A big thank you goes to TrenchMice for once again stepping up to the plate and sponsoring Mind Camp 5.0 - turns out, they are the first company to do so, and for that, we are grateful. TrenchMice is a community forum that gives you opinions, news, and rumors about companies, bosses, and employers.  It’s the place to safely speak your mind when a company does something brilliant, or brilliantly moronic.  And where you can find out the inside story about a company before you accept their job offer.

The site’s content comes from visitors, blogs, and other web sources. Members’ posts can be anonymous.

TrenchMice.com is proud to sponsor Mind Camp 5.0!  Visit TrenchMice for more info.

Read More | TrenchMice

Seattle Mind Camp 4.0 starts in just 7 hours, so we wanted to make sure that anyone and everyone heading to the event had the pertinent information in order to make it there for a day full of awesome. The event takes place at the Tukwila Community Center, located at:

12424 42nd Ave S
Tukwila, WA 98168
(206) 768-2822

If you want to map some directions, use the link below.

Read More | Directions to Mind Camp 4.0

We are happy to announce that AMD has stepped in as the Mind Camp 4.0 Platinum Sponsor.

AMD is the customer-centric innovation company, a processing powerhouse that offers smarter choices for its customers and makes technology more accessible to the world. AMD is focused on best meeting the needs of leading computing, wireless and consumer electronics companies to help them deliver high-performance, energy-efficient and visually realistic solutions.

Read More | AMD

A big “Thank You” to Lockergnome for supporting Seattle Mind Camp 4.0 as a Gold Sponsor:

To inform, empower, and entertain - Lockergnome is here as a resource for people who are curious about the world of technology around them. Novices and experts are welcome to explore our ever-growing list of resources. Our contributors are full of passion. We will do our best to keep you informed on a daily basis. We will share your feedback, suggestions, and stories with the rest of our community whenever and wherever possible. If you seek knowledge, if you seek professional growth, if you seek information that’s presented in a personal voice… you’re home with Lockergnome.

Read More | Gnomedex

Another great company has jumped on board to help support Seattle Mind Camp 4.0 - this time, it’s Parallels, Inc. We are sure that many of our attendees are familiar with Parallels, but if you aren’t, here’s a synopsis:

Parallels, Inc., an SWsoft company, builds powerful, user-friendly, cost-effective server and workstation virtualization solutions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. The company is best known for its Parallels Desktop for Mac product, which was the first solution to allow Mac and Windows applications to run side-by-side, at the same time, on any Intel-powered Mac.  The product’s newest version, Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, is a significant upgrade to the award-winning desktop virtualization product that already powers more than half a million Macs worldwide. Since its launch one year ago, Parallels Desktop for Mac has been recognized with MacWorld Magazine’s “Editor’s Choice” Award (the “Eddy”), PC World Magazine’s “Innovation of the Year” Award, and was the first non-Apple product to ever win the MacWorld Magazine Reader’s Choice Award. Parallels Desktop for Mac was also named “Best in Show” at the 2007 MacWorld Expo and in May 2007 was ranked #6 and a “Reader Favorite” on PC World Magazine’s “100 Best Products of 2007” list.

The guys from Parallels will be on hand to talk about their product, and virtualization in general.

Read More | Parallels

Zillow has just jumped in as a Mind Camp 4.0 sponsor. A big thank you to the team over there for supporting our cause.

Zillow.com is an online real estate community where homeowners, buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals can find and share vital information about homes, for free. Launched in early 2006 with Zestimate values and data on millions of U.S. homes, Zillow has since “opened up” the site to community input, data and dialogue, including Home Q&A.  Zillow’s goal is to help people become smarter about real estate – what homes are worth, what’s for sale, and what local experts have to say about real estate and individual homes. We have information on over 70 million U.S. homes, and growing.

• Zillow is designed as a research tool – giving people free and easy access to an enormous amount real estate information and data, from public records, Zillow’s statisticians and the Zillow community.
• Our data is free and anonymous – consumers don’t have to register or give us any personal information to view.
• Zillow will continue to add services, information and tools to help people become smarter about buying and selling homes.

Zillow is actively hiring for Sales, Development, Program Management and Test.  Feel free to check out their current openings.

