Another year, another bout of kvetching over the attendee list for O’Reilly’s Foo Camp. Before I get started, let me say that I have never been invited to Foo Camp, and even if I were invited I probably wouldn’t go because I never go to conferences of any kind.

Let’s say I’m throwing a party and I want for it to be fun for myself and for the guests. I’m going to carefully choose who to invite in order to create the best mix of personalities and conversations that I can. I’m probably not going to invite people that I know to hate each other. I’m certainly not going to invite anyone that I don’t like.

Foo Camp is O’Reilly’s party. The problem seems to be that this party has lots of well known attendees who document the parties they go to on their weblogs, which opens them up to criticism from people who don’t like the kind of party they’re throwing. BarCamp is a much more productive response than complaining about somebody else’s party.