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Regarding that foo party thingy, that's mentioned everywhere: It's quite strange. Surely nobody wants to object when someone invites people he either knows or wants to know better. Surely there's nothing to object to when people gather, play with gadgets, dito for drinks and have a good time. Surely it's regrettable to not have been invited. But why be bitter. How many parties did I have without inviting Mr O'Reilly or any other person moderately known to the web? I probably wouldn't have kicked them out, had they turned up – but that's just the generous person I am and that's just the reassurance that there won't be too many surprise guests coming...
And if I run a party on a budget, I will have to limit the number of people coming. Similarly if it's my money or my authority to invite people, it's me who decides who's in and who's out. Simple. I can't see any reason beyond vanity why people would be upset because of those things.
The only questionable thing would be to label the whole thing 'significant' or 'visionary'. If something important happened there – surely enough we will all get to know it and it will be seen as significant if many people consider it worthwhile using or developing. The same applies to most 'open' and not 'invite-only' gatherings or conferences of course. At least in these rather informal areas of the world – virtual world that is – things don't happen because they've been made up at a particular place. Things happen because they're accepted by many people.
More on this topic by Danny O'Brien: While I don't fully agree on the first part of his text – which is amusing nonetheless – he uses the second part to develop a theory on how the internet only knows public and secret and that consequently there's literally no room for privacy.
More opinions and discussions of the subject at Derek Balling's site.
The discussion at Derek Balling’s is pretty funny — a whole lot of “waah” about nothing, from the big babies you’d expect.
I just re-visited that page to see that quite a bit of the wining hadn’t been up the other day.
Always good for a laugh.
