Hong Kong BarCamp
On Saturday I attended the Hong Kong BarCamp. This was the first Barcamp I have attended and it blew me away. Here were 200-odd people, brought together on their own volition to share and learn.
On-line communities are easy to subscribe to, requiring minimal effort to participate. Being physically present requires more commitment and effort. The content, as typical of Barcamps, was generally technical. It asks the question, is there something inherently social and altruistic about being a geek? Do other industry horizontals have such a rich picking of community events? Could there be an accountancy barcamp, or a marketing barcamp? And what about the verticals? Could there be a banking barcamp? And what about collaboration on projects for the common good? Geeks get together to opensource. When will the (to pick on a vertical) accountants get together to build an opensource offering?
I think yes for marketing and no (to some degree) for accountancy. When people are inventing and creating things, there is a lot of benefit to exchanging ideas. When accountants come up with radical new ideas for reporting your taxes, they tend to end up in prison. That said, there are a lot of events and such for accountants around here, and they are focused on communicating changes in rules and such, providing interpretation and things like that.