FooCamp 2007

...for the next six days, I'm back at the edge of the world. I've been fortunate enough to be invited back to Foo Camp for a third consecutive year...it was a little weird as some of my friends didn't get a callback, but others got a re-vite, after a year away. I can't wait :)

• I arrive at SFO later today to collect a Mini Cooper S (yay!) before spending the night at Carbon's forward base of operations in Burlingame.

• My old boss, Dr. Norman Lewis, and I briefly Dopplr in San Francisco, so we're planning to have breakfast at David's Deli in Union Square on Friday morning. Then, I pickup Surj and head up to Sebastopol for Foo.

• Tony Stubblebine has created a social network for Foo Campers using a combination of his CrowdVine service and Pathable, who're helping similar clusters of people find each other by analysing their profiles. I'm in the Grey Cluster, along with Mitchell Baker, Andy Baio, Summer Bedard, Jane McGonigal, Surj, Greg, Blaine Cook, Kevin Rose, Joshua Schacter, Marc Hedlund, Gavin Bell, Mark Frauenfelder, Rich and Tony - that's Twitter, Poly9, Mozilla, Upcoming, ITP, Digg, del.icio.us, Wesabe and BoingBoing as well as a couple of close friends...how cool is that!

• I'm planning to do a a talk introducing some of the ideas behind Believr, using a demo Tarique is working on this week to mashup Twitter and Google Earth :)
  

• Monday, I'll be meeting up with Asha and Shishir, friends and former colleagues from France Telecom's San Francisco office and maybe exploring Haight-Ashbury and shoppin' in Union Square.

• Tuesday, I'm visiting Citizen Space (thanks Tara!) and Hat Factory to scout ideas for Carbon's planned coworking space for Leeds Met.

Except that none of this is gonna happen. I had to cancel my trip yesterday and put my family ahead of myself...I've reset my Foo threepeat counter and will keep my finger's crossed for 2008... :(

UPDATE (A) Tim's impressions and the full schedule of sessions.

UPDATE (B) My family situation is resolved...my brother Farhan passed his re-assessments and graduated with a BSc (Hons) Computing - Computer Communications with a little help from Mohsin, Tarique and big bro :)

Comments

[Scott Hanselman]

Wow, I hope everything is OK. That totally sucks that you won't be there. Be well.

[Matt]

That's a shame. Good luck - hope everything works out ok.

[Imran...]

Thanks for the kind thoughts guys...I'm really, really sad to be missing out, but I hope I'll get to come back and I'm sure everyone will have a blast :)

[Hasan]

Imran, best wishes to whomever isn't well. See you next year!

[Prolific Programmer]

I hope the family's well, and look forward to meeting a fellow Yorkshireman next year. I myself am born in Leeds, living in San Francisco.

[Imran...]

Thanks Hasan - I remember we met at ETel in 2006 :)