What is Foo Camp?
FOO Camp is to BarCamp as FOO is to Bar — deeply intertwined. FOO Camp started as a joke by O’Reilly VP of Corporate Communications Sara Winge that she always wanted to have a party at one of our conferences for special “Friends Of O’Reilly” that would prominently feature a “FOO Bar.” In 2003, in a brainstorming session, Sara and I decided to riff on this idea, and hold a special kind of “unconference” at O’Reilly. We’d invite all the people who didn’t work for us but had done a lot for us over the years — writing books, speaking at conferences, acting as our eyes and ears in various communities — to the O’Reilly campus for a weekend campout and get together. We also invited a bunch of people we admired and had always wanted to meet. If people couldn’t make it, they were allowed to nominate someone to come in their stead. The format we came up someone christened “the wiki of conferences.” On Friday night, we give everyone three words (plus their name and company) to introduce themse
The Foo in the term Foo Camp is an acronym for Friends of O’Reilly, and is the brainchild of O’Reilly Media’s head, Tim O’Reilly, and his Vice President, Sara Winge. O’Reilly Media humbly began as a technical writing firm in the 1970s, and has now morphed into an industry giant, publishing books and web sites on a variety of computer related topics. The idea for the camp came about after the dot com bust, and is an invitation only event held for the top hackers (computer experts) in the country. What makes Foo Camp interesting, aside from its invitation only status, is that there is no specific agenda until participants arrive. Invitees then have to create a plan on Friday night as to what lectures, demonstrations, and/or forums/discussions will take place. For O’Reilly Media, part of the goal is to get some of the best minds in the computer and Internet industry together to solve problems (like trying to reduce spam mail). Since 2003 when the first Foo Camp was held, other industry pr
