Early on in the CityCamp movement there was a fair amount of confusion about which “camps” to join and who should be partners. Some local organizers were frustrated by the number of groups forming in their area. They were experiencing a kind of social network fatigue. Others complained that people weren’t working closely enough together, weren’t coordinating efforts. Some had (have?) strong feelings about how the open source brand should be interpreted.

My answers then and now: 1) Join and partner with whatever feels right and is easy. 2) Yes, we are working together. It just doesn’t feel like what you are used to when it comes to collaboration and team work. 3) Don’t worry about it. Together we’ll do the right thing. There will be more good than bad, while everyone remains free as their will without judgement. That’s powerful. The reason for my answers is that CityCamp works like the Web.

CityCamp is a network within a network, the Internet. There are nodes and there are links between nodes and they all generally represent the same concept. Some nodes grow large. This is mostly because of the number of links that point to them and the quality of links to which they point. Some nodes die and links go dead. No one should take that personally and everyone should rejoice in the fact that it’s super easy to create new nodes and new links. Farm the fields that produce. In the end, we are all hyperlinks that point to the shared goal of using the Web for the good of better governance and community. We want that node to get huge and every time someone starts a CityCamp we point to it.

This idea that our behaviors model the Web has been on my mind often, lately. Sometimes I’m afraid of it. (Who on the Web hasn’t been freaked out by it?) Mostly I think this is all fantastic. CityCamp, like the Web, is an Architecture of Participation.

- KMC