David Wees's blog

We are planning on meeting this coming Saturday. We need to meet before the year ends so we can start the new year with some momentum.

As per @millerblair's suggestion, we can meet at the Vsev-Joyeaux Cafe (see map here) at 9:00am this coming Saturday, December 19th. I'll make sure to hang out for at least 3 hours as I am sure some people will not be able to make exactly 9am and may be late.

Most of the professional development I've done in my career has been driven by an organization of some sort. The purposes of the professional development and the types of sessions offered have been strictly controlled and I've been forced to go through and choose topics from the list of offerings which are either the most interesting to me, or as often happens, the least boring sessions.

As the video below explains, Wikipedia defines an unconference as:

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

Watch the video below for #EdcampPhilly which explains what an unconference is, and describes a little bit of what would happen at an unconference.

As you will probably notice, I am still working on this website. I've just redesigned the logo, using Lorenzo Ibarra's (a student at Camden County Technical Schools) design as a base.

If you think of other features we need, sign up and let me know. I've got a lot of flexibility over what this website looks like. Thanks should go to Keith Rispin for hosting this website and purchasing the domain for our use.

Here's a video @mritzius shared with me through Twitter. It describes how Edcamp Philly was run and is essentially advertising what an Edcamp looks like when it is being run. Watch it so you can get an idea of what we hope Edcamp Vancouver will look like.

Ed Camp from True Life Media on Vimeo.

If you are hoping to connect with Edcamp Vancouver, you can do so through our new Twitter account @edcampvancouver. We will also be using the hashtag #edcampvan as our official hashtag for any Edcamp Vancouver sessions we run.

One immediate thing we need to do is to decide upon a date, and start planning for a venue. Once we have this in place, we can start looking for sponsorship for our event as our goal is to make the event completely free to attend.

Thanks to those of you who have signed up already, we'll be leaning on your support to help make this event a reality.

We are currently brainstorming and coming up with ideas for EdCamp Vancouver. Our objective is to create a version of #Edcamp which will be hosted in Vancouver. We haven't picked a date yet, or a location, etc... as we are still in very early planning stages.

An Edcamp is a conference which follows the Barcamp model. No one is merely a participant at the Edcamp, everyone is a presenter, everyone shares their expertise, and everyone learns together.