Adam here from FLOSS Manuals – I agree entirely with your points. We are working on bringing together people to build a team so that remote collaboration extends beyond the real space event. Utilising a real space event to facilitate remote collaboration if you will.

Remote and real space have very different energies and purposes, and in my experience ongoing remote collaboration can be jump started and its life span extended through select real space meetings.

Also, just to note – the event is not entirely run from donations but has contributions from the organisations involved (but this does not cover the full amount needed).

Further, I am organising an event in May ‘09 called Electro Smog – International Festival of Sustainable Immobility. It is precisely about these issues you bring up and the entire event will consist of local presentations and discussions and workshops augmented by remote (telematic of various forms) presentations.

It will be held at De Balie in Amsterdam and other venues around the world simultaneously. Watch http://www.debalie.nl for info closer to the event.

adam

Hi Belinda – We’d love to have you – you can add your name to the http://sugarlabs.org/go/DocumentationTeam page where many of the documentation plans are posted. One attendee plans to camp, and I have information on local hotels near the host location. I’ll be sure to add this information to the wiki page.

However, this effort is based on a budget from donated money, not a pre-approved company budget. Also, the environmental picture is quite different from even a year or two ago. For these reasons, the negative impacts of a face-to-face collaboration for efforts like this seems to outweigh the positive benefits for the few writers who are involved. The work *could* be done just as effectively in an online collaboration. I would think that people and company asked to donate to a charity effort like this would prefer to see their money spent as efficiently as possible. Given the current focus on global climate change, rising fuel prices, and the negative impact of burning fuel when you do not really *need* to burn fuel, it seems inefficient to have so much of the cost for which you’re requesting donations being used for gas, travel, and lodging. I’d prefer to see my donated money used only for the unavoidable costs (and less environmentally-impacting costs).

I’m just trying to raise consciousness that it’s the time in our history to stop doing things a certain way just because we’ve always done things that way. It’s time to start thinking outside the box because the quality of life for our descendants depends on us learning to curtail our excesses now. Not later. Even if that means learning new ways of conducting business and collaborating that might in some ways be less ideal than our previous consumptive excess had enabled.

It’s an interesting day and age when technology like wikis and Second Life enable virtual meetings to be just as useful and productive as real space. But sometimes even an online community needs in person interaction to either be more efficient (one argument) by communicating faster, and in person you can understand nuances only available with body language, personal space, and so on. I know you personally strive to overcome any communication gap that a lack of face-to-face contact may bring with it, and you’re quite good at it.

Also, when you just are the type of person who enjoys interaction with others with similar interests, these kinds of events really motivate and reward contributors. I also think that this interaction will spur more activity later, by bringing together key players. We’ll get to know each other and learn the best ways of working together going forward. This BookSprint is partially about longevity of the volunteer community around the XO and Sugar.

It’s similar to how unconferences and BarCamps are springing up all over – sure, maybe it’s because the extroverts and social animals really thrive on this kind of interaction. But I think that there are good reasons for and benefits to occasional, specially planned events such as this one.

You and others reading about the BookSprint might enjoy this newly contributed article on the Role of Face-to-Face Interaction in Building and Complementing Online Community at http://commons.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Kaliya. It cements for me that there is a role for face-to-face for online communities to improve their connections and communications.

For example, if you want a feeling of “being there” in the same room while you discuss ideas, Second Life would be a perfectly good venue for a small group of less than 30 people. Your avatars can chat using voice comms or text. You can watch videos together. You can view web pages together (and therefore slideshows delivered via web pages). Alternatively, or in tandem, you can use WebEx or Sonexis or NetMeeting technology (or Microsoft variants) when you need to collaboratively review and mark up drafts or somehow share your desktops.