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Essential Mind Camp Info!

Looking for the quick info on Seattle Mind Camp, and what exactly it is? We’ve collected the most important information right here for you:

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Okay campers - these are the people that are keeping you fed. Fed well actually. Thanks to Windows Live, we will have a fully catered dinner on Saturday, and breakfast on Sunday - as opposed to hot pizza on Saturday evening, and cold pizza on Sunday morning.

Windows Live. Bringing your online world together. Finally, the people you care about, the information you need, the interests you have, plus powerful protection all living online in one place. So you can quickly get to what you want to do. Know who’s online right from your inbox, search the web during instant messaging chats, drag and drop your photos into folders to share with friends. And so much more. Do it all with increased security around virus protection, phishing and spam. It’s your world.

 


The newly renovated and re-opened Youngstown Cultural Arts Center is the home for Mind Camp 2.0, and we couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.  As part of the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association’s $30 million “three projects | one community” campaign, the once-abandoned historic building is now a bustling home to artists, educators, and community activists.  The center’s tenant partners—such as Twelfth Night Productions and the Nature Consortium— produce innovative arts, education and outreach programs that enrich the community.

Seattle Mind Camp will make extensive use of the first floor of the former Frank B. Cooper School, which includes a 150-seat theater, a movement studio, a media room, and a recording studio.  You can read more about the Center in the Seattle Times and The Stranger, or listen to KUOW’s Dave Beck interview Center Director Randy Engstrom here.

More pictures are available at this Flickr page or at the Youngstown Center’s rental page (click the room links on the sidebar).


The first thing that Seattle Mind Campers encountered when they registered was a page with two questions:  “What’s one thing you’d like to learn at Mind Camp?” and “What are two things you’d like to discuss at Mind Camp?”  This is a participatory event, after all, and we aimed to reinforce that right from the start.

So what did the attendees say?  Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Seattle Mind Campers are passionate about the latest technologies, but they are also interested in the arts, politics, social responsibility, interaction, collaboration, and community.  The raw list of responses are on the wiki: here for things campers want to learn, and here for things they want to talk about.  Perhaps reading them over will give you an idea for ways to contribute.

Some ideas on topics addressed in these lists are being fleshed out on the Session Ideas wiki page, and on the mailing list.  Many more will spontaneously evolve during camp.  One thing is for sure:  if you’re bored at Mind Camp, it’ll be your own dang fault!


Tom Bihn Brain BagSo, last year, there was quite a drop-off in attendance between day one and day two…partly because some people preferred to sleep in their own bed, and didn’t make it back in the morning, and partly because we didn’t really announce anything interesting for the morning. That being said, this time, we are.

In addition to sponsoring a tremendous dinner for us, Windows Live will also be taking care of breakfast. This isn’t your normal continental affair either…we will have a chef on hand, ready to prepare omlettes, and we will have a bunch of other breakfasty goodness as well (yogurts, muffins, danishes, juice, etc.)

Even better, during the closing, we will be giving away some gear. We are talking about some great stuff, like the Tom Bihn Brain Bag, pictured at the right. It retails for $150, and is worth every penny. At Gear Live, we absolutely love Tom Bihn products. Big thanks to Darcy at Tom Bihn for giving us a couple of these bags to give away at Mind Camp 2.0. In addition to the bags, we have a few other nice things for the attendees. You gotta be there to win though. If you skip out on Saturday and don’t come back, you may lose out!


Invisible ChildrenEarlier today I was able to view a short version of the film Invisible Children, a documentary focusing on a story where children are the weapons - and the victims - in a 20-year-long war going on in Northern Uganda. The 35-minute short version of the film was eye-opening, informative, and sometimes heart-breaking. On April 29, Invisible Children is having a nationwide call to action, where people across the nation will be commuting to outdoor places in their communities for large slumber parties in the effort to raise awareness of the effect that this war is having on the children in Uganda. In fact, over 1,000 are expected to camp out at Green Lake here in Seattle.

Since we will be at Mind Camp on April 29, why not watch the documentary, and have a discussion afterward about it? Maybe brainstorm on ways we can help?

I am thinking of having on short session sometime during the afternoon on Saturday where attendees can view the 35-minute short version, and then screening the whole movie later on that evening, with discussion to follow.


We just got confirmation that State Representative Toby Nixon will be making an appearance at Mind Camp 2.0 at around 3:00 PM. When we set out to create this event, we wanted it to be much more than your run-of-the-mill camp/gathering/unconference. We wanted to do something relevant to the Seattle community. That being said, Toby’s appearance will be a great opportunity for us local big-thinkers to share our thoughts with the Seattle government. Toby will talk about both what he does in the legislature, along with his duties at Microsoft, how they interact, and some of the new things he is working on in both places.


If this is your first Mind Camp experience, you should know that the event is much more than just a series of collaborative sessions. There is a lot of fun that goes on, especially in the evening hours. Last time, when people decided they didn’t want to be in a session, they were talking in the common area, coding away on computers, and gaming wirelessly on their Nintendo DS and PSP units. If you have great gear that you want to show off, bring it along. Same goes for hardware or software that makes your personal or professional life easier. Have something that is cool, but that you don’t necessarily need anymore? Bring it along…maybe we can get a hardware trading session going!

Oh, and to the guy that kept destroying me at Lumines last time - I have been training hard for my rematch. Watch out!


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