OSCON comes to Europe. The O’Reilly conference on Open Source software takes place in Amsterdam, this Monday ’till Thursday. Participants from around the world have been flying in in the past days.

 

 

More interesting to me however is the BarCamp that will take place directly after the conference. Starting Thursday after Cory Doctorows closing key note at OSCON, coders, developers, thinkers, creatives and others from different backgrounds will get together until midnight Friday, to discuss, create and present new ideas. I am planning on joining them Friday for at least part of the day at the PostCS building near Amsterdam Central Station. More info on BarCamp Amsterdam in the BarCamp wiki.

 

Apart from this being a very good opportunity to meet fellow blogger Roland Tanglao from Vancouver face to face again, I look forward to having conversations about how create flow between different social software tools, p2p social networking tools, and bringing together the infoscape that is the internet and the geographical landscape we move around in.

 

In true unconferencing fashion, organizing this event started mere weeks ago. Mediamatic donated their space, after several community members in the Netherlands scouted out possible locations. More “common” venues fell off, because they expected bookings at least 6 months in advance. Different business models.

 

Oh and if you’re going to OSCON and/or BarCamp: informal get-together over drinks tonight at 9 p.m. in Café de Jaren in Amsterdam. (Can’t make it there myself though)