Toronto Transit Camp — Follow-up #1

Now that’s how you end an unconference!. Photo courtesy of Michael Glenn; click the picture to see the original on Flickr.

Yesterday’s unconference, Toronto Transit Camp, was a success. In spite of outdoor temperatures of sixteen below zero — and indoor temperatures around freezing (as we found out, the Gladstone Hotel’s big ballroom/bar isn’t insulated or heated terribly well), we had a great turnout: the hundred or so people who signed up, plus the media and a surprisingly large number of TTC executives, including TTC chair Adam Giambrone, city councillor Joe Mihevc and the TTC’s Marketing director (her names escapes me at the moment — could someone let me know in the comments, please?)

An interesting note: originally, Adam told us that he’d only be able to attend for a short bit of Toronto Transit Camp, but he and the other TTC folk were so struck by the passion, ingenuity and creativity of everyone there that hey ended up staying for the whole thing. My thanks to the TTC folks for knowing a good thing when they see it, and my thanks to all of you who came and participated for making that good thing they saw!

For those of you who missed the news report on last night’s broadcast of CityNews, it’s been posted online, complete with video. My kudos to co-organizer Jay Goldman, who did an excellent job explaining what we’re all about. I have to salute him with a filet mignon on a flaming sword for the line that explains that we’d rather the event be about generating ideas than be a bitch-fest: “This is not a complaints line; it’s a solutions playground.”

The day started with a special session that I led, which was called BarCamp 101, which was meant for the attendees who were new to the concept of unconferences and specifically unconferences following the BarCamp model. My presentation was based on an essay I posted to this blog last year: BarCamp Explained.

Some parts of the schedule had been predetermined, with a good chunk of the afternoon set aside for the Design Slam — a design brainstorming session in which people form teams and attempt to come up with interesting yet practical design solutions in a relatively short period of time. However, since BarCamp-style unconferences are supposed to be attendee-driven, we devoted the first major gathering of the day to getting proposals for discussion topics from the participants. Anyone could suggest a discussion topic and stake out a space or room and time slot in which to hold it. Implicit in making the suggestion is that if you make a suggestion for a discussion, you must lead that discussion. There’s also an understanding that all discussions should be documented, with the documentation ended up on the Toronto Transit Camp wiki.

(In case you’re wondering, a wiki is a collaboratively document on the web; you read it on the web, and it can be edited using a specific web page. Wikipedia, the collaboratively-written online encyclopedia, is probably the best-known example.)

Work calls, so I’ll write more about Toronto Transit Camp later. In the meantime, here are some links about it that you might want to check out:

• David Crow: The Future Will be Wikified
• Mark Kuznicki: Toronto Transit Camp: “Trojan Pony”
• Julia Breckenreid: Results of Toronto Transit Camp
• Flickr photos tagged with torontotransitcamp

Once again, I’d like to thank everyone who gave up their Sunday to participate. Events like this are only as good as the attendees, and judging from the event, you were terrific!