Read More | Zillow

We have another sponsor signed up and on board for Seattle Mind Camp 4.0. We want to thank Federated Media, Gear Live’s advertising partner, for jumping on board as a sponsor for the event. In previous events, the topic of monetization of Internet content has come up repeatedly. Federated Media will have a couple of people on-hand at Mind Camp to do a session or two on this very subject. More about FM:

At Federated Media Publishing, we believe great voices attract great audiences. We’re in the business of supporting those voices by connecting them to great marketers, as well as providing a suite of services that lets authors focus on what they do best: making compelling media. We’re proud to represent Andru Edwards of Gear Live and dozens of other outstanding authors whose sites cater to cultural influencers, technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders.

Read More | Federated Media

We wanted to take a moment to thank Eyejot for jumping on board as our first Premium Sponsor for Seattle Mind Camp 4.0. If you haven’t given it a try yet, fire up your webcam and hit Eyejot for a free video messaging account:

Eyejot is a comprehensive, client-free, video-messaging platform which enables people to easily send and receive video messages from within their existing internet browsing environment, without the need to download or install any additional software. Eyejot marries the best of what email and live video chat have to offer in a way that is easy to use and understand. The video aspect of Eyejot ensures that messages are delivered with the energy and tone that the sender intended. The email-like features allow Eyejot to deliver messages even when the recipients are away and offline. And, the recipient can access their Eyejot messages from any web browser, anywhere - even on their cell phones and iPods.

Read More | Eyejot

We want to throw out a few words of appreciation to TrenchMice, one of our Mind Camp 4.0 sponsors. TrenchMice is a community-moderated forum that gives you “Insight from the Trenches” - what’s really going on in the companies around you. It’s the place to speak your mind when your company did something brilliant, or brilliantly moronic. Warn someone off, or give your place credit for having good sense.

The content comes from the members, blogs, and other web sources. Members’ posts can be anonymous.

TrenchMice.com is proud to sponsor Mind Camp 4.0, and they’re giving free two-month Gold memberships to MindCampers!

A big “Thank You” goes out to the Jim and Tris over at One by One Media, as they are our first Gold sponsor for Seattle Mind Camp 4.0:

One By One Media, run by Jim Turner and Tris Hussey, is a full-service, turn-key blog and social media consultancy.  We specialize in setting up blogs for businesses, blogosphere monitoring, and are the largest professional blogging agency on the Blogosphere.  OBO can set up your blog and have a professional, reliable, and seasoned blogger blog on your industry vertical.

Read More | One By One Media

Previous Seattle Mind Camp attendees have already started receiving emails about the next event, Seattle Mind Camp 4.0. We have just announced the date and venue of the event. The next Seattle Mind Camp even takes place on July 1, 2007 at the Tukwila Community Center. Tickets are already on sale, so be sure to grab one before they are gone. Discounted early bird tickets are available.

Mark your calendars and save the date. We will be opening up about half of our tickets for early purchase at a discount. Start spreading the word and letting people know about Mind Camp 4.0.

A couple of things to note when registering:

• We need your FULL, REAL address. We will be mailing out tickets, and if we don’t have yoru address, we can’t mail yours.
• Double-check the spelling of your name. If you make a typo in your name, that same typo will be on your badge.
• List a corporate affiliation ONLY if you want it printed on your badge. Otherwise, put your website, blog, or whatever else you want to appear on your badge.

Sponsors? We are looking for you - contact us if you are interested in helping make Mind Camp 4.0 happen.

Mind Camp is all about participation and networking - checking out what cool projects people are working on, and getting a chance to show off your own work, or to discuss your crazy off-the-wall ideas. We want to encourage everyone, therefore, to Bring Stuff. If you have a cool gadget you want to show off, bring it. If you’ve a website that you want to get some eyeballs on, bring your laptop (we’re working hard to make sure wireless will be readily available). Even if it’s just a cool book or piece of video, or anything that might spark an interesting conversation, bring it with you. We want everyone engaged and active and helping us out to make sure Mind Camp 3 blows the socks off of the last two. See you Saturday!

Get ‘em while they’re hot!  The Seattle Mind Camp 3.0 Session Candidate Organizer Forms are here!  If you’re planning on organizing a session this weekend, be sure to download the form, fill it out, and bring it with you to Mind Camp.  And, if you haven’t already, please read over the new session selection process.

This post has been updated since it was originally posted on April 27, 2006.
Seattle Mind Camp 3.0 is coming up fast.  For those of you who aren’t sure what to expect, this guide will hopefully give you a bit of an orientation.  Even you Mind Camp veterans might want to look over the details, here, as a few things have changed this time around.  Pick us up after the jump for the 411 on SMC3.

