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Its time for this to stop. The cult of personality around people that don’t actually do anything is out of control, as is the celebration of the very fact that they don’t do anything.

What are we celebrating anyhow?

The Mashable party in Los Angeles was as boring as one could expect an entire event based around a blog to be. It was a lot of scenesters talking about the scene, and eventually dissolved into the after party. I had more fun talking to a friend I just had lunch with earlier in the week (hi Tyler).

The trap that this is falling into is a confluence of no action and a cyclic oroborus of talking about what other people do rather than what you can do yourself. Specifically, a good number of people that I know that are in the “scene” in LA or elsewhere can’t for the life of them do anything productive with the very technologies they are ostensibly celebrating.

This is not universal of course. I know a good number of brilliant people who go to the parties and such, but a vast number of those brilliant engineers, programmers, designers and what not are at home actually working vs. having really bad liquor with dubious people.

I hate to say it, but I miss the bullshitting of art school. At least it was acknowledge that it was bullshit. And two buck chuck was better than some of the shit served at the parties.

And I really hate to say it, but Hollywood parties are much more fun in their ridiculous splendor.

I would love to open a discussion with like-minded people in the creation of some sort of salon type atmosphere that was more focused on collaboration, discussion, intellectual discourse and knowledge sharing. Bar Camp’s don’t work from what I’ve seen, as they lack a center and they lack a cohesive framework for any meaningful discussion. I’ve been to many, have gotten nothing out of them all. Not to discredit them though, its probably more what I’m looking for than what they provide.

So who’s with me in my grumpiness about all this movement without action?

If you’d like to plan a Salon type atmosphere in Los Angeles with me, let me know. Something between Gnomedex, Barcamp, an Unconference and a good old fashion Art School Crit. With wine. Like the constitutional convention, but not as smelly and hot.

Comment here.

PS: I think dev-camps and hackathons are awesome and inspiring and fun. Code-sprints too. I’m a bit too scatter brained to program with that much hyperfocus however.