Last weekend, downtown San Francisco hosted an event that celebrated the diverse community of which we are all a part. People were free to be themselves, without fear of persecution or judgement. It wasn't for everyone, but those who attended came away with a confidence that their voice is heard, their contribution to society is valued, and that there are solutions for the problems we face as a culture. I speak not of the Pride Parade, but BarCamp San Francisco.

Actually, San Francisco was awash in tech conferences last week. Bloggercon IV ("The Voyage Home"?), Jakob Nielsen's big Usability Week, Gnomedex, and even Microformats got in on the party. Typically personified as the two-headed bitch goddess that bestows boons upon both oppressor and liberator alike, Technology was definitely on her best behavior last week. Even the most conventional conference, Usability Week (with tickets weighing in at over $3k for the whole deal), concentrated on making the web more accessible and generally suck less. Hard to argue with that.

But my attentions were lavished upon BarCamp. For the many of us who are not experienced BarCampers (this was my first), here's a quick introduction: Spaces are typically donated, as is equipment and supplies like projectors, coffee, pizza, ice cream, and even presenters. No fancy experts are flown in from the Institute for Ivory Tower Position Papers That Are Completely Irrelevent to Your Day to Day Work. Panels are made up of people like you, including, in fact, you. One entire wall is the schedule and attendees grab a Sharpie^TM and sign themselves up to talk about whatever their area of expertise happens to be. These sessions then continue well into the evening (I think "Quiet Hours" began at 1am) after which follows a good deal of giggling, pillowfights, and talking about boys (or AJAX implementations of drilldown menus).

Working as a webperson at a progressive non-profit in San Francisco, perhaps I take too much joy in anti-hierarchical tech conferences. It's entirely possible. Still, sometimes it seems that while the anti-capitalists and anti-globalists and anti-whateverelseists are arguing about inclusive processes and consensus-based decision-making, the web community (even while full of globalists and capitalists and certainly whateverelseists) seems to be quietly doing it.