I am attending Mashup Camp 2 today and tomorrow at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View. This is a really amazing event with almost 300 developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, etc. What really strikes me is how this is in effect a free, open source-style conference similar in spirit to open source software. There are no pre-planned sessions. The participants come up with the sessions the day of the event. The facilities, wi-fi, and the food are completely provided by the sponsors and donations. The event free to attend which amazing compared to high-tech conferences like SuperNova and Web 2.0 which cost many thousands of dollars to get into. These "camps" like FooCamp and BarCamp have been going on for a while, but this is the first one I have attended. I'm impressed, and in fact, there should be more events like these for things other than Web 2.0 technology. If these camps take off, it is bad news for commercial conferences and I don't think I am going to be paying to go to too many more of them.