BIL is…an open, self-organizing, emergent, and anarchic science and technology conference.Nobody is in charge.

If you want to come, just show up.

If you have an idea to spread, start talking.

If someone is saying something interesting, stop and listen.

This free, two-day meeting of “minds set free” will be happening March 1-2, 2008 in Monterey, CA (you can register on the wiki). It’s bittersweet that the open house at my library is on March 1, because even if I could wrangle the plane ticket to get out there, I wouldn’t be able to attend.

If you can get out there — librarians in the area should road trip together! — it should be awesome. I think our profession could learn a little about the benefits of the occasional healthy serving of organized chaos with a dash of anarchy thrown in for good measure. The whole thing is basically a BarCamp on steroids, and I can’t wait to read the blog posts and Tweets.

This is also an excellent example of taking a big, expensive concept conference (in this case, TED, which is six grand a head; if you use Miro, you can subscribe to the TEDTalks channel), and making it affordable as well as accessible. Imagine what you could do on a local level just by inviting local Thought Stars to your library for a day, an afternoon, an evening.

So, if you head out there, let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the experience.

© Andrea for LibraryTechtonics, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: barcamp, BIL, tedtalks, unconference

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