Tom Coates writes a post on the Foo experience regarding the elitism. I wrote a post on this last weekend. Then got some mail from folks and wrote a followup post.
Foo camp is a rewarding invitation only event. Big deal. Tim has a business and his business is based up on relationships so he invites people to his campout. WTF is the big deal. How he runs his events is his business and Tom Coates writes a good opinion piece on this (see link above).. Tom Coates says …”invitation-only events happen all the time in the tech industry. There are more conferences and seminars happening in and around Silicon Valley than there are days in the year. And any individual or company is free to start their own event and invite whomsoever they choose.”
Tim’s Foocamp vision and pespective is around his business objectives not a global culture. If it was we’d have see podcasts and video from the event. He has the right to have a private party anytime anywhere. This is not a new model. Closed events have been around for a while as pointed out by Tom Coates.
To me it is my opinion isn’t that the the larger ‘macro issue’ is the effect of private get togethers in a global blogosphere. The net is now comprised of a growing blogosphere. The blogosphere is based upon connections. A blogosphere without connections is like a city without sidewalks. Connections create feedback and feedback loops drive the effectiveness of the blogosphere. Without and openand feedback centric culture the connections and relationships lose the vibrancy and effectiveness.
Silicon Valley Technology Blog - John Furrier 
John, good points.
I prefer to go to events that are open to all. The practical issues are manageable, as we’ve found with Bloggercon. And sometimes its uncomfortable when someone says something that’s off-topic, or hurtful to others, but that’s the way life is, you can’t control what people say about you.
Tim is right not to invite me to Friends Of O’Reilly — I am not their friend. I’m very picky about who I call a friend. The way they treat people pretty much means I’ll never be friends of theirs, unless they change, and that’s not tooooo likely.
Let’s build on open structures, like the blogosphere itself. We didn’t just allow friends to ping weblogs.com, people who dissed me were allowed on the network too. If I hadn’t been open about it, someone would have come along an invented one that was open and that’s what we would have built on.
Similary, the community that ORA is building is a dead-end, it leads to boastful hurtful posts like the one from Coates. I don’t want to be part of that! People need to think about what they want to support. I don’t think good people want to support that kind of meanness.
Dave, I don’t think that Tom is being hurtful in his post. He is articulating his opinion which makes sense. Private events are fun and simulating. Open events drive more discussion and are inclusive.
The tech landscape is more global than ever before and connections matter.. like open systems interconnections before open relationships will create new changes. That is where the action is. Closed = Closed
That is in all probability top-of-the-line articles I’ve study in a very very long time, I just wish there were extra goodies around the web as of late, thanks and will God Bless you my youngster. LOL