Yet another conference this week: the Intel Strategy Summit in San Diego. I keep getting the same questions at each one of these things. The question, “How does community happen?” is particularly fashionable right now because proprietary companies seem to think open source and openness in general are black arts. Communities just spontaneously form and magically self manage. You can see the outsiders trying to participate, not quite getting it, and hording their knowledge.

Fortunately I have the perfect example of community-building this week. On Saturday I got a call from long-time co-conspirator Raven Zachary to discuss Apple’s recent WWDC conference and the iPhone. He invited me to team up with him and Chris Messina on a new BarCamp inspired event: iPhoneDevCamp. Apple’s releasing the iPhone next week, and 3,000,000 hungry customers will line up to get one. At the same time, traditional Apple developers are feeling left out in the cold by the recent announcement that there is no iPhone SDK. The company says webapps were the way to go development-wise, and traditional developers seem a bit sullen about it.

Enter willing volunteers to fill in that gap: iPhoneDevCamp. For those of you who aren’t familiar with BarCamp, here’s how it works. It’s a non-commercial event, organized by volunteers, with no cover charge for any attendee. On Saturday Raven set up the initial wiki. By Saturday evening the volunteer organizers had already reorganized content, added additional content, and started spreading the news by word of mouth.

Attendees will include web designers, developers, testers, and iPhone owners—all working together, on their precious weekend, to improve the web experience for iPhone owners. Development projects will include both solo and ad-hoc team efforts encouraged by the organizers based on skills and expertise. Everyone will work on a development project in some fashion. You don’t need to be an expert developer, an owner, or even want an iPhone—it’s a truly open event.

As I write this post, over 90 people have signed up to participate, several sponsors have come forward, and Adobe Systems stepped up and offered the use of their facilities in San Francisco to host the event. It’s been covered by Wired, Business 2.0, MSNBC and other major press outlets.

The iPhone isn’t available for purchase yet. There’s no existing community of users. There’s no SDK. Who are these crazy folks and how did they create a community in 72hrs? They’re just folks that saw a need, and shared their desire to fill it with other like-minded individuals. Community happens. Want to experience it for yourself? Here are the details:

When: July 6-8, 2007
Where: Adobe Systems 601 Townsend Street San Francisco, CA 94103 Map
Website: http://barcamp.org/iPhoneDevCamp

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