Last month in Portland, Oregon, approximately 250 people convened on Cubespace, a co-working space, for BarCamp Portland 1. BarCamp, if you aren't familiar, is an unconference - an Open and free event whose content and direction is decided by its participants. It's a great way for people to come together in the spirit of community to share knowledge, talk about technology (generally related to Web apps and Open Source), and generally geek out. Started two years ago in Palo Alto by Andy Smith, Chris Messina, Eris Stassi, Matt Mullenweg, Ryan King and Tantek Çelik (among others), it has grown quickly to an international scale. To date there have been BarCamps in Amsterdam, Austin, Shanghai, Milwaukee, Paris, San Francisco, Chennai, London, and many, many more places.

One of BarCamp Portland's organizers, and artisan of all things community, Dawn Foster, took a moment to answer some questions relating to BarCamp Portland and the BarCamp phenom in general. Read on!

DLS: What inspired you to take up organizing BarCamp Portland?

Dawn Foster: Last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to FooCamp, which is a yearly invite-only O'Reilly event that was the model for BarCamp. Spending the weekend having discussions with some very smart people from across the technology industry was an amazing experience, and I wanted to replicate that experience here in Portland. We have a great tech scene in Portland with so many users group meetings, but very little cross pollination between groups. I wanted to create a monthly meeting that brought a diverse group of techies together for networking and discussions about a variety of technologies. As I was talking to people about this idea, I learned that Raven Zachary was starting to plan BarCamp Portland. The two ideas were so similar that Raven and I decided to merge them into a monthly BarCamp Meetup that we would use to plan the BarCamp Portland event.

Last weekend at BarCamp Portland, I gave a brief talk on switching family and friends to Linux. I hear you asking, why would you want to do that? Well, for a number of reasons really: cost, principle, maintenance, all of the above, or any reason what so ever. In my case, my father's work PC was a constant source of trouble for him (and me). So, with his agreement (and my assistance), he made the switch to Ubuntu Linux. So far it's been a success, barring a few minor problems (printing envelopes from OpenOffice, for example). It might also be good to note that my own personal affinity for computers does not, to the best of my knowledge, come from Dad (thanks Mom!).

However, I don't want to give the whole story away. Instead I invite you dear readers to take a look at my presentation slides. Do you have family or friends that you have given thought to switching? Have you already switched someone? Let me know your experiences in the comments. I'd also enjoy any feedback or additional ideas that you may have.

If you live in the North East of the US, will be in the area, or just want to attend a podcasting Unconference, then Boston is the place to be the weekend after Labor Day. "PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style meetup..." is how the PodCamp Site describes the event.

Anybody can attend, you do not have to be a podcaster, so listeners are welcome, as well as anybody who wants to register and attend. It is free but you do not to go through the registration to get the event swag that will be there. The final venue is still undetermined, but they know it will be in the Boston area and accessible by public transportation to ease attendees getting to the event.

[Via Dave Winer's Blog]

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of open source blogging platform WordPress, has announced WordCamp, a one-day conference for WordPress users and developers. It's being held for the first time on August 5 in San Fancisco and is following the example of BarCamp, including "free BBQ for lunch, WordPress t-shirts, and a full day of both user and developer discussion." According to Mullenweg, fellow Wordpress developers Donncha and Podz will be on hand from Ireland and England, respectively. Having recently installed the latest version of WordPress on my personal blog and being impressed all over again, I'd love to go to WordCamp, but it probably isn't in the cards.