This one time, at Transit Camp…

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been recalling my turn at the welcoming circle at Toronto Transit Camp in February (which was captured on video and is available on YouTube, of course), ten months ago. I stood at the microphone in the circle and said, “I want to have a Transit Camp in Vancouver.”

This past Saturday, December 8th, I was standing in the middle of a welcoming circle once again (though unfortunately, more of a welcoming half-moon) Рat the inaugural Vancouver Transit Camp at WorkSpace Caf̩ in Gastown. This time, I was doing the welcoming to a group of Metro Vancouver bloggers, software developers, activists, transit geeks, and TransLink staff, and I could not be happier to have had the honour to convene, and chance to address, such a unique group of people.

Thanks to Roland, Richard, Dave, Paul, Luke, JMV and Dustin for helping me shepherd the details – couldn’t have gotten anywhere without you! And a big shoutout to the lovely Vancouver Transit Camp sponsors for helping us make it possible – Happy Frog, SillySoft, Socialtext, SPEC and WorkSpace (with kudos to Blim for the swag)!

It’s been quite a trip! I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on it – many enjoyed it, found it refreshing and appreciated the chance to engage with the other people in the space. I couldn’t have asked for more, and the other “organizers,” I’m sure, feel the same. There were lots of people who couldn’t make this one who expressed their interest, since there was a scheduling conflict with the Climate Change Day of Action unbeknownst to us all when we were first coming up with the date, as well as other conflicts.

I will spare you the sketchiness of any re-cap I could write, since I was doing organizer-y stuff. Here’s what others had to say about Vancouver Transit Camp:

• from Paul Hillsdon
• from Stephen Rees
• from Roland Tanglao, the bestest small-o organizer ever
• from Miss604
• from John
• from Dustin
• from Ariane

One of the questions I heard many times before Transit Camp was, what’s the outcome? And it’s been a bit of a struggle, but ultimately very rewarding, to come back to what I said in the circle during the closing: that it is whatever we want it to be for ourselves. What do we want to be able to say we did as a result of Transit Camp? What do you want to start? Who else do you want to talk to as a result of the conversations you had? What questions do you want the answers to? What change do you want to see? I didn’t really understand that until I started helping make Transit Camp a reality – I, after all, was the gimp at Toronto Transit Camp in February that asked, “What now?” at the closing circle. We make now – so what we do with it is what comes out of it. Not waiting for someone else to make things better for us, but working on it together, as hard and difficult as it is. I’m wary of my success in putting that across, but perhaps I didn’t have to make it as explicit as I think I do.

In the next while, I’ll be blogging about some of the more interesting conversations I had at Transit Camp, as well as some lessons learned. Stay tuned.

Photos by JMV.