I Am A Grassroots Skeptic: Reed Esau Part 2
PART II – THE GENESIS OF SKEPTICAMP
Previous Post: “Part I: Becoming a Grassroots Skeptic”
Following TAM 5 in 2007, I was a newly minted grassroots skeptic. My mind raced, wondering what I’d pursue. My experiences in the tech community suggested a fruitful avenue to explore, offering ideas that could be applicable to the skeptical movement.
I recall discovering that our traditional organizations remained conservative in their vision. They might be keenly interested in the growth of skepticism, but weren’t eager to tinker with an established approach that at least maintained the status quo. In any case I was a newbie, who might possibly have good ideas, but no established credibility in their execution.
So where would it start? I had stepped up my role at the new Denver Skeptics Meetup to become an assistant organizer. It was a blank canvas upon which I could experiment. (Later I would realize that having a new group available proved fortuitous, as easy group-forming plays a huge role in building collaborative efforts, such as the one that was to come.)
I might have started a blog or podcast, both of which could have been valuable, but which were not a good match for my skills. Ultimately I arrived at a strategy of adapting a successful idea from the tech community, an open conference format called BarCamp that had seen great success since its inception in 2005.
The BarCamp approach to open conferencing focuses on tearing down the barriers to distributing knowledge within communities. The format had already demonstrated its adaptability, finding its way to other domains like photography. So I asked “why not skepticism?” Instead of tech or photography, we could feature user-driven content on topics related to science and skepticism. As portmanteaus are the custom in adapting BarCamp to other domains, “SkeptiCamp” was born. I optimistically registered the domain name as a first step.
Cowboy Skeptic Rich Ludwig (whom I’d met at TAM 5) had already joined me as an assistant organizer of the Denver Meetup, and was eager for something to do. I shared my idea, and secured my first partner in this effort. Along with Crystal Yates-White we set about planning the first SkeptiCamp event.
Did we know what we were doing? Not really.
I had no experience motivating people, nor had I never spoken before a large group. Crystal had a bit of experience in helping to organize other events, though nothing quite like this. We were newbies proceeding down an unexplored road. Reading of the experiences of BarCamps provided some insight, but only partly prepared us for what was to come.
Looking back, it was an interesting paradox. Had we been experienced organizers, we would likely never have pursued the BarCamp model. It wouldn’t have been the way we thought about events. It wouldn’t have been the way we thought of the larger rank-and-file skeptical community, as having knowledge to share to produce substantive events. We would have been stuck in the lecture model of established speakers. It may well have been our lack of experience and desire to innovate that made such a speculative venture possible.
The effort nearly fell apart at least once, where a disagreement or miscommunication led to anger among us. Somehow we got the effort back on track and held the first event in the summer of 2007, coincidentally on the same day that James Randi, P.Z. Myers and Eugenie Scott attended a user-driven science conference in California called “Science Foo Camp.”
Our first event came off fairly well with a turnout of 30+ participants — possibly 40+ if we include those who attended one of the talks at a “pre-party” the night before. Our event featured eleven talks, nearly half of which were led by women. It had a few rough spots. One of them was my own talk, which suffered from a lethal combination of lack of sleep and inadequate preparation.
But we survived. We learned much that would feed into future events, not only for us, but eventually for organizers in other cities.
Afterwards, I encouraged other skeptic groups to give it a try, but didn’t find much traction. The second event was also going to be in Colorado, in March 2008. Rich led the organization, and I played a secondary role this time, mostly as a “Speaker Wrangler,” encouraging people to speak. The event easily doubled in size to 60+ attendees, in spite of a location that was a 30 mile drive south of Denver. Mistakes were made, but so were incremental improvements. (This event saw its influence reaching into our traditional organizations. Phil Plait attended as an observer, sitting quietly in the back. He found himself enthralled by Joe Albietz’s talk, to the extent that Joe not only was a panelist at TAM 7 but played a big role in setting the JREF down a path to fighting anti-vaccination nonsense.)
Several months later, in June 2008, the first SkeptiCamp outside of Denver took place. It was a small event organized in Vancouver by BC Skeptics.
However, project fatigue had set in. Though we had solved some of the challenges in adapting BarCamp to skepticism, the wider adoption of open conferencing by the skeptical community had not yet materialized.
I was prepared to accept that the idea might fail, but I didn’t want it to fail for a stupid reason such as my inability to execute. If SkeptiCamp did fail, it would be because of a fundamental incompatibility between open conferencing and skepticism that could not be overcome. I resolved that life is too short to tolerate fumbled execution. Compelling ideas deserve to be given a fighting chance.
And so I got to work.
Next post: “The Comeback”
Category: Skeptical Groups
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