There is not so much an intersection where community, culture, technology, and geography meet up as there is a big traffic circle, the kind they have in Europe. In the middle of the traffic circle I imagine a Will Alsop-esque open concept building that has an outdoor amphitheater illuminated with projections of camp fires. People turn off, lock up their bicycles, park their electric cars and engage in enlightening ad hoc conversations, form organic groups to get things done, and generally engage in Wuffie based commerce (human capital for non-sci-fi nerds).

This day dream was induced by Mark Kuznicki after reading his essay "What is an Open Creative Community". This is a very important discussion in the context of the Arts, Calgary Arts Development as an organization, and, if I may be so bold to say, how people organize themselves generally.

At Calgary Arts Development we've employed open space technology and the World Cafe format for our community engagement sessions and understand that people are generally very good at organzing themselves organically. There has been a recent trend of unconferences, perhaps the most famous of which is tech giant O'Reilly's FOO Camp, which has inspired the more grassroots approach, BarCamp.

I'm excited to attend the upcoming calgary DemoCamp which takes place on Nov. 27 to get an idea of how this community is emerging in Calgary. There is a full blown Calgary BarCamp on Dec. 15 and I encourage everyone to go and check out the wiki and consider taking part. Maybe at some point in the future they can host one in the middle of a traffic circle.