I don’t know about other BarCamps, but in LA the community core seems to be very hacker-based, in most senses of the word hacker. You know the Gibson quote “The street finds its own uses for things”? Well, BarCampLA is mostly made up of that street. People using technologies in ways that weren’t quite what they were designed for.

From Jay Bushman of the Loose-Fish Project telling stories via Twitter and Wikis to Dan Kaminsky breaking languages with language, from hi-rez cameras revealing the secret lives of automobile dashboards to genetic algorithms preparing to take over the world, BarCampers are finding new uses for lots of things.

Not to mention things like FlickrWall. Take a spare cell phone, combine with a prepaid sms card, a laptop, and a projector. Project the phone number on the wall and allow barcampers to text message Flickr tags to the system that then retrieves and projects images with those tags. Watch as people quickly try to wash out someone’s “goatse” tag with “puppies” or “unicorns”. It’s a lot more social than you’d think, with a fun ebb and flow.

This was my second BarCamp, and both times I’ve come out refreshed and inspired. Making new connections between various technologies and thinking up new possibilites. Sign me up for the next one, and I might even head down to San Diego for their BarCamp in May!

Anyway, some random impressions from Day 1:

Small-scale social networks can be used for small-scale social pressure. Thought from the lifehacking presentation. We’ve always seen this, of course, the idea that telling your friends you’re going to do something makes you more likely to do it. But something about the idea of “publishing” that same statement, in however small a way…that seems even more motivating.

Is the mystery still essential for making an ARG compelling? Or can you do without puzzles? Of course, good storytelling always creates its own mysteries.

Marketing is all that matters now. I’ve said below this is true for the small filmmaker before. But it’s also true for the major studios (and record labels). They don’t really want to be in distribution any more than is absolutely necessary. They only want to be in production insofar as production transfers investor monies into studio pockets. But if they lost it, they would survive. But they can’t lose marketing. That’s the core competency, and in the end it’s the only one that matters. (Yes, quality of product matters, but that’s another topic).

Everyone wants a true metaverse, but no one wants to build it. Where’s the business model that works? So much of a metaverse has to be user generated if it’s going to be useful…

More on day 2 tomorrow.