Continue reading "Getting ready for Seattle Mind Camp - The Practical Guide"

This is an updated version of a post originally published on April 28, 2006

Most of you who have previously attended Seattle Mind Camp understand the free-form nature of the beast.  However, many of you will be joining us for the first time, and I wanted to try to prepare you for the kind of event you’re going to encounter.  Mind Camp is not a traditional type of gathering, and the success of the event depends in large part on the willingness of the participants to wrestle the chaotic mess into order.

Seattle Mind Camp is an “unconference,” in the style of Bar Camp or Foo Camp.  The idea of an unconference has been promulgated by Dave Winer, among others.  As I understand it, Winer’s particular insight was that, for any conference panel discussion, you could take any random group of people out of the audience, replace the panel onstage with that random group, and have an equally enlightening and worthwhile session.  The Mind Camp experience seeks to leverage that idea by completely doing away with a pre-planned program of speakers. The day’s sessions will be designed by the attendees and the schedule will be created by the attendees themselves.  (More after the jump...)

Continue reading "Getting ready for Seattle Mind Camp - The Philosophical Guide"

Our friends over at Seattle’s hottest Social Discovery service, Blue Dot, have jumped into the sponsorship pool as a Gold sponsor.

Blue Dot, Inc., is a Seattle-based company whose mission is to help people stay connected with their friends, wherever they are, whenever they want. Through a new type of communication described as Social Discovery®, Blue Dot’s free Web site allows users to find, save and share interesting Web content with friends and family. The company’s technology lets users quickly communicate and share information on a wide range of topics in a way that can be easily incorporated into their daily activities.

Read More | Blue Dot

Sxip has signed on to provide badge-holders and lanyards for Seattle Mind Camp 3.0, so that means we will have those nice, business card holding, pen holding, name tag displaying badge holders this time around. Good times.

Sxip Identity is the market leader for Identity 2.0, an internet-scale approach to identity and access management that is simple, secure and open.  For the enterprise market, Sxip Access delivers delegated authentication and access control for on-demand, software-as-a-service applications, which mitigates provisioning risk and significantly improves user experience.  For websites Sxip has developed Whobar, an open source package for web developers, which enables users to easily register and login to a website using their choice of emerging identity protocols, such as CardSpace, i-names, and OpenID.  For blogs, Sxore enables authentic conversations by preventing spam and bringing identity and reputation to the blogosphere.  See sxip.com for more info.

Read More | Sxip

Josh Hallett has put together a very useful post titled ”How to Blog a Conference.” He lists the hardware and software tools you’ll need, as well as team strategy for getting the best coverage.  Having done some live blogging in the past for various events, I can tell you that this would have been a nice checklist to have before I got started.

We’d love to encourage as much blog and podcast coverage as possible from the floor of Mind Camp 3.0.  If you’re thinking about using Josh’s techniques, let us know about it, would you?  And Josh would appreciate some feedback as well.

Note: Some of you may have read this already when I posted it to the Seattle Mind Camp mailing list.  I wanted to repeat it here, in case there’s anyone who’s not on that list yet.

On behalf of the Seattle Mind Camp Planning Committee, I’m pleased to announce that we’re planning some significant changes to the session selection process for Mind Camp 3.0.  The Planning Committee has tried to address some of the challenges of the previous method of having everyone sign up on the Session Grid at once, while retaining the spontaneity and egalitarian nature of that process.  We hope this new process will have the benefit of, among other things, helping us to assign rooms of appropriate size to the more popular sessions, and to otherwise manage resources more efficiently.

For the impatient, here’s the quick bottom line:  keep an eye on this blog for the release of the Session Organizer Candidate Form.  You’ll want to download that and bring it with you on the 11th, so that you can submit your session for consideration BEFORE opening remarks.  Sessions will be selected by a combination of popular vote and lottery; rooms and times will be assigned by the Planning Committee.

Details after the jump:

Continue reading "Session Selection Process for Seattle Mind Camp 3.0"

With just a few weeks left until the event, the race is on to grab a Mind Camp 3.0 ticket. As of this writing, we have 14 more spots left for those who want to be a part of the Seattle Mind Camp experience. I expect those will be snatched up before the end of the week. That said, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues about the event if you think they would dig our vibe. Also, be sure to hit the wiki to start planning the things you want to do this time around.