Techies flock to Red Hat

The Triangle will host its first BarCamp today, an "unconference" that lets participants design and lead the agenda.

BarCampRDU is expected to draw 150 technology afficionados from across the Triangle and the country to meeting rooms at Red Hat, a Raleigh software company.

An unconference is based on the idea that the best parts of conferences are the discussions in the hallways and over meals -- not the planned sessions. BarCamp will begin today with a blank, wall-sized paper agenda that participants fill in with sessions they want to lead. Some will come with ideas in mind, others might be inspired during the day.

"It's going to be a day where people sort of geek out and learn and teach," said Fred Stutzman, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student and the organizer of the event. Online brainstorming so far (at barcamp.org/BarCampRDU) includes sessions on juggling, programming protocols and making most of social networking sites such as MySpace.com.

Some of the Triangle's best-known technoscenti plan to attend, including IBM engineer Sam Ruby; Andy Hunt, author of "The Pragmatic Programmer" and Dave Johnson, developer of blogging software Roller Weblogger. Registration is full, with dozens of people on the waiting list.

The workshop's name could cause some confusion, Stutzman acknowledged. Computer programmers frequently name variables Bar and Foo, and BarCamp's name is a play on a famous unconference, Foo Camp.

"Everybody thinks since it's BarCamp, we're going to be drinking a lot," he said. "We may be rowdy, but it's a tech conference. We're not bar-hopping."

The first BarCamp was held in August in Palo Alto, Calif., and since then, they have sprung up around the world. There had been at least 42 BarCamps through the end of June, with about a dozen abroad and five on the East Coast.

Stutzman went to the first two Foo Camps representing ibiblio, a digital archive project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he has attended several unconferences since then.

"This is a new phenomenon," he said.