About Wintercamp: In March 2009 the Institute of Network Cultures brought 12 networks to Amsterdam for a week of getting things done. The aim of Winter Camp was to connect the virtual with the real in order to find out how distributed social networks can collaborate more effectively.

*my Blender article is mistakenly attributed to Marijn

More posts from me and the other Wintercamp bloggers are on the site.

The group focused very granularly on topics such as the MVC model for Blender, and how they should handle default keymapping in the case of users that have international keyboards. And while these discussions seem to be relevant for future releases of Blender, even the group admitted to me that the topics covered at this workshop are of much more interest to the developers and not for the end-user.

I had a chance on Day 3 to follow up with Blender members Campbell Barton and Brecht Van Lommel regarding Blender and their thoughts on Winter Camp. When I asked them about Blender’s competition they responded very slowly as if it wasn’t something that they’d thought much about. “We’re not really competing with anyone”, said Lommel. The guys agreed that Blender’s success had grown large enough to keep the project moving along – as well as keeping them employed – so they don’t have to worry whether “Hollywood” is paying attention or not.

“An amateur could see something like Lord of The Rings and say, ‘hey, I need to go out and get the same expensive software if I want to be serious about 3D design’, but the truth is they probably won’t use all of the complex functions”, they exaplained. Therefore, Blender’s target audience is the low-to-mid level 3D designer. Also, it is especially useful for high schools and colleges that want to offer 3D modeling courses, without the pricey overhead to afford a high-end software package.

After sitting in on meetings with five of the networks here at Winter Camp the difference between the technical groups like Blender and the more theoretical groups was striking. Blender, for instance, has a concrete goal that is almost tangible and therefore within the group there has been little to no discussion about the group’s identity or “hierarchy”. Barton talked about his experience at the plenary session, “Maybe I don’t understand the abstract talks we’re having at these meetings or if it doesn’t so much apply to Blender. We’ve been working well together for a few years now, and I’m not sure how useful it is for us to think…ok well each of us are nodes, and so-and-so here is our network diagram.” In the case of Blender, an abstract discussion on Blender’s own network structure may be more beneficial to the other networks here at Winter Camp hoping to learn about how a successful network operates. As one of my colleagues here commented, “It seems like the groups that are confused about their goals and identity are having the most trouble collaborating this week, while groups like Blender and GOTO10 are too busy to worry about it.”

Read the original post on the Winter Camp site

At first FD began by posting orange sticky-notes to the board – each with a different theme for discussion. Twenty sticky-notes later they decided they would give a brief introduction and then split into separate discussion groups. Since FD is a multi-dimensional network, by breaking into smaller groups they could better target the parts of the Winter Camp audience that share an interest in collaborative writing, education, the use of video for storytelling etc. In line with the FD’s general philosophy, they “hope to use the power of open-space as a meeting tool.”

FD wants to make clear that they are an inclusive network – “everyone is invited: artists, writers, tech people…” On Day 4 they will ask the audience to engage and raise questions. I’m enthusiastic about this approach, for as long as the crowd is willing to interact it could be a nice dialogue. They affirmed, “any type of communication can be seen as jargon”, so rather than hide behind network jargon they’ve decided they’ll open up the discussion and ‘include everyone’.

Read the original post on the Winter Camp 09 Site