated with this independent survey, and no individual information will be shared or published.

After a few Mind Camp 2.0 discussions on tagging last weekend, I’m more interested than ever on getting ahold of some good research telling us why users use these services — and where we can find concrete ROI’s with them.

Right now, there seems to be general agreement that tagging and folksonomies are useful (except for Dave anyway, who, at Mind Camp, made some really good points about tagging being an early adopter edge case activity that regular folks will likely never do — consistently anyway).

My thing about all of these discussions that advocate things like tagging or informal learning tools like blogs/wiki’s is that they are very anecdotal. Am looking forward to some research that will help us separate fact from fiction.



Mind Camp 2.0 Video

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/05/02

Dave Geller of WhatCounts quickly turned around this really cool Mind Camp 2.0 video that really captures the vibe — I’m on the road until late Thursday, so until I can write up my highlights, check it out and pass it around.



Mind Camp 2.0 Session: The Good Thing Rapid Discovery Slam

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/04/27

UPDATE: We’ve added a sign up the session’s wiki page. If you are an MC2’er, add your name. Don’t be shy — bring something interesting to you — odds are it’ll be interesting to the rest of us as well.

Will be at Mind Camp 2.0 this weekend facilitating a session with Scott Berkun. We are calling it the “The Good Thing Rapid Discovery Slam”. Here’s the details.

The Good Thing Rapid Discovery Slam Bring something short and interesting to read or show — something that has inspired you (or been caused as a result of you being inspired). Can be original or someone else’s work. Bring stuff from every genre — the blogosphere, novels, poetry, tech, business, software/product design, whatever. Watch and listen to things that are inspiring and provoking minds from your tribe. Each contributor will have 2 minutes at the helm. Bring various things to share in case there’s time to do multiple rounds. We will have a projector and audio hookups for multimedia. You need to bring the hardware for playing and any non-standard connectors. Count on standard monitor connectors and RCA for video in, as well as stereo 1/8 inch audio or RCA jacks for audio. We will also have an iPod AV cable with RCA video and audio connections.

I think we’re going to try and do it sometime on Saturday night after dinner – probably around the 8:00 time slot. Visit the session and discussion sections on the Mind Camp wiki .

This is an idea I brainstormed for Mind Camp 1.0 back in November 2005 but did not get around to doing because I did my other session on “Neo vs. Samwise in a fight? (And what does this have to do with the attention economy…”

As Mind Camp 2.0 (now sold out) geared up, folks (Stuart Maxwell in particular) raised the kernel of this idea again as a quintessential Mind Camp meme.

Scott and I had talked about similar ideas since Mind Camp 1.0 — possibly around the idea of gathering people to do this and a meal once every month or two — sort of like a geek dinner with wider scope.

If this goes well, let’s chat to see if people would be interested in doing this a couple of times between camps.



Mind Camp 2.0

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/04/07

Mind Camp 2.0 registration opened this AM. Event is Saturday April 29-30 in West Seattle. It’s going to run $25 a head this time to help cover costs.

Get in quick if you want to go — space went fast last time. Register at —

http://www.mollyguard.com/event/28039868

From the email announcement —

Seattle Mind Camp 2.0 Begins: Apr 29, 2006 at 11:00 am Ends: Apr 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm Location: Youngstown Cultural Arts Center; 4408 Delridge Way SW; Seattle, WA 98106 It’s that time again… Seattle Mind Camp is a self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnight Seattle confab. What happens when you put 200 of Seattle’s smartest people in a creative environment for 24 hours? We’re not sure either, but we’d like to find out. It’s time to meet and connect with those involved in the interesting projects going on in Seattle.