As people sign onto the passenger roster, I’ve been thinking about how RoadCamp is going to be a kind of “social (media) experiment” that’s completely unprecedented. You see, the cool thing about Podcamps and TweetUps is that they let us share an actual physical space with people who we usually interact with only online.
But even that shared experience is ephemeral. We share it only for a limited time, and in a limited way: we’re not in each other’s face 24/7, and we’re not force to push each other’s boundaries beyond the shared (geeky) interests that brought us there in the first place.
In fact, if you think about it, these “unconference” events are so few and far between that, despite sharing a physical space, our interactions tend to focus only on your shared interests.
But by putting a couple dozen people into a relatively confined space for 3 days with no real escape or personal space, we’re going to really push personal boundaries. We’ll be forced to connect with each other on a much deeper and more nuanced level, and confront how we all have interests and perspectives that are completely alien to one another — and have nothing to do with the internet.
And you know, while a lot of us blogger and tweeters like to quip that we’re social media rock stars, we rarely have groupies and we never have tour buses. Well, by going “on tour” together, we’ll be testing whether we’re just another melee of one-hit-wonders, or really do have the kind of staying-power it takes to “make it.”
In fact, it just might be the kind kind of experience that either tears us all apart once and for all, or inspires us to do some of our greatest work ever.
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great words. i’m doing my upmost to take this vision to the next level.
Phil, you’re a mensch to the utmost degree, and I’m not just saying that because you flatter me. After all, reciprocal flattery would make us sycophants, and I’m much too much of a jerk to be a sycophant.