I’m a huge fan of Marketplace, but I was terribly disappointed by today’s report about unconferences.

Your report entirely missed the point of *why* people have unconferences in the first place… to share their passions with other, like-minded people in an open forum.

Along with several friends, I’ve organized BarCamp San Diego… which is an unconference that has broad support among San Diego tech community (with sponsors like Microsoft, Opera, DivX, Stage 6, etc.)

Our BarCamps have featured talks on topics like yoga, knitting, how to screenprint your own t-shirts, and the San Diego fires; not to mention many great technical talks (on topics from web design to video games.)

At the two BarCamps we’ve hosted thus far, the attendees spanned a broad demographic, from college students to professionals. None of them were like the goofy nerds you portrayed in your piece.

Oh, and… we had working wifi too.

…

Perhaps you can do a follow up story about BarCamp? BarCamp is a global unconference movement… and it’s spawned tons of related conferences such as the one your reporter visited.

Sincerely,
Patrick Crowley

[Note: I suck at blogging. I promise to blog more soon.]

This weekend will mark the first BarCamp conference in San Diego. With over 70 speakers already signed up, it’s looking to be a blast.

I’ve never organized a conference before, but I’ve had a lot of fun putting this together.

(You can see one of our t-shirt screens above. We’ll be screenprinting custom BarCamp t-shirts during the event.)

One of my Flickr photos just got published.

Rude World is a collection of roadsigns with suggestive language.

About a year ago, someone asked me if they could use this image of a roadsign. To be honest, I’d forgotten about it completely… until this cool book showed up.

I propose a new emoticon for the high five:

:5

While there is an existing high five emoticon (^5), it doesn’t truly capture the crazy, raise your hands in the air goodness of a true high five.

Viva la National High Five Day!

On Monday, I disconnected my cable service.

While the cable-box-is-your-DVR paradigm has served me well over the past five years, it just seems a bit silly now. I’m paying a pretty high premium for time-shifting (either in the near term: to pause live television, or in the long term: to record shows I’d like to watch later.)

Let’s look at the math for a second.

Cable is expensive

My cable bill is $130/month. That breaks down to $70 month for the cheapest digital cable/DVR combo, and another $60 for the high speed internet connection.

I’d love to ditch the internet connection. But all the other options suck. Dialup: are you fucking kidding me? DSL: too slow. Verizon FiOS: not available in San Diego yet.

Ok, so I’m stuck with internet. What about cable? How much am I spending per year? Well, math fans, $70 x 12 is $840. Ouch. I have to say this number was a bit shocking. Does cable really provide that much value to my life?

My high school economics professor used to always talk about opportunity cost (i.e. if you spent money on something else, what would it buy?)

So what could I buy with an extra $840 in my pocket?

• 42 DVDs (at $20 per DVD)
• 120 paperback books (at $7 per book)
• 420 television episodes from iTunes (at $2 per show)
• 840 songs from iTunes (at $1 per track)

Starting to make sense? Yeah? So let’s keep going!

The point of this exercise — the reason I cut the cord — is that I want to save money, so the more of that $840 I can keep, the better.

iTunes is now a real alternative

Here’s what I figured out. I watch 5 shows regularly. You know, the ones I can’t miss. They are… LOST, Battlestar Galactica, Studio 60, Heroes, and Dr. Who.

With the “season pass” feature from iTunes, I can subscribe to an entire season of episodes from a show for approximately $35. Too, they’re widescreen, near HD quality, and commercial free. (Another plus: if I’m traveling, I can take my shows with me or download them on the road.)

I don’t have one of the new AppleTV units, but that’s ok. My office is also my living room, and I’ve got a clear view of my 23in Cinema Display from the couch.

Now, of course, nothing is perfect. For me, the main drawbacks to this plan are not being able to watch live television or content that isn’t available on iTunes yet. But I can live with that.

So, five shows at $35 per season. That’s $175. I’d save $665 a year.

Not bad. But can we do better?

And it’s really cheap

I typically watch LOST and BSG with friends, so I probably don’t need a season pass for these. But I’ll probably still want to buy my favorite episodes, so let’s say that works out to $10 per show.

And it turns out Dr. Who isn’t available on iTunes yet (cheeky Brits!), so I’ll have to watch that with friends or maybe grab a torrent.

That cuts down the cost quite a bit.

• BSG: $10
• LOST: $10
• Heroes: $42
• Studio 60: $35
• Dr Who: ~

Total cost: $97. (About $743 less than I had planned to pay.)

The future is unbundled

A year of television for under 100 bucks. Not only is that it’s an awesome price, it really makes the business model of companies like TiVo seem tenuous.

DVR was magic five years ago, but we’re living in the future now.