07FEB09: SkeptiCamp

I was listening to a Skepticaity podcast from November (episode #90 MP3), a few days ago and ran upon the idea of Skepticamp. I thought somebody might be interested in this.

Let me just parrot what is on their website:

What is Skepticamp? SkeptiCamp is an international (well, US and Canada so far) network of user-generated skeptic conferences.

It's is a new kind of BarCamp, a conference whose content is provided by the attendees themselves. Where BarCamp focuses on technology, SkeptiCamp instead focuses on science, critical thinking, pseudoscience, paranormal claims, alternative medicine and the hundreds (thousands?) of topics of interest to skeptics.

The 'skepti' in SkeptiCamp is to emphasize a respect for critical thought, reliable evidence and the many traps of faulty reasoning. It should not be construed to be a blanket rejection of the weird.

New to skepticism? Check out Michael Shermer's A Skeptical Manifesto or the Wikipedia article on Scientific Skepticism. Better yet, pick up a copy of the late Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark, a classic on the value of critical thinking.

New to BarCamp? A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to meet, share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

The next one will be in (near) Atlanta on Saturday February 7, 2009.

SkeptiCamp website

Atlanta SkeptiCamp website

It sounds like a meetup where everyone has researched a topic and will share it with others. It sounds like an interesting idea for doing confrences.