Whoever comes are the right people

There was some worry at Recent Changes Camp late today that it hadn't been planned soon enough or firmly enough, and it was probably justified. Still, Recent Changes Camp happened, and it seems to me that the right people came. It was a smaller group, so a whole bunch of food went to another conference tomorrow and a food bank tonight. Still, the smaller group had a certain intensity and focus. We were who were there, so we'd better find a purpose.

I'm not sure that we produced any one thing. It was a very shapeless conference, governed loosely by a masking-tape schedule on a wall in the courtyard. I don't think there are even any one coherent set of notes, save perhaps for the batch of photos uploaded on Commons.

It was, I think, in that very openness and disorder that this weekend had its greatest strength. It's a mixed-up mess, and that means that people and ideas that might otherwise not meet each other, did. They met around loose themes and grew out organically from there.

Some sessions started with a prepared presentation or statement, but these invariably set the stage for open discussions in more of a forum style. Some hovered more or less around a given or stated topic; others strayed wildly and wonderfully. Pretty much all of them blossomed.

It was a small enough group, too, to put faces with names, to get nearly all of the names, and to connect at an individual level. There is a power in that, too, especially starting with a shared (but diverse) understanding of what this thing is that is called a wiki.

Perhaps someone made a connection, someone met someone else, someone put words to ideas or names to faces they already knew.

Perhaps, we just got together and had fun.