Anonymity, action and headlines at BarCamp5

I'm currently sitting very antisocially next to Annie Mole and the gingeriffic Mr Ben Matthews typing way about the amazing stuff available at BarCamp5 - a meet up of social media peeps at eBay's offices in Richmond. The key focus of the event is a kind of self enclosed school where everyone is both a teacher and a student.

There's a whiteboard in the reception of the very cool, Palo Alto-esque office, which was completely empty at the start of the day. By 2pm, when I stumbled into the building with a nasty hangover, the board was awash with scribbled post-its - each one a lecture that individuals were offering at some point during the day.

So far today I've attended three.

I've just been sitting very attentively through a presentation by the Open Rights Group (ORG) an amazing lobbying group, which works to represent geeky types everywhere by spotting the big glaring holes in legislation and nudging politicians into action. The talk was given by Glynn Winttle and was one of the most interesting and enlightening presentations I've seen in a long time.

So powerful was the oratory that I've decided to pledge the monthly five quid donation that the organisation needs to exist and I would urge you to do the same. I'll write another time about the very cool work that ORG do but in the meantime please, please, please visit the website here - http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

The quality of the lectures as you might imagine vary quite massively and I've already had to sit through an example of social onenism with people talking about how they remain anonymous online. True enough I could've left before I did but I thought I'd at least give the lecture a chance....never again.

Currently I'm listening to a talk on writing headlines given by a bloke called Tom who if I remember correctly is Communities Editor for The Times. I'm going to sign off now because Tom deserves far more of my attention than he's currently getting and I genuinely feel like I'm learning something important.

People should do this more - sharing useful information - and I don't understand why it seems to be the preserve of the social media crowd. Let's do this more often. Photos coming soon.