Foo camper puzzler

I’ve been slow to sort through my Foo Camp notes, partly because it was such an overwhelming experience, and partly because so many of the people from Foo Camp are famous and prolific A-list bloggers. What can I possibly add to the story that they have already blogged about in such detail? Well, of course they have their stories and I have mine. And if you don’t keep up with A-list bloggers that went to Foo Camp, then just maybe you’ll hear about it here first.

The place to start is the name: Foo Camp. The “Foo” part is a kind of quasi-joke that stands for “Friends of O’Reilly” in a winking sort of way. But the “Camp” part is not a joke. We really did show up in Sebastopol, California and camp in the grassy area behind the O’Reilly Media headquarters. Just imagine pitching a tent in a business park and you’ll get the basic idea. Here is what it looked like. And, in the spirit of an un-conference, we really did throw together an improvised conference schedule on Friday night. And we really did drink at the proverbial Foo Bar. I’m sorry, I meant to say the literal Foo Bar.

Without getting too much more into it now, I will say that absolutely everyone there was smart and interesting. It was intimidating to meet so many fascinating and accomplished people, but it was positively alarming to come home and read more about their accomplishment online. I camped next to D. Richard Hipp, an open source developer from North Carolina. When I was poking around his web site after I got back, I came across this lovely puzzler page. I hope it wastes a lot of your time, because it sure burned up a lot of mine.