Here are some photos and some captions from AboutUs.org at RCC.

“Open Space facilitator Jeff and John Abbe of Wagon work on preliminary organization for the Camp outside Socialtext HQ.”

“As part of the welcoming ceremonies for RecentChangesCamp 2008, we created a circle reaching from the earliest to most recent times of discovering wiki, our ‘Wiki Birthdays,’ spanning 1999-2008.”

“The other end of the WikiBirthdayCircle, reaching through 2006.”

“A participant, between Eugene Kim of blueoxen associates (the wiki host for the RecentChangesCamp wiki) and Wikimedia developer Brion Vibber tells the story of his wiki birthday.”

“MarkDilley listens while Peteforsyth of Wikipedia and the Our New Mind blog elaborate on the story behind his wiki birthday.”

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Check out a few photos on RCC by Steven Walling as well.

Here’s a message we got today from Steven.

Just wanted to send out the message that Mark, Kristina, Pete (Forsyth), Dunbar and John (Abee) have arrived in Palo Alto and all is well. We’re thinking we might do a blog post from and/or about RCC sometime in the near future, we already have a few photos as well (including of Facebook HQ, which is just down the block from Socialtext).

SocialText is the sandbox for this year’s RecentChangesCamp. I’ve encouraged them to post, as well as to use the AboutUs.org Twitter account to keep us informed by proxy of what’s happening. Also, check Mark’s, Kristina’s and Pete’s Twitter accounts for possible updates. The photos will eventually show up on the AboutUs.org Flickr page.

Wednesday, Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki and a member of AboutUs.org’s board, gave a presentation on the Future of the Wiki at AboutUs Towers. Sponsored by PDX Web Innovators, was well attended by a host of webby, wiki types. I asked Ward what he talked about and his response was collaborative and adaptive, not suprising considering his background and interests.

Ward gets his wiki on

“Here is how the event worked:

• I passed out printed copies of (notes) to use a an idea stimulator.
• We brainstormed a list of topics
• I chose topics, we discussed them, and then I lined them out

Let’s get physical

Soylent Wiki is people!

“I spent most of my spare brain cycles just trying to stay ahead of the audience enough to make good next selections. I made the wise choice to work from people oriented ideas toward technology oriented ideas. Other than that the whole event is a bit of a blur.

It’s people I tell you!

“Somehow I was able to bring the event to a close without going more than a few minutes over and ending with the convincing conclusion that we were working on a mechanism for world peace.”

Did I mention it was people?

A small cadre of AboutUsites are rocketing southward to Palo Alto, California this weekend, May 9-11, to attend RecentChangesCamp. RCC08 is a big, wacky wiki hoedown that welcomes “participants from all wiki-related disciplines.”

This “big tent” includes poets, painters, novelists, historians, sculptors, scholars, designers, stylists, trade-paper sub-editors, interior decorators, wolves, millionaire patrons of art, sadists, nymphomaniacs, bridge sharks, anarchists, tire formers, educational cranks, economists, hopheads, dipsomaniac playwrights, nudists, restaurant keepers, stockbrokers and dentists and more.

So, if you’re going to be attending RCC, hunt us down, leave a comment here, or contact Mark Dilley or Kristina Weis. If you’re not attending but are part of the wiki universe and would like to get together and chew the fat, give us a holler as well and we’ll see what we can do.

If you’d like to see some photos of the disreputable sorts who populate the RCC, check out the photos from RCC 2006, taken by, among others, our own Beloved Leader, Ray.

AboutUs does not keep its wikiositude (it’s a word - look it up) confined to its website. This collaborative approach “bodies forth” even in the physical shape of AboutUs Towers. At AboutUs, work is done in small groups, which change to reflect the needs of the job in front of us. What better way to allow for the creation of work groups than living the wiki.

Look at the space as a whole. It’s open, with few barriers between individuals. The large rows of industrial windows even effect a connection with the outside world.

Now look at the work stations Each of the tables and chairs in our workspace are equipped with large rubber wheels. When a work group forms, AboutUs-ites can wheel desks and chairs together for the duration of the meeting or project, lock down the wheels, then unlock them when they’re done and wheel them away again.

Finally, the whole place is tied together electronically not by great fat bundles of wires but by a sophisticated wifi system, that allows anyone to work with any computer from anywhere in the office.

For AboutUs, wiki is not just a nice idea or a business sector to exploit, it’s a way of thinking. At AboutUs, we practice what we preach.

Yesterday was May Day, a holiday that celebrates, among other things, the dignity of labor. Unions, labor groups, political parties and movements that emphasize labor are primary celebrants. From early on in the holiday’s history May Day has frequently been punctuated by large gatherings. For instance, yesterday, dock workers all up and down the West Coast stayed at home or marched instead of working the day shift. They both celebrated labor and criticized the Iraq War, including the latter due to a belief that it is a disproportionate burden to working class families.Early in the labor movement the emphasis was on physical labor and the people who did it. But the movement has expanded to include so-called intellectual property workers. The term’s arguably a bit misleading. As someone who has been both a truck driver and a marketing communications director, I can assure you, you can’t do the former without thinking and the latter without physical issues (such as repetitive stress).

One of our own, MarkDilley spent 15 years as a labor organizer before helping to shape AboutUs. The movement from one to the other was more natural than it may seem at first. Wiki’s self-organizing aspects fit well with the initial step in organizing (both labor and information), building lists. As any industry leader knows, having a list of people and businesses you can go to is invaluable, same within organized labor. So, take a minute, honor your own labor and that of others by adding to the list.